Saturday Flight to 5W5

Well, I finally got up in the air again. It was a mixed bag sort of experience (I'll explain a bit better over the next paragraph or two).

We left LHZ and it was a really smooth take off and not much wind (it was 5kts from 260). I turned to the southwest and made my calls leaving the area. As I was making my final call, an airplane flew directly over us. I'm not sure how close but it was close (maybe 150-200'). No call, nothing until he was beyond us.

Nice start, right?

The rest of the flight to 5W5 was uneventful. We made our approach (keeping an exceptionally peeled eye out for any traffic and probably overdoing it a bit on the radio calls). However, I did make a mistake in assuming the wind would be the same as it was at LHZ (or at least close). I set up for a normal approach to runway 34 and it was not a smooth approach. I couldn't get the descent rate in and I was going to miss my spot so, I aborted at about 300' and did a go around. As I was setting up for a second attempt, I happened to notice some smoke from the ground and realized that the wind at 5W5 was actually coming from about 160*. A quick scan for the windsock (it's not the best maintained field and the windsock can be hard to spot) confirmed what the smoke indicated.

Ugh! This was just plain stupidity on my part. I should have flown over mid-field and confirmed wind prior to my setup for approach.

I aborted again and decided to head back with a short detour to find and fly over my friends house (who is also a pilot and who's second set of eyes I was glad to have along for the trip).

The return trip was uneventful and my approach and setdown at LHZ were unexceptional (it's amazing how much easier it is to land without a quartering tailwind). I was a bit tense and beating myself up a bit on the return flight but, all in all, I learned quite a bit from this less than stellar trip (not the least of which is that I need to fly more often).

I'm a bit embarrassed by the whole experience but also think that telling about it will remind me to be more thorough in the future.

Safe Flying,
Kelly