Yesterday, Thursday, July 17th, 2008 at approximately 8:15 pm I flew my first ever solo flight!  It was incredible.  We started the day by doing some touch and go landings.  My instructor must have though I was doing too well because after my second landing he decided we were going to do a couple without the aid of flaps.  Now for those of you who may not know flaps are used to slow the airplane down and give us more lift.  Basically it creates more drag and increases lift therefor slowing us down and allowing us to fly at slower speeds at the same time.  So a landing without flaps is a lot harder to do b/c you have to slow yourself down and still hit the runway at the same angle and speed.

I aced these two landings even better than the with flap landings.  So we went back to do a couple of more ‘regular’ landings.  On the fifth landing of the day my instructor told me to ‘pull over here.’  He got out and told me: “Do at least 2 and no more than 3.  Fly safe and have fun!”  Then he walked back to the terminal.  At this point I was extremely excited!  I taxied to the runway, called my intention to enter the runway and took off.  Now there is no feeling like the feeling of your first solo take off.   I had control of a 1 ton machine that was lifting off into the sky!  I know all the physics involved with keeping the plane aloft but it was still incredible.

I flew the pattern around the airport and proceeded to do 3 of my best landings yet.  Each one got progressively better as I grew more and more confident in the air.  The feeling was so exhilarating that I actually broke out into song.   “I believe I can fly.  I believe I can touch the sky,” I sang with the iron bird soring through the air en-route to another great landing.

The crazy part was that I had no time to get nervous.  There is so much to do when flying in the pattern that I stayed busy pretty much the whole time.  There are a few moments while parallel to the runway heading in the opposite direction (the downwind) that I could start to get nervous.  As soon as I saw the signs that I was getting nervous I started checking my instrumentation for any deviations from the suggested fly pattern.  That got my mind back on the task at hand and my nervousness melted away.

After my three landings I taxied back into the airport and took this picture to commemorate the experience.  As Kuzco would say: “I’m so happy.”

Posted by mobile phone:
Now I’m able to blog from my mobile phone! how cool is that?