Milestones

Some are bigger than others, but all are nerve wracking and all are worth mentioning. Despite the fact that I’m not learning anything “new” per se, every lesson still seems to have enough memorable and milestone marking stuff to keep the adrenaline flowing. My legs were distinctly shaky after today’s flight.

Milestone number one, the first time that I’ve gone out solo without doing some “tester” circuits first with Bob. Today it was just hand over the keys and away you go. A little nerve wracking that’s for sure.

Milestone number two, first time doing slow flight and stalls solo. Even RTH admitted it took him a little while to get up the nerve to do stalls on his own. I was determined that I was going to try.

And I did, two power off stalls without flaps. Stalls and their recovery are not hard. The hardest part for me is actually stalling the plane. This time I am 100% confident that I did indeed stall that plane, both times. It was easy. So easy. I can’t believe I’m actually saying that. When I got back and reported on the flight I could tell that RTH was genuinely impressed that I'd actually got up the courage to do them.

The truth is though, the flight was a little bumpy and doing some of the stuff was hard, like maintaining slow flight (or even my altitude for that matter). Stalls are simple. After all most of the time you are actively trying to stop the plane falling out of the sky, with stalls you actually want it to!