First Lesson

Aeroplane Familiarization and preparation for flight, ancillary controls, taxiing, attitudes and movements, those were the topics of discussion for my first lesson.

I arrived at the academy 25 minutes early so I pulled out the books and blankly stared at my notes, darn still 20 minutes till 10. One of the flight instructors is describing a student's misfortunate death when a lesson on spin recovery went terribly wrong. I find it surprisingly undisturbing, seeing I'm going flying in 20 minutes, and note what went wrong.

15 minutes, the instructor finishes up his own student's debrief and comes over to talk, "Hi, is this your first flight?" Nope Ive flown before, "Ever done a walk around? Yes "Excellent, why don't go out and do your walk around till your instructor is finished with his other student" Uh, walk around, sure why not. He hands me the bag with the dip stick and POH, I go outside and find my plane looking a little off canter as one wheel has sunk in the damp ground.

Darn what is it that you check first? Oh right remove the control lock, OK, no control lock. OK, um master switch on, nope better not touch that, don't want to break anything. Well might as well "walk around" yup this flap looks good, rudder is still connected, 4 blots and a pin that looks good, is that the remains of a big bug or a glancing blow from a bird? Ugh there a little dent here, at least its little. Well looks good to me best go inside then.

I meet my instructor and he gives me a pop-quiz on the pre-briefing I had received a couple of days before. My pauses to think before answering were a little longer then I would have liked but I get all the answers right and he seems satisfied.

As he guides me through the proper walk around procedure I scramble to mentally note all the steps and the details, when we get half way through I realize the next steps are the same as the first half, just backwards. Perfect that's half the stuff to memorize then. Everything checks out good and we hop inside the cockpit and run through emergency exit procedures. I find the procedure of the student extingushing any fires and then running as fast as I can after the instructor amusing.

As I run through the pre-flight checklist it becomes very obvious that my years of toying around with flight simulator hasn't taught me much of the basics, when was the last time you needed to prime a sim engine?

OK and now the wheels are rolling, time for the engine run up, left mag, right mag, both, good there is the RPM drop, note how small it is. Turn on all the electronics, then confirm the altinator is working. Jeez I really just want to start flying, oh well I better learn this stuff now, not later.

And we are not taxiing. He gives me control and tells me to keep the plane straight down the centerline. When the plane is on the ground you steer with your rudder pedals so you need to fight the tempation to rotate the control colum in your hands.

But, boy these things move like walruses on the ground. Im suppose to be following the center line but there it is 9 feet to the right of me. He corrects it and puts us on the center line.

OK this is it were ready for take off, but wait a second, there is a plane on final approching fast towards us. "Ummm..." I say as the instructor is flicking a couple switches "There's a plane on final approach". "Damn," he says, "I have control" as he punches in the throttle and the plane is no longer moving like a walrus, he rounds the corner to the nearest taxiway almost on one wheel, as he apologizes to the other pilot "sorry, didn't hear your call" and when I think about it I'm pretty sure I didn't hear it either. Oh well, its good to see the procedure in that situation. Get the hell off the runway as fast as you can. We both didn't see him or hear his radio call so I doubt the other pilot made one. But the other pilot didn't seem too upset so I quickly put the incident out of my mind as I concentrate on taxiing back down to the end of runway 10, its a lot easier when you realize that your not suppose to press forward on the pedals and activate the differential brakes.

What a rush! We are finally airborne! Take off is the easy part. Wait till your airspeed reaches rotation speed and pull back, very simple. Little right rudder to compensate for any yaw to the left when your wheels leave the ashphat and just keep that nose too the horizon, keep your eye on the airspeed indicator and enjoy the ride.

Smooth like water out here; barely a cloud in the sky, though the humidity is causing some mild haze. As we climb away I notice how natural it all feels, better not get too confident. He gives me control and just tells me to run with it. Supposably nothing I do can get us into trouble, but I highly doubt that. Either way I have some great fun with steep banks and the feel of those G-forces pushing me down into my seat. Everything seemed to work how it should, push forward trees get bigger pull back and trees get smaller. I do some steep climbs and even steeper dives and watch my airspeed hit 125 knots! Nice! I quickly calculate thats something like 220 km/h (231.5 to be exact). I really expected it to be over before it began but really it seemed like a moderately long flight.

In the end would say that it was a successful flight and a even more successful lesson. My confidence of handling the plane increased exponentially as the flight progressed. Instead of losing 500 feet in turns at the beginning it became closer to 50 or 100, but needs to be more like 5 before I'm satisfied . Its the greatest feeling finally getting up in the air after sitting behind the book for so very long.