I finally got my first solo cross country out of the way, but still had two to go. Honestly was not looking forward to them, although I love flying, I want to go with my family and friends, going alone doesn’t really do it for me anymore. These flights just kind of feel like busy work. It is something I will just force myself to do.

Getting my maneuvers within PTS is another major task for me, so I met my instructor at the hangar so that we could practice. We decided to do some simulated instrument, slow flight, steep turns, and of course the dreaded soft field takeoff. There had been thunderstorms forecast for today, but the sky was almost completely clear, and we didn’t see any precipitation in the vicinity on the radar, so we decided to go up.

I told ATC that I wanted to the Northeast, but they were using runway 27L so we had to takeoff heading to the West, and they took their sweet time directing us back to the Northeast. They also had me climb to 4500 feet when I requested 2500, so we ended up having to go into Class B airspace. This ate up a lot of time and fuel, so I wasn’t too pleased.

Once we finally got into uncontrolled airspace my instructor asked me to slow it down to 55 knots for slow flight. Internally I groaned, my instructor really loved doing slow flight for some reason, and he usually dragged it out quite a bit. He had me do slow flight with several 360 degree turns, and I did fairly well. I maintained my speed much better, did have a little trouble with my altitude, but nothing major. I still needed some more practice, but I was greatly improved on this, I used to be a basket case.

Next we moved on to steep turns. I rolled into a steep turn to the left, and unfortunately did not apply enough back pressure when I started the maneuver, and my altitude started to drop. I recovered somewhat, but ended up about 150 feet below my starting altitude, and rolled out of the turn too late, so I overshot my original heading. Not too happy with myself on that. I did another one in the opposite direction, had similar results. This was something else I would need to work on, I hadn’t done these in a while and needed to get the hang of it again.

My instructor then threw me for a loop, he pointed out a soft field airport on the sectional chart, and said we were going to do a real soft field landing and takeoff. I thought this was kind of cool, but as we headed towards the airport, I had a lot of trouble making it out. The grass strip really blends into the landscape, and I kept losing track of it as we made our turns. With the help of my instructor I found the airport again, and I entered downwind for runway 27. As I turned final I was a little high, and as I came down on the runway for some reason I started to bounce up, and given that the runway was fairly short my instructor put in full throttle for a go around. I hadn’t screwed up a landing in a long time, but for some reason the plane seemed to perform a little differently when hovering over a soft field.

I went around the pattern again, and this time came in a little lower. I noticed the same phenomenon again as I got into ground effect over the runway, but I fought through it and made a decent landing this time. I was fairly pleased with that, but now I knew I would have to deal with the dreaded soft field take off. I back taxied back to the beginning of the runway, put in 10 degrees of flaps, and hit full throttle for takeoff. I got overly nervous as the plane was not getting off the ground, I over-applied right rudder, and then over applied left rudder, and the plane became difficult to control. We did finally takeoff, and I did not pitch down to remain in ground effect like I was supposed to, my instructor had to force the plane down. After getting to rotation speed we took off normally, but overall I was really unhappy with the way I handled that. Those takeoffs are just really awkward, and I think I am getting too nervous about screwing it up. This is an area where I am going to need a lot of work.

With that my instructor asked if I wanted to do another one or head back to Sanford. I decided that I wanted to go back, I wasn’t up for another soft field takeoff just yet.

Once we were back at the hangar, we went over the lesson. The main topic of conversation was of course the soft field takeoff, he felt I was just too tense and needed to relax. I agreed, it was something I would have to think about. I just had to somehow get myself in the right frame of mind to deal with it.

I headed out of the airport and back to my office. I was so close to being done, yet still so far. I had to get all my maneuvers within PTS, and on some of them I was still pretty far off. I had to figure out a way to do that, bottom line after all the time and money I had put in there was no way I was going to quit now.

It was time for me to start doing my solo cross country flights, I had to admit I was a little nervous about it and was thus kind of avoiding my first one. But with summer thunderstorms coming soon, I decided that I at least needed to get that first cross country out of the way. Also since my instructor needed to sign off on my cross country flight plan the day I flew, I wanted to make sure I got the flight in before he went out of town for his other job.

So when I checked the weather and it was clear of clouds, although somewhat windy, I decided to go for it. My instructor told me to meet him at Panera, and he would review and sign off on my flight. I arrived a little early as I hadn’t completely finished the flight plan yet, and I hurriedly filled in the blanks before he got there. I fortunately finished up just before he arrived, and he started reviewing my work. After a few minutes he said it looked good, he signed my log book and my medical certificate, and wished me luck. He asked that I call him at each stop, which I didn’t mind doing, but he also asked me to take a picture of each FBO at each stop as proof that actually landed at the airport. I thought this was a little much, and kind of resented the lack of trust, but I decided not to argue.

