PTS Practice

I logged another 1.5hrs today. It was sunny and windy and about 71°F, very odd for October 30th. At ground level there was about a 10-12kt wind coming straight down the runway and since I needed to practice some of the PTS requirements prior to my checkride, I figured that a nice windy day would give me a solid challenge on maintaining a rectangular course or turns around a point. It was pretty hard, and when executing the turns around the point, I only had about 3-5 degrees of bank dialed in when I was transitioning across the cross-wind portion of the turn. I think that the winds at 3000ft were probably more like 13-15kts, because when I was flying with the tail wind, my indicated airspeed showed just about 100mph and I was hitting 108-110kts ground speed. Fortunately for me, this was only a slight crosswind (10-20degrees off the runway heading), so no major problems. However, given that stiff breeze, it took me a couple of landings to get the glide slope down. On final, it was like I was flying into a brick wall...I kept descending, but I didn't seem to be getting any closer to the runway. When getting closer to the end of runway 22, there was some serious ground turbulence that wanted to twist and hop the C172 all around. A little disconcerting when you're on short final, but I'm just glad that I wasn't taking someone up for their first flight today. It was fairly bumpy, given the sun and the wind and the hills that surround Coshocton. 5 landings were made, with the last two landings being ultra-smooth. I think that I'm ready for the checkride on my maneuvers, just need to brush up on the FAR and my C172 knowledge. The setting sun sure looks nice on 06G, don't ya think?