Inexperience.
That's your problem, but nothing that can't be solved
I'd never recomend you to turn off the AP at 200AGL if it's not really necessary. If you disengage it earlier, you have more time to make corrections and get a general "feel" of the aircraft. At 200ft AGL, one mistake there and you'll have to play catch up. Not good.
And inexperienced pilots does make mistakes - we have all been there. So turn it off earlier, that's my advice.
You should always follow the ILS needles, the "One notch below" probably means you should INTERCEPT the glideslope from BELOW. But correctly, that's called to have the needle "1 dot above". As the needle starts to move down, you'll engage the approach mode.
Landings in crosswinds are always tricky. There are two ways to encounter this:
Sideslip: Very hard technique: You lower the aileron facing the wind, but at the same time, deflect the rudder to the opposite direction (that is called cross control). This will cause the airplane to have a slight bank angle, but it will keep the aircraft nicely aligned with the runway all the way down.
The other technique is the easy one:
Crabbing: Mostly used on commercial jets
You'll fly into the wind, to track the extended runway centreline. this off course means you're flying "sideways", even though you're ground track is straight forward.
Just before touchdown, you'll use left or right rudder (depending on wind direction) to align the aircraft with the runway. Keep in mind that a yaw motion from the rudder will aswell cause a roll motion, so if you used right rudder to align with runway, lower left wing to encounter the right roll (again cross control!)
I know it sounds confusing, but that's my advice.
Send me PM's if you have questions iof what I said
Good luck!
by jrpilot » Mon Mar 22, 2004 8:46 pm 
