Well, I wasn’t able to fly last week and I really felt like something was missing. Today I had an appointment at 4:30pm and it felt so good to get back in the sky. Unfortunately, I was hit with the news that my instructor would be leaving the country next week for 3 months or longer. I should be able to get 1 more lesson in with him before he passes me off to another instructor but it certainly won’t be the same. While I’m on the topic of bad news, my grandfather will be going back to Europe this week and I will miss having him watch me grow as a pilot. Hopefully, next time he comes to visit, I will have my private license and can take him on a real flight rather than just a lesson.

As far as this week’s lesson goes, we did a lot of review. At first I was disappointed with reviewing maneuvers but I really feel myself getting more confident and comfortable in the cockpit so it’s proving to be useful. During takeoff, we had a bit of a crosswind which I am not too used to being in Southern California. After that we made our way to Simi Valley, which was still smokey from the fires in Santa Barbera, and did some steep turns, power-off stalls and began work on emergency procedures. The emergency procedures were done with the throttle at idle and over some farmland North of Simi Valley. Though we didn’t make an actual landing, we went through the trial and error of instrument operations in order to look for potential problems in the cockpit. We also discussed recognizing engine fires and electrical fires and how to try and deal with them before landing the plane.

We made our way back over the mountains and back into the San Fernando Valley and was notified by Van Nuys tower that the winds have picked up to about 7 knots (which was higher than ATIS was broadcasting). I did my first crosswind approach and crabbed the 172 all the way down to 16R. I logged another 1.1 hours and plan on going once more with my current instructor before having to switch to someone new.