From there I quickly drove to the airport, did a quick pre-flight check, and started taxiing to the runway. As I was taxiing I noticed the plane was riding a little rough, there was more vibration than usual as I taxied. I wasn’t sure what the problem was, in retrospect I should have turned back, but I decided I was being paranoid due to nerves, and continued. I took off from Sanford and headed West to my first stop, Leesburg.

As I approached Leesburg I had a little trouble finding the airport, and after making my radio call to Leesburg tower I realized that I almost flew right past it, as I mistook another area on the ground for the Leesburg airport. The tower asked me to make right traffic for runway 13, but since I had to make a hard left to get back to the Leesburg airport, I got a little disoriented, and unknown to me at the time, I was making right traffic for runway 3. Leesburg has no radar, so tower had no way of knowing my location, they relied on me to tell them where I was. I told him I was making right traffic for runway 13, and as turned base I could see the runway marking was a 3 and not a 13. I got really mad at myself and somewhat embarrassed, but at that point nobody knew I screwed up, and fortunately it was fairly easy to correct my mistake, so I flew towards 13 and landed. After landing it was taking more power than usual to get the plane to move, and I was starting to get worried about what might be wrong.

I taxied to the FBO and took a picture of the front of the building, and sent it as a text message to my instructor as he had asked. After relaxing a few minutes at the FBO I headed back to the plane, and started to look around the plane to see if I could find anything wrong. My heart sank again as I noticed that the nosewheel tire looked to me almost flat. This was the last thing I needed on my first solo cross country, and I wasn’t sure what to do.

I called my instructor, and told him we had a problem. He nervously asked me what the problem was, and I told him about the nosewheel. He said to sit tight and he would call the owner of the plane to see what he wanted to do, worst case he would come and get me. That was really good of him, but I really didn’t want to have it come to that. So I went into the FBO and asked if they had anyone who could do maintenance. They directed me to the hangar next door, and I went in and told them the whole situation. The mechanics were very nice, and they said they could replace the tire for me in about an hour if I wanted to do that. I decided that would be the best course of action, and I called my instructor and told him to ask the owner of the plane if I could get the tire or tube replaced and get reimbursed. He was able to get a hold of the owner of the plane, and he agreed.

I had the maintenance guys get to work, now I would have to kill an hour in the FBO. And if they were anything like car guys, I figured it would be more like 2-3 hours before it was actually done. I paced around nervously, I really just wanted to get out of there and on my way and was finding it difficult to relax. To my great surprise after almost exactly an hour they came in and told me it was done. They ended up replacing the tube, and the total bill came to about $200 with the cost of the new tube and labor. I was a little nervous that the owner of the plane might try to say I somehow caused the flat and wouldn’t reimburse me, but I could only hope for the best on that. I paid them and continued on my way.

Part of me thought I should just turn back at this point, I was burned out, but I also really wanted to get this flight out of the way, so I decided to continue on to my next destination, Ocala.

It was about a 35 mile flight, and this airport only had one runway that ran North-South, so there was no way I could screw that up. Before long I arrived in Ocala and landed without incident. I noticed during taxi that the plane was riding much smoother than it had been a long time.

I stopped in at the FBO to take the picture and texted it to my instructor. I relaxed for a bit, and although I wouldn’t have minded relaxing longer I decided that it was getting late and I didn’t want to risk it getting dark.

So now I was almost done, I just had to fly back home to Sanford. I flew the same route back to Leesburg, and called Orlando approach when I was over Leesburg so that they could get me back into Sanford’s Class C airspace. They set me up for a straight in approach on runway 9R, and although the winds were pretty strong I made a good landing, and with that I was done.

As I put the plane back in the hangar, I actually felt pretty good. I got one of my three solo cross country flights out of the way, and even though I made some mistakes, my confidence had increased. The nosewheel issue was a pain, but I got through it, and was somewhat proud of myself for still being able to finish the flight. So now all that was left was to clean up my flight maneuvers, and do my last two solo cross country flights. Soon I would be able to take the Practial Test and get my private pilot certificate. Although I was nervous about the test, I couldn’t wait to be able to take passengers up with me.

I am now very close to getting my private pilot certificate, all I have left is cleaning up my flight maneuvers, doing my solo cross country flights, and I will be ready to take the practical test. I do also have to take the written test which I have been putting off, hopefully I can get that in next week.

