Alaska tent and tarp or Alaska Wing Covers both make really good quality wing and insulated engine covers. Unlike Bruce’s, they both sell primarily to a crowd that parks outdoors year round, in severe weather.

I’d buy from them, and both will modify their covers to suit your specific needs.

MTV

After I had 100 hours in my 170 I set out on a goal of landing at every public use airport in Montana. It really was a great thing to do. First it got me out of my comfort zone at home. When you fly only local you can simply walk outside to understand the weather but when you go far afield things change. With that goal in mind if I traveled a long distance to bag an airport and the winds where not great I would land it or make the attempt as I did not want to fly all the way back to tick that one off. Got better at crosswinds that way. Learned about local conditions as in mountain and flat land flying. Saw a lot of amazing country and met a bunch of interesting people. Slept in a few pilot lounges and did some fantastic camping ( caught some fish too). After doing all that I was much more confident as a pilot and amazingly I could be hundreds of miles away from home and no longer needed a stinking GPS and fly straight home. Then my next adventure was Oshkosh. Only checked the weather before I left no other flight planning because I new the first couple hundred miles. Hopped in the plane and took of to a heading I guessed at 090 and later while flying and planning damn if 090 was not the right heading. What a great trip that was and learned a lot. Good luck and keep learning.

Let’s go surf. We can start a tail dragger surf club. I’m in VT but always heading for the coast in the wagon when there is a swell. Mostly Nantucket, Rye NH, or Maine but I’ve heard RI is great.

Coyote - My plan is to try to hit all the RAF strips over 2k ft in New England. I should probably expand it to ALL strips in new England. Hopefully I have similar results as you.

Ington6 - Hell yes! Taildragger Surf Club is one heck of a name. I'll get t shirts made haha

Thanks for sharing the beginning of your adventure. It was great that you were not afraid to change up instructors a few times.
One thing I like to teach and is a very versatile item in the toolbox is low passes. For Backcountry they are critical and for strange airports and wind conditions they are extremely useful. You can do them at all different altitudes from a few feet to a few hundred for different reasons. A low pass at an appropriate speed and landing configuration for what you're trying to achieve can give you extremely valuable insight to everything from surface conditions to what updrafts downdrafts or squirrely winds you might find along different parts of the landing zone or short final and climb out.
Have fun, I love the idea of visiting tons of landing strips in your area!

SmokeyTheBear wrote:.... I will check out Bill Whites Technique. Thanks for the heads up! ....

Bill White (of insurance fame) wrote this essay many years ago.
Unfortunately it has been modified a bit over the years,
as I believe the original; version as Bill wrote it was best.
But here's a link to the newest version:

https://bwifly.com/aircraft-insurance/w ... e-numbers/

I disagree with the "mile out on final at 500' AGL" part but otherwise it's a great technique.
Definitely a great place to start if nothing else.
Here's the gist of it:

This seems like a good method to get a sort of soft field landing onto the fairly early part of the runway. 60 is nice and slow full flaps and power to touchdown is good. Terrain and wind conditions can mess up arbitrary numbers, however 60 might be a little fast in ground effect. But full flaps and slow enough to sink requiring throttle to control glide angle and rate of descent to touchdown works with any conditions.