My First Solo

I have a new decoration for my office wall:

As I promised in my last entry, I flew the airplane solo! Last Friday we had a temporary break in the cloudy weather, so I rushed down to the airport on my lunch break (about a 15 minute drive). First I went up with my instructor, executed two unassisted landings and taxiied back to the ramp. Then my instructor got out of the plane, wished me good luck, and I was on my own. I taxiied the airplane back to the runway and let the tower know that I was a student pilot doing my first solo. As soon as I was cleared, I took off!

I was far too focused to be very excited at this point. All that was in my head were the things I needed to do: keep the wings level, fly runway heading and climb at 80MPH. At the end of the runway, turn left and overfly the golf course for noise abatement.

I'm so used to having an instructor in the right seat that as soon as I leveled off at the pattern altitude and had a moment to take a breath, the quiet in the cockpit got to me and I actually felt a bit lonely.

That passed very quickly and was replaced by, holy cow, this is not Microsoft Flight Simulator. I am flying an actual freaking airplane in the actual sky (really!), which was quite clear and beautiful that day.

As soon as I reached a point towards the end of my downwind leg, tower cleared me to land and I began my descent. Now I was back to being extremely focused: flaps, speed at 85, descend at 500 fpm, glide, break the glide, flare, touchdown.

Back to the ramp. I marked my logbook: 0.7 hours dual instruction, 0.3 hours solo. I returned to work that afternoon with a huge grin on my face.

Landing: Check.

I had a GREAT lesson this morning! We did nine landings, eight of which were completely unassisted, and they were all pretty fantastic. In the one that was assisted, I came in too high and attempted a "slip" to lose altitude*. I screwed up the slip maneuver, ended up off track, and my instructor had to help me out with some right rudder.

We also tried one landing with no flaps, just to see what it felt like. The result of that was we landed at 90 miles-per-hour instead of 80 and rolled down the runway about twice the distance we usually do.

I now have "landing" checked off on my pre-solo checklist. I believe the only things I have left to do are slow flight and emergency procedures, and then I'm going solo. Wish me luck!

* A slip is when I bank the airplane to one side, as if I was going to turn, but I use full, opposite rudder input to keep the plane on the same track. The result is that the nose stays pointed toward the runway, but one wing will be lower than the other, and the resulting drag from the full rudder deflection slows the airplane down considerably.

Landing!

Landing: important part of flying? Or most important part?

Last week I did an hour of touch-and-goes at Santa Monica. A "touch and go" happens when you land the plane and, without slowing down, put in full power and take off again. You "touch" the runway, then "go" again. It's a great way to get a lot of practice landing and taking off. I did eight landings in one hour and felt like I was really getting the hang of it!

That was Thursday. Fast-forward to Saturday, in which mother nature decided it was time for me to learn the crosswind landing. Due to some unfortunately-located clouds, we couldn't do any practice at Santa Monica. So we flew to Van Nuys, where the sky was clear, but a moderately strong wind was blowing across the runway (to be exact, it was 10 knots, 20° east of runway heading).

I felt like I handled the crosswind well; I was able to keep the plane headed straight down the runway center line, despite the wind trying to push me away. The problem was that the added stress of dealing with the crosswind caused me to forget everything else I had learned about landings, and they were all terrible.

Looking at the bright side, I know exactly what I was doing wrong most of the time (flaring too early and too much), and I am feeling good that by my next flight (or possibly the one after that), I'll have it down.