Solo Landing Practice

Today I planned on flying solo in the pattern to brush up on my landing skills. After a brief delay in finding an aircraft I got aboard N194SP, my old standby. After preflight I taxied out to Runway 10 for the runup. I was a little annoyed because I would have rather practiced with the standard left hand traffic pattern instead of the right. It's just easier to see what you are doing. You can always keep the runway in sight. As I took off for my first go around the pattern things seemed mostly normal. After getting lined up for final I brought the plane down just a little harder than I would have liked. Since I had a lot of runway left I added full power and retracted the flaps for a touch and go. I was a little shaky on my directional control. The airplane, because of torque and P-Factor wants to turn to the left. I needed more right rudder than I had initially applied and I went zig zagging from left to right on the takeoff roll. As I got in the air a second time I noticed that while the surface winds seemed calm the ride up a few hundred feet in the air was bumpy and rough. It also seemed as if the winds aloft were stronger that I had expected. I went through some gyrations to control the airplane and decided that I would discontinue any more practice due to the turbulence. This was most likely caused by the rising temperature unevenly heating the earth's surface. Whatever the cause if was uncomfortable for me as a low time solo pilot. My second landing was hard and had a side load. I decided to try one more time for a good landing. It also seemed as though getting closer to the ground helped with the bumps. I taxied back to the runway and took off. Now it was bumpier still. I felt that I had pressed my luck and regretted taking off again. Now I was left without any choice but to land again. It was bumpy around the pattern and the tailwind on the down wind side got my up three hundred feet higher than I needed to be. While trying to reduce power and get back to my approach pattern altitude I noticed that the airplane was "loaded up." This means I could feel the resistance in the stick and I was increasing the G's on the airframe. I was also accelerating on the down wind as I tried to lower my altitude. This was exactly what I didn't want. I wanted to fly the pattern slow in order to make a controlled, stabilized descent. I extended my down wind leg a little in an effort to try and salvage the approach. Once I got to Base Leg I still was high and fast and turned to late. Well to the left of the center line and way too high I called out a go around and flew parallel and to the right of the runway. It was still getting bumpier as I went around. Another late turn onto final with too much altitude caused a second go around. The bumping continued as I swallowed my pride and flew another pattern. This time I extended my down wind and tried an earlier turn. I was still left of center but on the long final I was able to correct it. Getting down this time I was very happy until it came time to round out. I was holding what I thought was a good stabilized descent at 60 Knots when I started to round out. I guess I really wanted to get down quickly because I rounded out too soon. I also flared too soon. The nose was coming up the speed was decreasing to around 40Knots and everything felt fine. It looked like a greaser but why hadn't I touched down yet. As the stall horn increased in volume and speed decayed I realized I was flaring a couple of feet too high and the bottom was about to drop out. I gave a little throttle but it was too late. I dropped in and bounced. I stuck with it and tried to maintain directional control and applied a little throttle to try and cushion the next bounce. Fortunately I only had one bounce and not a series of them. I know that the nose gear wasn't very happy but at least I got the plane down. I decided to call it quits because of the bumps. I taxied over to the fueling area and did my first fuel up on my own. Once that was done I taxied over to the tied downs and finished up.