First flying lesson

Today the weather finally cleared for my friend AH and I to take our FIRST flying lesson at the wonderful Freeway Airport. (We couldn’t fly on the weekend because the weather was terrible with very low cloud ceiling). The afternoon grew clearer and sunny and it was a lovely day to look down from above. I was a little nervous and my fear of flying was certainly kicking in. The first hour was spent doing a flight plan and learning how to do a preflight check of the aircraft. I managed to avoid bumping my head on anything so that was definitely a good start. The last time I crawled around a plane was many many years ago during my air force days when it was a much sleeker FA-18 jet. But, today it was a much smaller plane and I enjoyed looking over the rivets, surfaces, probes, prongs and points. I did note that it was pretty small in the back and might be difficult to fit a mountain bike (thinking ahead).

Despite this being a small aircraft (Cessna 172), would you believe I need a booster seat !! I didn’t use it today but in future I will use a booster seater to raise me higher and help reach the pedals a little better. After an intro to all the dials and switches, I turned the key and started the engine. I have to say, it was a sexy feeling hearing that throaty engine sound and seeing those propellers turn around in front of me. Let’s do this Batman.

We taxi’d to the end of the runway and waited for others to land so we could get on our way. Blood pressure rising a bit more at this stage. After some ssshhkk Whiskey Zero Zero, Freeway …sshkkkk and a few more words on the radio that I’m still yet to master, the instructor said we need to get up to 80 knots and then pull back and climb. I can’t even remember if it was 80 so I could be wrong. I was a bit overwhelmed as we raced down the runway. Off we went and I totally couldn’t remember how fast, or when….but thankfully he had the stick and off we went, up and the horizon disappeared in front of me. After I took a deep breath, I nervously said…what now? Take over and keep climbing and then level off shortly the instructor said.

The lesson was great. It was a very smooth flight. I flew almost an hour and over the water with some huge ships below. As soon as we leveled off I practiced turns to learn how each control worked. I have to say, this was a pretty cool feeling. I was turning left, right, left, right and thought that was enough as my gonna-be-sick warning light was flashing. I have been studying the theory but it takes practice to fully understand how things work and today certainly helped. I needed to learn how the controls felt and how much pressure I needed to use for things to move. So the instructor said ‘take your hands off, let go’. I stopped breathing, stomach dropped. You want what? He said it’s not like the movies where the plane dives out of control the second you let go. So I took my hands away and we stayed on course, steady and smooth. It veered a little after a while but yeah he was right, as an instructor would be !!  

We then practiced increasing and dropping engine speed. When the instructor dropped the engine power, my stomach dropped again!!  The nose starts to drop too so I had to ask the instructor – how low can the engine power be before we drop….or words to that effect. He reassured me of the engine power needed and I calmed down once I saw we were totally fine. These are the things that I’m keen to learn and understand as it’s one of my flying fears – those sudden drops in engine power. Anyway, I learnt lots of things and we headed back to the airfield to land. I gently held onto the controls but just so I could feel what moves the instructor was making. It’s certainly going to take some practice and skill to get this mastered. The instructor let me taxi and I soon realized that you steer with your pedals, not the stick in your hands. Very rookie mistake and I guess my mountain bike mode kicked in. We parked the plane, did final checks, tied it down and took my momento photo. It was a very relieved feeling.

I felt mentally drained after the flight. It had been over 2 hours of heavy concentration with some fear thrown in there to keep the blood flowing fast. I waited for my friend to return and he had similar experiences as me – good, nervous and feeling like a complete gumby. But, it’s only the first lesson and we will both improve with more practice. It takes a minimum 20 hours, but more likely 30 hours to be able to fly solo and then another 15 hours at least to get the final license. So we have some hours ahead of us. I watched in awe as those little planes took off and landed with their solo pilots doing their training. Hopefully that will be me in a few months.

I always thought it was a bit corny when people say how ‘a-mazing’ it is to fly a plane. Today, I guess I had my moment when we up there and I was doing the turns over the water. But I think I can now see why it is amazing to fly as I’m sure there will be more of those fabulous moments in the future.

I’ll update you on my progress in future blogs. We plan to fly 1-2 times each week and I can’t wait to take off and land on my own.