Windy...

That is the best way to describe today's flight. The wind was at about 160-170 degrees (Out of the south south east)at 20-25 gusting to 30. This was great for the ground reference maneuvers, I was able to do the rectangular pattern (basically flying around a square mile always flying a quarter mile from your points(usually roads, tree lines or fence lines). Do pass this maneuver you have to maintain the equal quarter mile distance, correct for the wind and stay within +/- 100 feet of your assigned altitude. I was able to do it 3-4 times around keeping it with +/- 40-50 feet. We then moved on to S turns which I am improving on and almost have down. After this came the interesting part. Until today I only had two landings so still pretty much learning. Even with the cross wind my instructor had me try it and we did two touch and go's and a full stop landing. The first one was rough figuring how much to correct for the wind. The second one was a reminder to fly the plane all the way to the ground. The third was better...until the flare. This is the point when you are basically just holding the plane off the ground burning off airspeed and altitude. Everything was going great until the wind decided to die and I learned the lesson to recover quickly as we pretty much fell out of the sky (only from a couple of feet but enough to ruin an otherwise good landing) without the wind. Taxiing with this much wind is also a little tricker but I slowly got the hold of it. After we got done I asked my instructor how he thought I was progressing and he thinks I am doing very well and I could solo in 2-3 weeks with good weather. Sadly the rest of this week looks hot and windy (in other words summer in Kansas) so we may not be able to fly Monday night, we will see. Thanks for reading and as always feel free to ask questions!