I just watched the last video. I missed it somehow the first time. With energy management turns on the river, the law of the roller coaster and movement in both the vertical as well as horizontal plane will help with irregular air as you will already be moving the controls. We are better when we move.

Contact,
I agree most of the time. My point in sharing the video was to be ready.

On this morning, which is very rare for most of my trips down the river, the air was cold and dead calm.
I had flown for 15 miles at 100' AGL or less without a hand on the yoke. Another Maule and I were headed to a friends house for coffee and breakfast over on open fire, and I was following along 50' or so above him and 1/2 mile back. When I get a chance to fly hands off in the Maule, I am definitely going to take it.
As I rounded the point of the hill, I decided to drop down closer to the river. That is when I caught the prop wash, prop rotor, wake turbulence, or whatever you want to call it. It was sudden and damned sure surprising, but I didn't feel out of control at anytime. A bit of power and some control inputs kept the plane straight and level. As you can see in the video, I was out of it as quick as I was in it.

I had picked up some turbulence following friends down the river before, but normally at a fair distance below the level of the lead plane. I suspect, being a redneck from West Texas, that it was the cold air that had kept the rotor higher and basically straight behind the Maule.

Anyway, the coffee was strong and hot, and thick cut fried bacon and eggs over an open Mesquite fire is hard to beat.

Hands free rudder only wings level is good practice. It teaches that using rudder to bracket the target, river in this case, will also keep the wing level. This comes in especially handy on final where bring the aileron into play, except to counter drift, just messes up an approach. We can never maintain alignment with a target in a turn.

It's been awhile since I had the cameras on the plane, but I got some video this weekend. We had a ton of rain, well for us, so I was getting some video of all the water running down the river. These are of my first landing at some friend's River Camp on the Rio Grande.
The wind was gusting and rolling over the hills, so my aim point was a little long to make sure I din't Wiley Coyote into the bluff.

Your rudder work to bracket the target dynamically and proactively on the approach is excellent and is not allowing the gust spread to cause you to over control aileron in a futile attempt to coordinate rudder and aileron. I can see this excellent rudder work most clearly in the video footage taken from the ground. You are not wing wagging, as is common in gusty air, which means you are tail wagging, walking the rudder, to keep the target between your legs with rudder. The inside view shows a bit of control yoke driving (left and right movement) which is leftover from attempted coordination of wing leveling with aileron and rudder. But not much. That will eventually completely go away. Good job. Finding the anti-turn control, the rudder only, is key to handling gust spread at low airspeed. Ailerons need more relative wind, airspeed, than does the rudder. And they are mounted where they will cause more harm than help, adverse yaw, except in a major upset. Good job.

Contact,

I appreciate the feedback, always good to hear from you.

Keeps me on my good behavior.