AWOS said, "Wind 340 at 12.  Peak gusts 19."  Counting the gusts, that was technically a bit much for students at Dominion Aviation, but it didn't give me any trouble.  After all, it was only 10 degrees off the runway.  And the air was surprisingly smooth above 1,000 feet, or so.  There were a lot of puffy little clouds--fair weather cumulus?--at about 5,000 feet, and I found myself going up and down as I flew beneath them at 2,000 and 2,500 feet, but that just provided good "straight-and-level" practice.  (Straight and level is no problem in N68608--unlike that 65545, which wants to turn left all the time.)

I did some ground-reference maneuvers--turns around a point and S-turns along a road.  It was good practice because of the relatively strong wind.

Then I just flew around for about ten minutes, looking for potential emergency landing fields, and trying to see what the airport looks like from the south, now that the foliage is heavy and full.  It's a little easier to spot the airport now--a clear line breaking the leaf canopy--and there's a big (ugly) blotch of red clay about 3 or 4 miles south of it.

Back at the airport, I did--

• a normal landing to get the feel of it in the wind and gusts.
• a simulated engine-out landing.  I turned base early, wanting to be sure I could make the runway, and then realized I was way high.  But the wind was so strong that just adding full flaps and holding the airspeed to 60 knots brought me down right on the numbers.  It was interesting to note the steep angle of decent (steep over the ground, because of the wind) and to watch the VASI change from white over very white right down to a perfect white over red.
• a landing in which I had to extend a long way downwind because of traffic and just pretended that it was a straight-in approach.
• a landing with no flaps, to see what it would be like.  I had trouble slowing it down and, despite the wind, floated a long way down the runway.

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