Flight Lesson 3

It took me a while to get around to updating this today, 'cos I was feeling kinda tired so I went to sleep and just woke up about 30 minutes ago, haha.

But anyway, I digress. The picture on the right is from my flight lesson today. Who took it, you may ask? Why, my father. I asked my dad if he would like to fly along with me sometime and he said he'd love that, so today I took him along. Sean asked me when I asked him if it'd be alright to take my dad along if I was sure I wanted to bring him along for slow flight, but I said yeah, it'd be no big deal.
So last time, Sean introduced slow flight. When he did it last time, I was kind of iffy about it, because you're flying along as slow as you can possibly go, weird angle of attack, flaps fully extended, with the stall horn blaring in your ear. It's kind of ingrained in you that stall horn = bad, you know? But slow flight was actually not all that bad. Sean made no hesitations in telling me that I got it down much quicker than he had expected, even quicker than he had when he did it, so that made me feel good. I don't quite have the procedure down yet, but he said that when we go up from now on, we're going to incorporate slow flight, for about 15 minutes or so, until I get it down. Fine by me, it was a breeze. Turns in slow flight are deliberate and slow (duh), and easy, though it took me a few tries to get on the correct heading, which it normally doesn't, but I didn't want to turn too fast for fear of actually stalling the plane.
So I've got slow flight down. He also asked me if I wanted to try steep turns today, because I've gotten to where I can easily do 30 degree turns, no problem at all. I wasn't quite sure, but he demonstrated them for me, and said if I started feeling uncomfortable, to just tell him and he'd recover the plane. Turns to the left aren't all the bad, but turns to the right, whether I'm doing it or he's doing it, are kind of weird. I guess it's because I'm sitting on the left side of the plane. Sean said when he first became a flight instructor, it was almost as if he had to relearn everything from the right side of the plane.
Did a few touch-and-goes, didn't do so well on the landings today, but ahh well, he also said that we'd do more touch and goes each time we go up. I'll get better. :)

Guess that's about it. I uploaded a ton of photos, but they're on my Facebook.


Edit: I just remembered. A little bit after we'd taken off, while we were flying out over the coast, some people came over the frequency talking to each other, and one of the people were talking about these two F-16s flying in formation that had just flown past them. We all looked to see if we could see them, but they'd gone into the clouds. Bummer.

Unassisted Landing

Today was a great day for sure. Today I did my FIRST UNASSISTED landing, meaning I landed that damn plane all by my-very-own-self. And it felt great, it really did.
We started out today by taking off out of KCRG, duh, and heading towards Fernandina where we did a few touch and goes there. We flew out over the coast, out over the water, which is still a little scary to me, but I asked, "Hey, you know.. like.. if the engine were to quit right now by some random chance, would we be able to land on the beach?" And the answer was yes, of course. From where we would, Sean said we more than likely would've been able to land at Fernandina as well, so that kind of quelled my fears.
So we did a few touch and goes there, about three I guess, before we took back off and headed for Cecil. Did one touch and go assisted and then the next, I did all by myself. And .. god, like.. man. I don't know what to say about it, lol, it was just fantastic. The feeling of actually having had accomplished something like that is overwhelming. It makes me feel all cocky, like I could do just about anything right now. Like fly to the moon and back, idk.
I actually didn't even realize that I'd landed by myself until Sean had said something. I was concentrating so much on what I was doing, keeping center line, watching my airspeed, concentrating on when to flare, etc etc, that I wasn't even watching Sean to see if he was helping me. It wasn't until he said, "Well Jessica, you just did your first unassisted landing." that I was like.. "well, wow. okay. Awesome."
He also introduced slow flight today, which I'm not really liking. Slow flight is basically flying the plane as slow as it will go, keeping the stall horn on for as long as possible. From what Sean said, it's also basically showing you how you do your approaches when you come in to land, except you're like.. 3500ft as opposed to about 1000. He showed me how to do it and then afterwards, I was like, "eehhh let's not do that today. Can we just do some touch and goes?" which we did.. So slow flight next time, as well as power on and power off stalls. I'm not looking forward to that at all, but hey, it has to be done, so whatev.