Since my instructor is only able to fly Monday through Thursday, I decided I would practice my maneuvers with him on those days, and do my solo flights Friday through Sunday.

We have started having a summer pattern of afternoon thunderstorms, so we missed flying one day, but fortunately on this day the weather was fairly clear with scattered clouds, so we decided to go up. My instructor said we would fly to Deland and practice soft field takeoffs, and short field landings. I had done some short field landings on my last lesson, and was having a little trouble staying within 200′ of landing point. I had only done soft field takeoffs one other time a while back, and I had struggled with it a bit.

The taxi way to the very end of our takeoff runway was closed, so we had to take a taxi way that went to the middle of the runway. Because of this ironically we we got to practice short field takeoffs as well, since we only had half the runway at our disposal. Those were pretty easy however, I held the brakes, hit full throttle, and we took off. After getting ATC clearance we turned North towards Deland.

I enjoyed flying at untowered airports, takes a lot of stress out of the equation when you are practicing your landings. I could mainly just focus on flying the plane and not have to deal with ATC.

The only problem is that the runway we were using was pretty short, so we could not do a touch and go, we had to get off the runway, taxi back to the beginning of the runway, and then take off again.

We did five landings, and I landed long again on all of them. They were all good landings, but the problem was that I was floating too long in ground effect, thus going past the 200 feet requirement for a short field landing. I was a little frustrated with that, but I was starting feel like I knew what I needed to do to fix it.

I also struggled with the soft field takeoffs. They are very awkward, in this scenario you basically take off prematurely and then float in ground effect until you reach your rotation speed, and then do a normal takeoff. I was having a lot of trouble getting used to this, but again after we did the last one I had a feeling that I knew what I needed to do to fix the problem. I was fairly confident I would do better next time.

We headed back to Sanford, and I started thinking about my solo cross country flights. I was starting to get a little nervous about doing them, even though I enjoyed flying by myself, it was always a little reassuring having your flight instructor in the right seat to back you up.

So I am pretty close to wrapping up training for my Private Pilot certificate. Part of me definitely excited about it, but I also can’t help but be nervous about the checkride. I guess I will do what I need to do when the time comes. All I have left at this point is doing my two solo cross country flights, and then getting my maneuvers within PTS standards. Also I STILL have to take the written test, but I think I should be able to get that wrapped up this week or early next week, and after doing a little more studying I am no longer nervous about it.

Initially I was going to do my solo cross country flights first, but I decided that since my instructor was not available Friday through Sunday, that I would work on my maneuvers with him while he was available, and then do my solo cross countries over the weekend when I didn’t need him.

We are starting to get a summer weather pattern a little early in Florida, where the weather for flying is usually pretty good in both the morning and the evening, but bad in the afternoon when we get a thunderstorm. This was unfortunate as of course this was when I usually liked to fly. Our flight on Monday got canceled due to a thunderstorm, but Tuesday we lucked out that it just got cloudy and did not actually develop into a full fledged storm. So we went out towards Daytona into uncontrolled airspace to practice slow flight, stalls, and steep turns. When we got back to Sanford we would practice short field landings.

I usually hated doing these, but somehow I just felt that it was something that had to be done, so I tried to stay positive about it. I also felt like mentally I was ready to the stalls properly, so I wanted to see if I was right.

First we did slow flight, which has been an intermittent problem for me. Sometimes I did it well, but I often did it poorly. I was hoping I would nail it, but the first try I really screwed up. I initially maintained my speed well, but after a while my altitude started to climb, and I got thrown all out of whack. I recovered my altitude and setup again, and this time I did much better. The trick is making small changes and waiting for them to take effect, there is a little delay between making a control input and seeing the effect of it.

After slow flight we did a power off and power on stall, and as I thought I did pretty well on those, both in maintaining heading and proper recovery. I was pleased with that.

We then headed back to Sanford to do a few simulated short field landings. I called Orlando approach, and they told me to expect runway 27R. I thought it was a little odd since we had used 9L for takeoff, but I guessed the winds had shifted. The approach controller switched me over to the tower, and then tower controller then told me 9L. This made more sense to me, and I started an approach for 9L. My instructor then said he thought we were supposed to use 27R, and asked me to call the controller for verification. I initially thought this was a waste of time, but I did as he asked. The controller then said we were supposed to use 27R. I was really pissed, if I had been alone I would have started landing at 9L, as that is what he told me. I guess he screwed up since they must have recently switched runways. Still they made this mistake all the time, and I was getting a little tired of it.

