What goes up (again)….

….must come down. This applies to so many things flying related. I’ve rapidly come to realise that taking off is by far the easiest part of flying. Planes fundamentally want to fly. Once you get past a certain point it takes an enormous amount of effort to stop the damn thing from taking off. I beginning to believe that you could probably take a reasonably intelligent chimp and train them to do a passable takeoff. Hell I manage it!

Landings are another matter though. They bite when you get it wrong. And mine have had a little too much tooth to them recently. Which brings us to other things that “must come down.” My mood and a little bit of my confidence. I’ve been on a bit of a high recently, everything coming together nicely. Navigation starting to fall into place; a burning desire to make it out to the practice area on my own, a belief that I could actually fly a plane on my own for an hour or so.

I still believe I can do that but I have very little faith that I’ll actually be able to get the damn thing on the ground afterwards though. And that is a very big problem. I’m not stupid; I know that there is no question of me being allowed to go out there if I can’t bring my flight to a satisfactory conclusion. I can’t help but feel that at this stage of my training I should be able to land the sodding thing. I know that Bob has said that the conditions have been challenging the last couple of flights, but really how challenging were they? I wasn’t on my A game last lesson, is he just offering a salve to my ego?

The old saying goes “take offs are optional but landings are mandatory.” If I can’t manage the latter then maybe I should reconsider even attempting the former. I need to be able to cope in those conditions, challenging or not.

Perhaps the problem is that I’ve become fixated on a goal, desperate to make that solo to the practice area. I need to relax again, remember how to enjoy the journey rather than fixating on the destination.

I hope I remember how to do that soon.