Ah, a cross wind, that explains a lot. The way it was first written, it seemed that the wind changed from, say left to right, which you were used to, to a right to left, which you were not used to, thus the question about the instructor spending more time with you with different wind directions.

I understand now. What I keep saying is practice practice practice. Do lots of landings.. do touch and go's, lots of them, and get used to the different wind conditions. That's what makes you crash proof, well, as crash proof as you can be.

I was flying my third plane, which was a Goldberg Skylark 56 back when.. and I was fairly new. Well, the wind was blowing pretty good, but it was straight down the runway centerline. So, I flew it a couple of flights, but the wind picked up quite a bit as I flew. On approach to land, I did the usual, turned from base to final, and chopped the throttle to idle. The wind caught the thing, flipped it over on it's back and it flew in the opposite direction, being carried by the wind, upside down for a short time. I managed to get it upright but headed in the wrong direction, away from me. I tried to turn it but had on success and, after several seconds, it fluttered and went down in a heap. It was just then that I realized that if I had added throttle (I was still at idle), all could have been avoided. But, it all happened to fast for my mind to react, but once I thought about it.. 10 seconds to late, I hate to say, well, it was all over.

Eventually, though, I got the idea and would judge the wind before making the approach and automatically adjusted the throttle to manage the different wind condition.

Somewhat different from your situation, but the results were the same, and it was from being new and the lack of experience. And, of course, how we gain experience is often as a result of a crash.. we learn after the fact.. what we could have done to prevent the crash. All part of the hobby. We can't learn everything on the first day out.

CGr.