We simulated a short field landing on 27R, and although I made a great landing, I went too long, not within PTS for a short field. We were going to do a total of five landings, but after two they switched us over to 27L for some reason. This messed up my rhythm a little bit, and I did not land within 200 feet as required by PTS for short field. On our last landing I asked them to switch us back to 27R, since the FBO for the plane was off this runway. The controller was a little annoyed, but got me switched over to the other runway, and I had to switch to a different tower frequency. So now the third tower controller that I was dealing with cleared me to land on 9L, when it was obvious we were using the opposite direction. I was incredulous, and just confirmed that we were cleared to land to 27R, resigned to their incompetence. He then at least had to the courtesy to say, “Sorry I meant 27R, my bad.” I could forgive this if it happened once in a while, but as a student pilot I have enough to worry about, this is not a minor mistake, TELL ME THE RIGHT RUNWAY TO LAND ON. It does not get much more basic then that.

We landed and parked at the FBO. For this lesson I tried a different club plane that was parked at an FBO on the north side of the airport. It was kind of a pain using the FBO, I think I would switch back to using the hangar on the southeast side of the airport.

Overall I was fairly happy, I had greatly improved my stalls, had some work to do on slow flight, but I think I had figured out what I was doing wrong.

It is hard to believe that I have finally made it to this point.  If you have been following along with my blog , you know that I was struggling pretty hard with landings, and many other aspects of flying as well.  There were times when I would wonder if flying was for me.  As much as I loved it, I was spending a lot of money, and seemingly getting nowhere.  My instructor would tell me that one day everything would just click, but when you are in the middle of the struggle, it is really hard to believe that advice.  That is almost exactly how it happened however, and now it is hard to believe that I ever had any trouble landing a plane.  When I am landing I am almost day dreaming now, I barely even think about it.

Since my solo flight I have only gone up a few times by myself, but it was definitely a confidence boosting experience to be able to do so.  It was also MUCH better to be up in the air without my instructor, and it was a nice little taste of what it will be like once I get my license.  Although I am somewhat nervous about doing my checkride, I know that I will get it done, and I can’t wait to have the freedom to take passengers with me.

Me and my instructor have done three cross country flights, one of them at night, and I also got all of my night landings out of the way.  So now all that is left is for me to do two cross country flights solo, get my basic flight maneuvers within PTS (Practical Test Standards), and then I will be ready to take the practical test.  It really is hard to believe that I am that close, the practical test always seemed like it was so far off, but now it is within my grasp.

I STILL have not taken the written test, that is something that I need to get out of the way.  I am ready for it, but I am nervous about screwing up so I have been putting it off.  I am hoping that I will get it out of the way next week.

I am also a little nervous about the solo cross country flights.  During the cross country flights there is a lot going on, and it is hard to keep everything straight.  While flying the plane you are supposed to keep track of how long it has taken you travel between your pre-determined checkpoints, and then also calculate your ground speed and fuel burn.  All this while still flying the plane.  I am a little worried about how I will do all this without my instructor in the plane to help out.  Also a little worried about landing at unfamiliar airports, as you have to figure out the runway layouts as you approach the airport.  I was getting better at it towards the end of our last cross country flight.  I guess I will do what I need to do to get this done.

I am already starting to think about some of the trips that I am going to take once I have my pilot’s license, that is what keeps me going.  There are definitely some exciting times ahead once I get through this last phase of my flight training.

After flying the pattern solo a few times, I finally took a solo flight to the area in between Daytona Beach and Kennedy Space Center.  It was a beautiful day, and the view of the ocean was incredible.  Here is a video of my landing after I returned at Orlando Sanford International Airport.

My instructor has a job that requires him to travel to Cleveland for almost two weeks every month, so I was having some down time from flying.  Honestly I needed those two weeks, I was pretty burned out from flying 4 days a week for three weeks in a row.  After those two weeks were up I was well rested, and pretty much ready to get back into it.  I had my first really good day making landings on the day before my instructor left, so now I was a little nervous about how I would do after two weeks off.  It really felt like an eternity since I last flew, and I wasn’t sure if I could deal with having regressed.  I was already bummed out about not having done my solo flight yet, and it would be a huge blow if I found out that that one day of good landings was an anomaly, or that the time off from flying had affected me.

So when the day of my flight arrived, I started to get really nervous, and almost felt like canceling.  But I told myself I was being ridiculous, and of course kept the flight.  I had to get back on the horse so to speak, and get myself to my solo flight.  My instructor had said after my last flight that I would be ready to solo soon after he got back, and I hoped that would be true.

