A tale of 3 (or possibly 4) landings

[KCDW]

Need to get this off my chest.

Beautiful day in New York/Jersey at long last, so the world and it's wife went up for the day. Never seen it so busy. Wind was stated at 310/11 gusting to 18 all over the State. At the airfield, the wind really didn't seem troublesome at all.

Took off from KCDW for a $100 coke to a small airfield called Solberg in New Jersey. Managed a greaser on runway 4 in a gusting crosswind (in my top ten definitely).

Returning to Caldwell, found myself in almost exactly the same situation (runway 4). All the way down final, I seemed to have hit a lull in the wind, and it looked perfect. As I flared, a gust lifted me up a good 10 feet, and before I knew it, I bounced very heavily. Another gust pushed me sideways across the runway over to the grass (despite plenty of rudder), so before I could bounce again, I poured on the power and did a go around. The stall warning must have been going for 5 long, worrying seconds while the Warrior struggled to climb away.

Next landing was... well so-so....

Anyway, I'm trying to figure out what I did wrong - here's my shortlist:

1. Maybe I should'nt have flown in the first place, with gusts exceeding the crosswind component of the Warrior (17 knts). This wind was clearly bang on the 90 degrees. I guess when you hear that the wind is only 11 knts, you don't think that the gusts could amount to much.

2. Once the first gust lifted me too high, maybe I should have put on some power to decrease the descent rate (something I never think of doing when in the middle of the flare).

3. I was at full flap, maybe I should have been at stage 2 in that Xwind.

Anyway, a cautionary tale (almost one for "that worst day"!).

Anyone else with a similar experience?

[iainpoll]

Hi

Well sounds like you did OK to me, nothing broken after all. I suppose to be hyper-critical, at the first sign of a balloon you should either initiate an immediate go around, or if runway length and experience permit add a squirt of power, reduce decent rate and reset for landing, but thats easy for me to say sat on my a*s in front of a computer.

In a Warrior, with that kind of wind I would definately not be going for full flap, one or two notches depending on runway length/surface.

Dont sweat it though, we all have bad days. The day after my skills test, I had to go around three times in gusty conditions - in the end a nice flapless approach got me down.:ok:

[Cool_Hand]

KCDW,

Unfortunately I cannot comment on the landing as I've never flown a PA28. Just a word to the wise though, I know of some PA-28's that have had a heavy landing apparently showing no signs of damage but for the next landing (no matter how much of a greaser) produces a bulge in the upper wing surface. It seems that on a heavy landing the rivets holding the main mounts to the spar absorb all of the excess energy and shear but no signs of this damage are particularly visible, but the next time the aircraft sees more than taxy bumps the main mounts just move on up through the wing as there is nothing to restrain them.
Granted this is a worse case scenario and it does very much depend on how heavy the landing was. On your next preflight just have as good a look as you can at the main mount attachments to the wing for anything that might seem out of place.

CH