A couple of weekends ago I practiced some cross-wind takeoffs and landings in the Cessna 182RG. On a gusty chilly morning, Keith, one of the Three Wing line guys, was extremely helpful in pre-heating the engine for me while I pre-flighted and watched the pre-heat operation. (Essentially, it’s a propane tank attached to an ignition source and a blower, connected to two large flexible hoses that are inserted into the air intakes on the cowling. With a padded blanket on top of the cowling, warm air is circulated throughout the engine compartment to heat the engine block and the oil.)
After an easy engine start (I LOVE this airplane), I let her continue to warm up, monitoring the engine gauges for pressure and temperature. It gave me a couple extra minutes to get the GPS and comms set up. Then it was taxi to Runway 24 and launch into a bright sunny morning.
All told, I did 10 touch and go landing and 1 full stop over 1.3 hours. Virtually all of them had some cross-wind component, generally about 30-40 degrees off the runway. Over the course of the practice, the wind kept shifting, from WSW to WNW, so halfway through my session, the tower had me change over to landing on Runway 29. All the landings were acceptable, though only one or two made me feel good. But with gusty winds, I didn’t feel too badly about it.
Unfortunately, the late morning started to get a bit busy with pilots wandering into the area for some practice. As a result, the controllers started getting frantic, particularly when one guy came in from Long Island and reported himself in 3-4 different positions from the airport, none of them right. Another guy wasn’t listening whenever the tower called him, so it got a bit dicey and the tower started issuing warnings about listening up and playing nice. At one point the tower called out to the three of us already in the pattern to “use extreme caution” as other aircraft were in the area and he didn’t have them under control or in sight. That was my cue to call it a day and make a full stop landing.
Oddly enough, I got an email from my dad the next day asking if I was the guy doing landing practice in a retractable from about 10:30-11:30am. When I told him it was, he explained that he had been with one of his buddies, duck hunting in the marsh area directly below the final approach to Runway 24. Not that a shotgun would have likely done damage at that range, but good to note that at least it was experienced intelligent hunters below! Lucky too that it was the last day of hunting this season.
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