I arrived at the hangar and tried to put myself in the right mindset to have a good flight.  As we got in the plane I joked, “Let’s see if I remember how to fly this thing.”  He laughed, and said I would have no problem.  I hoped he was right.

We flew out to the practice area to brush up on some basic maneuvers.  He loved doing stalls, so I knew that was coming.  We did a power on stall, power off stall, and a few steep turns.  Also we practiced an emergency landing.  He had to make sure I could do these well before I did my solo flight.  I did fairly well on these, although I had trouble maintaining my heading on the power off stall.  We also did slow flight, and I struggled with it.  I had a hard time maintaining my speed at 55 knots, and a little trouble with my altitude.  I was afraid this would delay my instructor allowing me to solo.

After we did that we headed back to the airport and did a few landings.  I was most worried about nailing these, I figured that if I could nail the landings he may at least let me fly solo in the pattern.  Fortunately I did pretty well on the landings, and my instructor responded positively to that.  He still gave no indication as weather or not he would solo me soon, which was disappointing, but mentioned that we would be flying the pattern the next few days.  This led me to believe he was preparing me for my solo flight.

The next day we flew the pattern.  We did 12 landings, and I did about nine of almost perfectly, three of them I had some minor problems.  I ballooned on a couple (pulled up too early on my flare and started to climb again), and bounced on one landing.  I was afraid my instructor would react negatively to that, but he said that overall I did pretty well, and said we would fly that pattern a couple more times, and that he would try to solo me by the end of the week.  I felt really good about that, at last a plan was in place for my solo flight.  Hopefully I would keep doing well and not have to go into next week for my solo.

On the third day after he returned, we setup to do our pattern work.  We did a few landings, and I did them pretty well.  I still had issues landing a little flat (on all three wheels instead of on the back two wheels), but no major mistakes.  After we did ten landings my instructor had me pull off the runway.  He got out of the plane and said, “Are you ready to fly solo?”  I said absolutely, and was pretty amazed that the moment had finally arrived, it was without warning, I was expecting it a few days later at best.

I quickly taxied back to the runway for takeoff.  It was pretty surreal doing that myself without my instructor.  Very liberating, I really wanted to be able to do this every time.  I took off for my first flight around the pattern.  Everything went well, I maintained my altitude pretty closely, and setup nicely for my final approach.  I came in a little high, but made a pretty good landing.  My instructor told me to do a stop and go, rather than a touch and go that we would normally do.  I didn’t like it, but I did not want to argue with him.  This actually ended up messing me up a little bit.  I had a good rhythm going with my touch and goes, and now that got disrupted by having to stop rather than take off immediately again.  When I stopped I forgot to put up my flaps and turn off the carb heat.  So when I hit full throttle I lost control of the aircraft, I almost swerved off the runway due to the flaps being down and the loss of power with the carb heat on.  I managed to takeoff, but it was a jarring experience.  My instructor had been watching, and I was really dreading what he would be thinking.  I was also mad at myself for screwing up, and little mad at him for forcing me into a stop and go which I was not used to doing.  In his mind he told me that he thought it was safer since stopping would give me more time, but that really backfired.  He should have known better.  I guess I learned from that mistake, I will NEVER leave my flaps down and carb heat on during takeoff again, better to learn that now than make that mistake later.  Still not something I wanted to go through on my first solo flight, it somewhat tainted the experience for me.

So as I took off I was more focused on what my instructor was thinking than anything else.  As I turned cross wind the tower called me and said, “This one will be a full stop.”  So now I was thinking that my instructor had called the tower and told them to have me land to a full stop rather than do the three landings that we had planned.  This made me angrier at myself, and at him, but I flew the pattern, and really flew one of the best patterns to date.  I made a good landing, and taxied back towards the hangar.  My instructor approached the plane and asked me what was wrong.  I thought he was going to chew me out, but was actually trying to figure out why I hadn’t done my third landing.  I was kind of surprised, I thought for sure he had called the tower and asked them have me get out of the plane.  I explained that to him, he said no that he had not called them and I could have done one more.  Oh well I overall I was still pretty happy.  I flew two good patterns, made two good landings.  I had the one screwup that shook me up a bit, if not for that I would have been very happy with the experience and it would have gone almost perfectly.

