After being delayed due to weather, I was able to get up in the air to do my second practice area solo flight. The weather was nice, clouds scattered at 5000, wind between 3kts and 7kts out of the North. Visibility was great. But, the clouds looked really weird; lots of Cirrus and Cumulous scattered all over the place. They weren't smooth on the bottoms so I suspected some turbulence aloft.

Takeoff was smooth but as soon as I got off the ground, I was fighting the winds to keep straight and level. The winds weren't gusty on the ground but they were about 200 feet off the ground. I was confident in my abilities to correct for when the gusts were blowing me around, but didn't think this flight was going to be productive. I reached 2750' and flew to Taneytown where it was still quite bumpy. My plans were to practice 30 and 45 degree turns and then descend to a lower altitude to practice turns around a point and S-turns. As I began my clearing turns I had to compensate a lot for the gusts and realized it was going to be a lot to handle the maneuvers today. I didn't want to practice in these conditions, so I decided to go back to DMW

I was setting up for the 45 for downwind 34 when there were two other planes inbound for DMW. They were 5 miles to the West and 5 miles to the South. I was on the 45 when those guys were calling crosswind and downwind. I didn't see them, so I decided to turn around and set up for my approach again. By this time one was on base and the other had landed. So, I made my approach and landing in these gusty conditions. Near the ground, my landing was nice because of the lack of gusts. I elected to do a no-flap landing by carrying some speed down the runway and it wasn't bad at all. I put .5 hours on the Hobbs meter and am ready to do another dual session, hopefully tomorrow.

While leaving the airport, I listened to my radio as I always do. I heard some pilots calling left traffic for 34. But, 34 is right traffic. No one at the FBO were telling the pilots any different. Maybe the traffic that I didn't see in the pattern at first was really people on the Western side of the runway?

I'm scheduled for: