Touch and Go in Dalton

After a 40 mile bike ride this morning which wore me out more than expected, I decided to take a sit-down break and do some touch-and-go landing practice. That's basically where you take off, fly around the airport, land, but then go back to full throttle to take back off and do it all over again. I loaded up the Tomahawk at the Dalton Airport, current time (around noon) and real-world weather, which seemed nice out.

My first attempt was not so great. I had trouble lining up, and in fighting that I overshot the ideal touchdown point (see that big white area behind me), and still only got two wheels on the runway:

After landing, I eased back onto the runway, lined up on the center-line, and went back to full throttle. With this small plane, and Dalton's runway having been extended to handle small jets, I was back in the air before the mid-point of the runway.

Next time around was much better. I eased around for the final approach, nice smooth curve instead of sharper turns with corrections, and seemed to be on track for a perfect landing, but by the time my wheel's touched down, I was off to the left again. At least I landed on the threshold properly and had all three wheels on concrete, but I would like to have been on the line:
The third go-round was the worst of the bunch and really frustrating. I tried to do a smooth easy turn, but overshot and then over corrected and back and forth until I finally went long again and landed full in the grass:
Fourth time was a charm though. Not perfect (sill of to the left a bit), but nice and smooth, right on the threshold and all wheels on runway:
After reviewing the flight (images are captured in replay mode as it's hard to take external shots when you're trying to land), I figured out what was wrong. I have been flying mostly at night, but with the simulator set to daytime and "fair weather" which means no wind. Since this was a Saturday, and I could fly during the day, I used the current time and real weather (downloaded from the internet). That real weather included a 7 knot wind which was almost perpendicular to the runway. In other words, a mild cross wind.

I noticed that there was a 7 knot wind, but did not think to look at direction or account for that on my landing approach. I figured 7 knots is not very fast so not a problem. Had it been a stronger cross wind, I probably would have figured out the problem after the first landing attempt, but it was so subtle, I thought it was just something I was doing to not line up right, or perhaps I was not compensating for the Tomahawk's natural tendency to turn left a bit (due to the torque of the engine - propeller spins to the right).

Lesson learned - always listen to the weather radio and note the direction and speed of the wind before landing!