As we headed back to the hangar I felt pretty good about finally having flown solo.  It was amazing to be up there by myself without an instructor breathing down my neck.  I really enjoyed that.  But I was also reminded that there was nobody watching my back after making that mistake with the flaps & carb heat.  Although I was mad at my instructor, it was my mistake and I would have to take responsibility for that.  But it was also his mistake for forcing me to do something on my solo flight that I was not used to, it was a case of over thinking the situation.  It was still great taste of what it would be like to fly the plane myself, and if I had any doubts before about wanting to get my pilot’s license, they were now gone.  The only thing that sucks about flying is having an instructor constantly looking over your shoulder.  It’s his job so I can’t complain too much, and I would not be here without him, he has made this possible.  But bottom line flying the plane is a lot more fun with him in the ground (not a knock on him, just the reality of the student-instructor relationship).  And that is my goal from now on to keep him on the ground as much as possible.

I had three days off from flying since my instructor had a job Friday through Sunday, and honestly I was pretty happy to have a break.  I was feeling a little burned out, and I guess the fact that I hadn’t had a really solid lesson in a while didn’t help.  I felt kind of stuck, and I just didn’t want to feel bad about myself anymore.  I figured that by Monday I would feel better.

Monday came, and I still wasn’t really feeling that great about it.  As I looked outside it was cloudy, with some light rain.  I was actually pretty relieved it looked like the weather would allow me to get another day off.  Today was also the day we were planning on doing stalls and slow flight which I did not really enjoy doing, so that played a part in my dreading the lesson as well.

Of course since I did not want to do the lesson, the weather started to slowly clear up as the day progressed.  I couldn’t believe it, earlier when I really wanted to go on a lesson the opposite would happen, things would suddenly get bad right around lesson time.  It was especially strange since rainy days are fairly rare this time of year, and if you do get one it is almost always an all day event.  This is one of the very few times I saw things clear up this like this during the Winter.

We had a lesson scheduled for 1PM, and at around 12:30PM my flight instructor gave me a call.  I looked outside, there were only a few scattered clouds.  He told me that he had actually gone up earlier in the day, which surprised me, and that since the winds were so calm it might be a good day to stay in the pattern and do landings.  It was funny he said that, because even though I rarely can bring myself to turn down a flight, I was going to do it this time, but he hit my soft spot.  I love doing landings, and since we have rarely had calm winds lately I could not give up that chance.  So I told him that we were on for the lesson.

As I drove to the airport, I started to get a feeling of dread for some reason.  I was afraid it wouldn’t go well again.  I really needed get over this hump.  For the first time ever serious thoughts of just quitting crossed my mind.  I had spent so much time and money, maybe I should just cut my losses.  I quickly dismissed those thoughts, and new sense of resolve came over me.  I was going to take charge of this plane and land it perfectly.  I loved flying deep down, and nothing was going to stop me anymore.

I met my instructor at the hangar, and we double checked the weather.  There was a light crosswind of 4 knots, so not too bad.  I was hoping for completely calm, but hey it was better than the 20-25 knots gusts I had been seeing lately.

I taxied towards the runway and I tried to put myself in a positive mental state to nail those landings.

We flew the pattern twelve times, and I did extremely well.  I flew a square pattern (ok light winds really helped there), flew each leg of the pattern almost perfectly, and setup very well on my final approaches.  I was controlling the plane much better, that is what pleased me the most.  In the past I would get a little flustered if the plane either rolled or yawed unexpectedly, but I had a “I’m showing the plane who is boss” attitude, and I kept the plane well aligned with the runway.  The only area where I was still having some issues was with my flare.  Although I improved a great deal in this area, I screwed up a few times.  I was changing my focus to the end of the runway like I was supposed to, and that helped me quite a bit.  But I was still pitching up too much at times, causing me to balloon.  It didn’t help that my instructor was constantly yelling “pitch up!” over the runway.  Oddly enough this was causing me to “pitch up”, just a little too much.  Overall though I was extremely happy with my improvements.

We taxied back to the hangar, and I was feeling really good after a flight for the first time in a long time.  I had a big smile on my face.

Once we had the plane fueled up and back in the hangar, my instructor said I had made a huge improvement in two weeks, and that I would be ready to solo pretty soon.  I was really happy to hear that as you can imagine, I was pretty desperate to get to my solo.  He went over some of my mistakes, some minor things concerning my altitude, and some drift on my takeoffs.  Nothing major.  He asked me to get my pre-solo test done so that he could sign me off to fly solo when the time came.   I would probably meet him one day and just go through it with him to make sure everything got done right and that he was satisfied.

I headed back to the office, and it was ironic that I had not wanted to fly today, and it ended up being one of my best lessons.  My attitude had turned around completely, I was feeling really good about flying, and finally felt like there was actually a chance I might get my pilot’s certificate one day.

