Finally Got (Slightly) Scared

Got to fly again today.  Went in expecting to do short/soft landings/take-offs.  These are practiced for a few reasons, the big ones being a) if I ever had to emergency land/"ditch" into a field, I could make it  b) some runways, especially in VA, are short and/or not paved.  Buuttttt, the winds were too..windy.  Big surprise.  So, my flight instructor launches on me that he wants to do some demo-ing of the VOR.  Ok, cool.  Then he throws at me: under the hood.  The hood is basically a cone for a dog cut in half and you put it over your head so you can only see the instruments and not much else..it's a cone of shame! (if you haven't seen "Up"...see "Up").  Ooook, I can deal with this too.  Then, we realize it's getting late and dark, so basically I can't see a whole lot in the cockpit.  We're getting difficult!  At the conclusion of all of this, we'll do night landings/take-offs.  Uh-oh.  AND, lastly, just to shake things up, we print out the wind reports and realize that there are some pretty windy winds aloft and a nice solid crosswind on the runway.  Gee, why don't you make it easier on me.
So I taxi on out and embark on the mission at hand.  Get about 100 feet vertical and suddenly we hit wind shear and shoot back downwards, Tom freaks out, we recover, keep going.  I put on the hood and not only am I fighting the learning curve of the VOR, but it's windy as anything and keeping level control of the plane is pretty much not happening and it's one of those "just ride with the winds and plane" days.  Urg.  Then it starts getting dark.  Awesome.  Suddenly, my stomach starts to get tested.  We're bouncing around in the sky in a soda can, I have no visual reference, we're doing doughnuts and turns in the sky, and out of the corner of my eye all I can see is semi-darkness which I think is the sky when actually it's the ground.  I actually considered ending the hood session early thinking I'd lose my cookies, but I either got used to it or it just got dark enough I didn't care anymore.
All in all, the VOR went well.  Got some more practice to do, but I'm starting to get it.

Now...night landings.
Remember that bike example I used last post?  Throw that out the window when you put it all at night.  No ground reference, all you have is a lot of lights, a compass, and an altimeter, and your adrenaline.  Oh, and a crosswind!  My first landing was hard, but did ok.  Second, I lined up to go in and TOTALLY overshot the runway.  It's difficult to depend on your altimeter when you've gotten used to landing via visuals, so next time I'm alone I'm definitely taking note of altitudes at different points in my approach legs.  My third was pretty decent, but I came in high nearly everytime, so I'm coming in fast as well, which leads to hard landings.

Needless to say, this finally was something that began to scare me.  It was tough, but I remember my first landings and how nervous I was, not to mention the first time in a plane.  I'm sure soon enough, I'll be fine, but until then, I'm glad biology gave us adrenaline.

Tomorrow I get to do the soft/short landings.  Yay for daylight.  Saturday, 10am, is my first cross-country =D  Lynchburg, then Danville, then back.  Sunday I get to fly by myself again and land at a local, small airport.  Then I probably won't fly much again next week, but we'll see.

On another note, I finished my first big milestone for my engineering thesis today.  It's been a mentally-overwhelming week, to say the least, I'm looking forward to tomorrow's fun landings and a weekend of rest (sort of).