Reliably unpredictable

(Yeah, this entry is out of order. Sue me!)

Saturdays are currently my “just practice” day. I head out to Franklin Field, which conviently has runways 09, 18, 27, and 36 (that’s magnetic east, south, west, and north, lined up with the compass headings). The layout is great.

The wind, on the other hand.. I got to the field about 8:15a. With nobody at the field already practicing and setting the direction of traffic, I had to fly over the field, check out the windsock, and choose a direction.

Wind favored runway 18. Ew. I don’t like that direction. But, that’s ok. Get into the pattern, make the downwind paralle to the runway, watch the windsock, and.. it changes directions 90 degrees. Damn! I took a practice approach at it anyways, but aborted and did a go around.

Next time around, get on downwind, windsock favors me again. Get to turning base, wind changes direction, again full 90 degrees off. Bah. Another practice approach and go around.

Repeat this a third time, swear up a storm, and .. switch runways.

Thankfully, after I switched runways, the wind started gaining a bit of consistentency, and the rest of my morning worked out good with 8 landings before heading back to the home airport.