The pattern, the wind shear and the blue sky
I guess I shouldn’t be surprised. It’s March. It’s supposed to be windy, right? Late Friday evening I canceled a cross-country overnight flight to Dallas, TX after reviewing a bundle of weather information that all agreed that flying on Saturday in a small airplane in Dallas wasn’t going to be fun. Winds were forecast from the Southwest 20-25 knots with gusts up to 32. With an abundance of runways facing Southeast, crosswind calculations painted an unpleasant picture.
So we were scrubbed for Dallas. San Antonio turned out to be windy on Saturday as well. I was beginning to believe that flying this weekend just wasn’t in the cards for Mr. Moore.
Today, however, the forecast was a bit more peaceful. A wind shear warning expired at 0900 and winds were forecast out of the west, northwest at 15 knots.
I launched into the sky at around noon in Skyhawk 810SA. The goal for this solo flight was to hop just a wee bit south to do some pattern work at Stinson Municipal Airport. I made a committment, long ago, that I did not want to see pages of logbook entries with one landing for every trip. As a result, I schedule periodic “pattern work” flights to make sure my landings are at the top of their game. The ride was a bit bumpy crossing over downtown San Antonio and soon I was handed over to Stinson Tower for handling.
“Skyhawk 810SA, enter a right base for Runway 27″
I descended to pattern altitude and made my first of three landings. The low level wind shear was still there. Lurking around 1200-1500 feet above the ground. On every final approach I had to make quick power and pitch changes to fight noticeable airspeed deviations that worked hard to disrupt my best attempts at a stable approach.
GPS track from my Garmin 296 - Stinson Airport Landing Runway 27
I advised the tower controller of the wind shear and decided that I’d had enough after my third landing.
“Stinson Tower, Skyhawk 810SA would like to head to the south practice area for maneuvers.”
I headed south and proceeded to do turns around a point, 45 degree steep turns and some standard rate turns over the lush, green farm fields south of the City.
About 45 minutes into the flight, I headed back north to return to San Antonio Intl Airport.
“Skyhawk 810SA proceed to the Tower of Americas for sequencing.”
A quick turn put San Antonio’s most notable landmark off the nose and it wasn’t long before I received vectors for Runway 30 right. This included flying over the path of a United 737 airliner that was landing on the longer, parallel runway.
I was very pleased with my landings today and maintained good directional control on my takeoff and landing rolls.
