Today we practiced stalls, slow flight, gliding, then I did a touch-and-go, and landed. On landing approach my instructor (Let’s call her K) gave me correct speed, altitude, and flap settings, and held me to them. I think I have most of the raw flight reflexes down, now I need to learn all the technical aspects of VFR, and get comfortable on the radio. That’s a whole new language to learn, but I’m looking forward to the challenge of it. I talked to the tower, but K still handled the read backs and talked to the tower when they were asking for us.
The aircraft was a Cessa 172 with the complete Garmin “glass cockpit” instrument panel inside. Here’s a pic
Very cool plane. A lot of fun to fly.
At this point in my training I need to pick an instructor who I’ll stick with for the rest of my program. The instructor I had tonight, K, who’s female by the way, was very technical and held the bar high. She only assisted when she needed to, and let me do my thing the rest of the time. Prior to tonight I didn’t know how absolutely talented K was, so she kinda blew me away.
The other instructors I flew with were both excellent as well. But they were more.. laid back. “We should climb a bit” they would say, while K would tell me “be at 1700 feet on this phase of the approach”. I’m all for the laid back approach, but I want to make sure while I’m learning, that I’m getting the text book lesson – I want someone to set the bar high and push me to reach for it. Come to find out, K’s won awards/trophies for landing competitions, and is regarded at this flight school for being a bit of a perfectionist. Although I had met her after my first flight, I had no idea how good she was until tonight.
The surprising thing is, she’s young. I would say, early 20’s. To me, most 20-somethings are kind of slackers, trying to figure out what they want to do with their lives. K blew me away with her technical knowledge and discipline. That’s the kind of instructor I want.
I took a buddy from work up with me tonight as well. He might end up taking lessons himself, so I wanted to give him a little taste. It’s free for me to take people up with me, so I was more than happy to have him tag along. He took a bunch of pictures, some of which I’m sure I’ll post on 43T.
Anyways, it was a great flight, and I see myself going all the way to the PPR + Instrument rating. I would love to get to the point where I own a partial or full interest in a plane, and can make “cross country” or regional flights. Wouldn’t that be a hoot?
