Birds on the runway, Birds in the sky....

Lesson #7
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Flight Time: 8:00am
Length: 1.5 hrs
Total Time in logbook: 22.6 (7.8 since starting lessons again)

Notes:
Awoke this morning to the most beautiful weather for a month at least now. Clear blue skies, temps in the high 40s at 6:30am. I think to myself "now this should be fun, no crosswind".

Upon arrival to the airport, my instructor greets me, and I proceed to preflight the aircraft. One of the things I dont like about rentals is the fact that each person has a different opinion of "full" fuel tanks. On inspection of the left wing tank, it was apparently 5 gallons low or so. I pointed it out to my instructor, and I got a credit for it so no biggie, just frustrating, as I take great care when refueling the plane. Today we decided stalls and VOR navigation were on tap. My takeoffs are getting much better, almost a no brainer. Im still having an issue correcting stalls. I want to correct with rudder into the stalled wing, not opposite....Ill get it one of these days.

I decided to ask about VOR navigation, as Ive been reading about it for awhile now. I have very little exposure to it as my last instructor did no instruction regarding that subject. We dialed in travis VOR, and maintained our 5000ft alt. I learned about Flight Following as well, and good thing we got it. Once out over fairfield area, Travis AFB became visible. WOW what a sight. About 4 miles of paved surface all said, and whats that a c-5 just departing the active headed our way ... too cool! At this point Travis approach asked we climb to 5500. 3 more departures quickly left the area, all within about 1500ft of us (all below thankfully). What a thrill, a c-5, 2 dc-10s and a c-130. Needless to say I was a little unnerved, but having the Flight Following really helped. We crossed the VOR, and told approach we were headed back to the nut tree. Flight Following cancelled, and I dialed in 122.7 (UNICOM for nut tree).

There was traffic reporting 5 miles out, and heading for runway 20. First of all, we were about 7 miles out, and secondly automated weather was reporting conditions favoring runway 2. I had visual on the traffic first, and called him to see if he had us. After what seemed forever, we decided that as we were higher and further out, hed lead us in. Ive never landed with a tail wind, and it showed. I really pancaked in hard. Indicated airspeed was lower than normal, about 60kts, but the ground speed was way higher. I didnt like that at all. I taxid back around to runway 2 and took off for some pattern work.

My best landings to date. All 4 of them were "greasers". My instructor congraulated me after each one. Im going to solo next time :) My plans of taking the written were a little adventageous. Theres so much to learn with just manuevers and commit those to memory I cant imagine all that at once. Oh yeah, birds every where in this everywhere during the AM hours it seems. A flock of birds all around us again on short finals.