When I woke up in the morning the only thing on my mind was my flight lesson.  My flight training was starting to dominate my life in many ways.  The whole night I know I had dreamed about airplanes, I couldn’t remember exactly what the dreams had been about, but I knew it was about flying, and I was still a little stressed from it.  As I looked outside it was pretty cloudy, and I actually felt good that it seemed like my lesson would be canceled.  I needed a little bit of a break.

We had a lesson setup for 1PM, and as the morning progressed, the clouds started to dissipate.  I had to laugh a little bit, because you and I both know that if I had really wanted to go for this lesson that the opposite would be happening.  As the clock struck noon wouldn’t you know it, it was actually a fairly nice day outside.  I checked the METAR, and winds were pretty strong, 15 knots, gusting to 20 knots.  The direction of the wind was out of 220 however, so it wasn’t a direct crosswind for runway 27, the runway that we would almost certainly be using, but there was still a crosswind component, and winds of that magnitude can be challenging even if it isn’t a direct crosswind.  I was about 50/50 at this point, my heart wasn’t in it, but I also wasn’t sure if I could turn down a flight if it was offered to me.  I know my old instructor would have canceled the flight in this wind, would be interesting to see what my new instructor would say.

Around 12:30 my instructor called to confirm the lesson, I asked him to call me to verify that the lesson was on in case I was busy.  He told me about the winds, which I had already checked, and said they were a bit strong but not too bad in his opinion.  He was from Cleveland, and he said there it was always like this, and it didn’t bother him at all, but that it was up to me.  I wanted to say no, but something wouldn’t allow me to do it, so I told him we would go ahead with the lesson.  What can I say, there is a part of me that just loves to fly, and it overruled the part of that was burned out.

I arrived at the airport, and as I got out of my car I got hit my some really strong gusts, to the point where it was a little difficult to walk towards the hangar.  Was I nuts?

I met my instructor, and he reminded me again that up North this was pretty typical weather.  I could see Cleveland being about as windy as Chicago, so I guess that didn’t surprise me.  We were overall pretty spoiled in Florida, we generally had pretty good conditions for flying.  But as a student pilot these would be tough winds for me regardless.  Part of me liked the idea of the challenge, but from past experience I knew it would be tough and I would make mistakes, and the other part of me was really ready for an easy lesson where I did well.

We took off and immediately I could feel the plane was a little difficult to control.  I did my best, and we flew the pattern several times.  On final approach for each landing, controlling the plane was pretty brutal, as is generally the case when you are flying slowly.  Aileron control was very challenging, and several times over the runway I was nearly blown off the edge by a gust of wind.  This prompted my instructor to take over a couple of times and do a landing himself to show me how it is done.  Although he did better, I could see he was having some trouble too.  This made me feel a little better, but did not help me that much.  The biggest challenges were maintaining proper alignment with the runway with the wind blowing me around, and staying over the runway as we were just about to land.  I might have had one or two good landings out of ten, that was it.  Not too happy with my performance, but towards the end I started to get that I was letting the wind beat me up a little bit, if I was more aggressive in fighting it, it would be easier.

We went back to the hangar, and my instructor gave me my post flight brief.  Nothing too surprising, he said I let my altitude get a little high a couple of times, and gave me some tips on my final approach.  One thing I was still having trouble with was my flare just as we were about to touchdown on the runway, this has been a trouble spot for me for some time.  I was tending to either pitch up too much, causing us to gain altitude again, or not enough, causing us to land flat.  I think I was looking down at the runway instead of looking straight ahead, which is what you are supposed to do once you are over the runway.  When you are looking straight ahead you pick a point on the horizon and hold the plane there, this tends to allow you to gently float down and make a soft landing, with the nose wheel touching last.

As I headed out I felt ok, not great, but not bad.  I was still a little concerned about when I would actually be able to fly solo.  But I was trying to keep the faith and maintain a positive attitude.  If I kept taking lessons and working at it would happen.  I would just have to put the solo flight out of my mind, and keep my focus on getting better each time.

