Short Fields @ Whiskey Eighteen & Lookout for Bambi

Today's flight involved some practice with navigation by instruments only. To further complicate things, the airplane I was flying had no directional gyro as the mechanic had removed it for service. Flying with the magnetic compass only is a pain because it bounces and lags. The upside was that I got to practice my timed standard rate turns. That assumes that you are turning 360 degrees in two minutes, or 3 degrees per second. You need to turn 30 degrees, no problem, enter a standard rate turn for 10 seconds. We did some more practice with flying on instruments only. On went the foggles and we began tracking VOR radials. After that it was a little recovery from unusual attitudes. This time it wasn't so bad and I actually did pretty well. In addition to the instrument work, I practiced pilotage by looking at the chart and attempting to determine our position. I still need some work in that area but with the help of my instructor, the VOR's, and an assurance from Potomac Approach control that we were headed in the right direction, we did OK. The highlight of our flight was that we got to visit a new airport. Suburban Airpark, FAA designation W18, is a small airport south of the Laurel Racetrack and about 3.5 nm West of Tipton. It's just a very short hop from Tipton and has a very different feel. It's nestled in the woods and occupies approximately 52 acres. Its runway is shorter and narrower than Tipton's, 2324ft long by 40ft wide. Our intention was to use it to practice Short Field takeoffs and landings as well as Soft Field techniques. My first landing there was stabilized and just a whole bunch of fun. When we were done my instructor told me that he had only one other student besides me that was able to land at the airport on the first try. So it appears I have some bragging rights. I did, however, have to go around once because we were too high. Other than that, no big problems. As I said the field was a lot of fun because of the way it looked and the trees that surrounded it. Trees mean woods, and woods mean deer. On one or our approaches we saw a doe standing to the left of the runway looking like she was going to cross in front of us. Since me instructor didn't tell me to go around I completed the landing and she ran into the woods. My instructor has had a deer vs. Cessna event. The deer lost and the Cessna only had very minor damage. It could have been worse. Once we started to taxi back we heard another airplane in the traffic pattern and saw a reason why the doe may have come out of the woods. We saw a buck wandering around and called the other airplane to let him know to lookout. Before the other aircraft landed the buck ran into the woods. He may have been chasing after the doe. After another trip or two around the pattern we headed back to Tipton and debriefed. I managed to get some shots of the sunset as my favorite plane, the one I soloed in, left the fuel pumps.