Between several weeks of downtime at the avionics shop and a bunch of personal distractions, my piloting skills had accumulated a layer of rust by the end of 2023. By then, what I and a few million of my closest friends had hoped would be a dry and benign Florida winter turned soggy, overcast and windy. It was okay weather if you wanted to climb to altitude and go somewhere—especially somewhere downwind with better weather—but the kind of flying I needed wasn’t the straight-and-level-in-cruise kind. Instead, I drastically needed some basic pattern work, along with a few more approaches, all of which, of course, is done down low. It took a while for the weather gods and my schedule to agree, but I finally managed to remove some of the rust I’d accumulated.
I didn’t really have any problems flying the airplane; I just wasn’t as elegant as I wanted to be. My landings, normally featuring relatively smooth tire chirps, now more closely resembled standing a one-inch-thick steel plate on edge and letting it drop onto a concrete driveway. The problem was especially acute if there was a crosswind, which there seemingly was for weeks, and if it was gusty, which it also was for weeks. It took me a few tries, but I finally cracked the code that was keeping me from executing the landing technique I had come to expect (which shouldn’t be confused with a “good” technique).