After the talk I had with my instructor yesterday I was initially a little upset, but now I had started to calm down a bit.  I was pushing my instructor to get me to solo, I felt that we needed to focus primarily on that.  Stalls and basic maneuvers were burning me out, I basically just wanted to fly the traffic pattern until he felt that I was good enough with my landings to handle a solo flight.  He pretty strictly told me that he was not going to solo me until he was comfortable with my stalls and slow flight, and that we would keep doing them.  I wasn’t too happy with this, as I felt like he could keep this going indefinitely, and that he was perhaps holding me to too high of a standard.  I was especially worried about how much this might end up costing me if he “held me hostage” and kept making me these basic maneuvers indefinitely.  However after spending some time thinking about it I decided I would indulge him a little bit and hope that he would be reasonable.  He did seem to be sincere when he said he wanted me to move forward and that he wouldn’t be doing his job if he didn’t move me forward.  For now I would take him at his word, I did not really have that much of choice, I could not change instructors again, and overall I was happy with his instruction.  And in any case I would have to get these maneuvers close to perfect for my checkride, so it may save me some time in the long run anyway.

We had our typical 1PM lesson scheduled, and I was trying to keep a positive mindset about the stalls and slow flight.  As long as I just focused on doing these properly the solo would come, and I would just put it out of my mind.

It was a little cloudy, but overall a fairly nice day.  We had some wind, but it was an almost direct headwind rather than a crosswind for once, so that would make any landings we did a little easier.

We headed out to the practice area, and I set up for slow flight.  At first I started to get a feeling of dread over having to do this, but I reminded myself to stay positive and just focus on improving the maneuver.  I slowed us down to 55 knots, and initially had some problems with maintaining my speed and altitude.  I was able to recover, and I changed my grip on the yoke during slow flight to using my fingertips rather than holding it tightly with all my fingers as I usually did.  That seemed to work better, as it was important during slow flight to make only the slightest pitch changes.  Anything more than the slightest pitch change causes large changes in speed.  Overall I did a much better job with my speed and I was happy with that, even if I wasn’t perfect.  I was a little surprised that my instructor harped on the initial difficulty that I had, he was usually good at giving me credit for the positive things I did.  Oh well.

Next we moved on to the even more dreaded stall.  I was pretty good at the power off stall, so I at least was not worried about doing it.  I went through the procedure of slowing down the plane, and once the plane slowed down I pitched up until it stalled and went through the recovery procedure.  The only mistake I made was that I went a little off on my heading.  He harped on this, and seemed a little annoyed.  I was a bit surprised again, and since I wanted him to be happy with how I was doing stalls so I could move on I asked him if I could do it again, even though I hated doing stalls.  He said fine, and I did another one.  This time I did better, I thought it was pretty close to perfect.  He didn’t say much but I could tell he had some issue with it from his demeanor.

Next we did a power on stall.  Although the overall procedure for this was somewhat easier, I had a lot more trouble with these.  Maintaining your heading was particularly difficult.  I went through the procedure, and when I recovered my heading had changed considerably.  I wasn’t happy with this, but I wasn’t going to bother asking him to it again.  I guess I would fight that battle another day.

We headed back to Sanford after that, and although we had planned to do a few landings, the airport was pretty busy, and they only cleared us for a full stop landing rather than another take off.  My instructor asked if I wanted to a landing or if we should just do a full stop and head back to the hangar.  I decided to just head back, as busy as the airport was it would be a pain to try to fly the pattern.  In fact when the tower cleared us to land they mistakenly said we cleared for 9R, even though we knew they meant 27R (in fact they even ended up changing us to 27C as we were about to turn our final approach for 27R).  It was pretty bad that they would make that mistake, shows how frazzled they were.  I did not want to deal with that potentially dangerous situation.

We taxied back to the hangar, and my instructor went over the flight with me.  He mentioned some of the difficulties I had with slow flight, but did mention that I recovered and did pretty well after that.  I was happy the at least acknowledged that I had done some of it well.  He then said I needed to be more confident on the power off stalls.  I had a real problem with this, I honestly felt like I had done that pretty much perfectly, I was not sure what he wanted here.  He then went on about how I went off heading on the power on stall.  No argument there, I need to work on those a little.  Not that I couldn’t safely recover from a stall which is what I felt was important, but it would need work before my checkride.  Almost reading my mind he did say something very encouraging, he said,”But your stalls do not have to be perfect before I solo you.”  That made me feel a lot better, hopefully he means it.  The fact that had any issue with my power off stall still made me a bit nervous, however, that was kind of ridiculous, and I honestly was not sure what more I could do.

I was fairly burned out from the week of flying, I was thinking of canceling my lesson the next day.  I would have three days off after that anyway since he had to work his other job during those days, so maybe I would keep it so I could keep my progress going.  He said he wanted to fly the pattern tomorrow, we would alternate between flying the pattern and doing basic maneuvers.  I knew this was due 100% to our earlier conversation, he would have had us do the maneuvers again otherwise.  Kind of like eating your veggies and then getting desert.  I guess I would sleep on it and see how I felt in the morning.