It has been just under two weeks since my last lesson. My next scheduled lesson was to be Monday the 19th, but I got a call from Josh on Saturday about flying Sunday afternoon. I was at the Foothills Fall Festival when I got the call, and I knew my wife wouldn’t be happy, but I wanted to fly. Especially because the lesson was to culminate with clearance to do my solo cross countries. I absolutely wanted to fly.
I left the fall festival and headed out toward the airport, it wasn’t very busy. Josh let me know that the intent was to knock the rust off, do whatever I thought I needed work on (which is ground reference maneuvers), and to head home. He also let me know that he would be out-of-town, but accessible. I preflighted the plane and we were quickly off to Walland Gap.
I did some turns around a point first, several each direction. They were not perfect, but they were workable. Josh reminded me of some helpful hints and we progressed to the s-turns. I always do alright with s-turns, but they are never perfect. Not that I am shooting for perfect, but I am looking for more uniform execution. I want to be able to do them well enough all the time. I do find it helpful when there is an objective viewer who can say, “Pretty good, but you’re banking to steeply on the upwind and it is throwing you off. ”
We went up and down 321 and then headed back to the airport, for at least one landing. The cool thing is that we overflew the fall festival. It looked pretty interesting from the air. I also found out later that my flight was seen. I made a very good landing, and we put the plane to bed. I plan to go to Upper Cumberland Regional (SRB) on my first solo cross-country. Unfortunately, I didn’t have my navigation log and stuff so Josh couldn’t sign off right then and there. Instead, he let me know that Nathan would do it for each cross-country. I set out for the return to the festival.