Retraction: Sploogal did not go solo today...
Went out and did circuits with Leith for 1.2hrs before packing it in for the day as it was becoming nearly impossible to land. There was a crosswind and it was gusty and a bit turbulent and getting worse the longer we were out.
We started on runway 25 but switched to 07 after one circuit because it was just silly trying to land from that direction. 07 wasn't much better, but at least I got in a couple of landings without being blown off the runway line.
On my second last circuit, a huge gust blew us off to the left of the runway when we were close to touching down, so we had to go around.
Coming in for my final landing, on the base leg, we hit a huge pocket of turbulence which caused the plane to suddenly roll about 30 degrees to the right. I pushed the stick nearly all the way left to get us level again, but we were only doing 60 knots since we were already on base so the plane was a bit slow to respond and that part of the circuit ended up being more wavy than straight.
Also cut a corner a little turning from crosswind to downwind one time as there were two eagles refusing to give way to us. We flew within less than 100 feet of them, slightly above and to the right, and they were beautiful!
I'm not too upset about not going solo today since I still had a challenging lesson. And the eagles were awesome! I've seen two eagles flying a bit further away the last couple of times I've been out, and I think they might be the same pair. Eagles don't usually live close to one and other I don't think... Any thoughts Gnomey?
I'm further consoled by Rhys telling me that his first solo got postponed three times due to weather. :) Also, he has the new Mario game on the Wii and we played two-player mode and it was awesome fun! Brought back a lot of childhood memories of him giving me continues because I kept on dying lol.