A lack of commitment.

Not to flying that’s for sure but to my landings in general.  The crosswind practice I got last time was very useful if a bit stressful as well. Eventually I found the sweet spot in the slip and began to execute something approaching a survivable crosswind landing. There were a lot of overshoots though. At one point I did accuse the Tarmac of magically repelling the plane, and the runway of “hating me.”

Reviewing the video though, I’m not convinced that the problem did lie with the Tarmac. I have a horrible suspicion that the problem lies with me. I just don’t commit to my landings. It’s like I’m looking for an excuse to bail out of them. Now I have enough confidence to know that I’m flying the first 90 % of any circuit pretty damn well, crosswinds or not. And 90% of the time my approaches are certainly tolerable. Hell I even know that 90% of the time I can salvage a slightly dicey approach as well, so why don’t I?

Ok so I was coming in a little on the fast side on some of my approaches. That’s fixable and reasonably quickly as well. I have faaaar more runway to play with than I allow myself to think. I aborted a couple of landings because I thought I was about to run out of Tarmac. I was only at Charlie when I made that decision. Even on a static take off roll Foxtrot is my decision point. I’ve seen RTH not get it off until Alpha before!

I don’t know what the issue is, other than it resides firmly inside my head.  While approaching every landing as a potential overshoot is usually a fairly healthy attitude, I have a feeling that Bob is going have to get a bit tougher on me and stop me taking the easy road out each time.