I took my second lesson today, this time in a Cessna 172 and the instructor was Juan. He’s been flying for 28 years, so he seems to know his stuff. Said I did very well.
Today I got to:
- Talk with the tower / get clearance for taxi/takeoff
- Take off
- Fly, perform 2 360 turns, both left and right
- Did an emergency “go around” at Campbell airport – that’s pretending to land, then at the last minute powering up and pulling out, this is to simulate an obstruction on the runway.
- Talked with the tower, approach to land
- Approached to land
- Landed almost on my own. Actually I think I did most of the work, but Juan helped out with the rudder.
I’m very happy with my results. I bought the 2006 “Private Pilot” 2006 Test Prep book, along with some sectional and IFR maps for Chicago and surrounding areas.
What I need to work on right now is getting down the radio communications with the tower, other planes, etc. I have my maps now, so I can start to study them, and of course my test prep has tons of info it in.
Tuesday I’ll go up with instructor Kristen and I think I’ll take Scott along for the ride. That will be the 2nd half of my “Phase 2” instruction, at which point I get to pick an instructor for my full 20 hours.
Jim, the Chief Pilot at Palwakee Flyers wants to meet on Thursday to talk about my long term pilot plans. I’m going to tell him I want to keep going, get my PPR and instrument rating. I don’t see anything at this point that would make me not want to go all the way.
