Archive for the ‘Flying’ Category

First Solo!

Since my last post on the subject back in December, I’ve had quite a few people ask me how the flying lessons were going. Truth is that there hasn’t really been that much to report until now.
Once you’ve covered the basic stuff, you start on what are known as circuits (which my last two [...]

More circuits

My weather karma seems to have gone the wrong way. During the summer, when it was pouring with rain and nobody was flying due to the weather, I didn’t have a single cancellation. Now the winter’s arrived, which I was told often produces some wonderfully clear (albeit cold) days, I’ve had such a [...]

Flying in circles

Thanks to a combination of bad weather and the trip away for FOSSCamp, UDS and AllHand, it’s been six weeks since I last got a chance to fly! Last time we’d covered a second session of stalling and recovery, and the next exercises to cover were the all-important circuits: taking off, flying around the [...]

More Stalling

My instructor was away last week, so it’s been two weeks since my last lesson. Sod’s law would suggest that the weather would be terrible, but someone must like me because instead it was one of the nicest days in quite a while!
The only real thing of concern was a bit of an inversion, [...]

Mixed bag

Two lessons booked today, one before lunch and one after lunch. The long term forecast hadn’t looked good, and I thought it’d be a good idea to try and cover the weather. Turns out that my hunch was right, the weather really wasn’t looking that good this morning, but looked like it might [...]

Slow Flight

Wasn’t sure what I was going to be learning today! I’ve reached an interesting point in the course where there’s any number of lessons I could do, depending on the weather.
Ideally this lesson would be some revision of slow flight, and an introduction to stalling; but stalling is going to require a decent enough [...]

Falling

I really wasn’t sure whether the weather was flyable looking out of the window this morning; the forecast hadn’t been that promising, but today’s METAR was a little better — at least it gave me some room under the cloud.
Phoned the flying school and was told that the cloud base was pretty high, but that [...]

Turning

Another offer of an extended lesson this morning, due to an earlier cancellation, but unfortunately I had too much work to do so had to decline. Happily traffic was almost non-existent on the drive down, so was half an hour early anyway.
Today’s lesson was the last of the “basics” – turning. Obviously I’ve [...]

Cloud Skimming

A cancellation opened up a slot with my instructor first thing this morning, which I jumped at to make up for the lost lesson this week. Normally I try not to book the first lesson of the day; you have the disadvantage of not being able to phone in advance to check the weather, [...]

Straight and Level with some Ups and Downs

First up, an apology; the lesson was a few days ago on Friday and I’m a little tardy in getting it typed up, so I apologise if I’ve forgotten anything.
I’d booked two lessons this week, since I wasn’t sure I’d be able to take one next week and wanted to cover the possibility of bad [...]