Until next time.

In the beginning...

Figured today would be as good as day as any to start a blog about my flight training and how it's going.
Let me give a little backstory before I get into all the really juicy details.

I've always been fascinated with aviation, airplanes and the like ever since I was a little girl. Those who catch the aviation bug as early as I did will always find themselves looking skyward whenever they hear the buzz of an airplane nearby. We'll stop in our tracks simply to watch an airplane pass over, most of the time stopping what we're doing, whether it be just walking, talking to a friend, or anything else that seems less important than just watching that airplane go by.
My father would always take me to the local airshows, NAS Jax (our local NAVY base) and I was just drawn in by the freedom of flying, the availability of it and just.. wow. There's not much else I can say, it's very overwhelming. But it never really occured to me that flying was something I could do, that it was within my reach. I'd read things and heard of others getting their certificates and owning their own airplanes and such, but the thought never popped in my head, "This is something that I can do."
So I grew up with the aviation bug biting me in the ass, but the welt didn't grow and begin itching until April of last year (2008) when my family took a "vacation" to Lakeland, Florida for the annual Sun n' Fun Fly-in, Sun n' Fun for short. Sun n' Fun is any aviation enthusiansts dream, one short of Oshkosh's EAA Airventure which, for now, is too far out of reach. Airplanes as far as the eye can see, always coming in for landings and doing takeoffs at almost every moment (it calms down at night), seminars, etc etc. It's just wonderful, everything one could ever dream of and more. It was after this trip to Sun n' Fun that I took my very first flight ever, in a Cessna 172 at St. Augustine Airport in St. Augustine, Florida. This flight was my discovery flight and it opened my eyes to the world of aviation. Suddenly, everything seemed so possible, within my reach, and my thinking turned from "Never for me." to "I can really do this."
We took another trip to Sun n' Fun this year and by this time I was dying for some altitude. Shortly after, I began my flight training lessons with Sterling Flight at Craig Airport in Jax, FL, where I'm currently training. Today was maybe about my 6th or 7th lesson, but I can still remember back to the first time I flew out of KCRG.

Today's lesson was nothing short of fun.
I began my training in a piper Warrior II because the Zenith CH200 that I normally fly is down for its 100-hour, although I don't think I will be going back to that plane anytime soon. The Warrior is bigger, a four-seater, and more stable than the Zenith, which is a tiny bird. I had my hesitations the first few lessons with the Zenith because it bounces around a lot, and this made me uncomfortable (something that after those first few lessons, I kept telling myself I would just have to deal with; turbulence is apart of any pilot's life, no matter what kind of plane you fly, it just happens to be worse in a tiny plane). This was not the first time I flew in the Warrior, however, but the first time I did fly in it, I got a little sick and we only stayed in the air for less than 5 minutes. Anyway...
So we did our usual thing, going down the checklist and checking everything, doing this and that, the run-up, the take-off.. which, by the way, is so much easier in this airplane. We putt-putted around for a little bit, doing a few turns, before heading off towards Cecil (KVQQ) to do some touch and goes. For those who don't know, Cecil used to be a military airport, but has since been decommissioned and is now a civilian airport. The runway there (27L) is a little more than 3 miles long. I believe it was made to be used as an alternate landing spot for the shuttle. So, needless to say, this runway is huge. Humongous. Gargantuan. It's just big. On our way there, we flew through NAS's airspace, which meant we had to call them up and tell them that we were flying through it. I actually got to see where I live from the air, even though we didn't fly directly over it (we weren't allowed to deviate from our course once we called up NAS tower). Coming in to land at Cecil was a bit daunting because of all the trees right at the beginning of the runway, but because it's so big, it doesn't really matter where you set down on the runway, there is more than enough room. I let my instructor, Sean (who, by the way, is AWESOME), land the first time and then the second and third time, I did it practically by myself. I took off by myself those two times as well and then we headed back to Craig for one touch and go and then a full-stop.

Ehh, I can't think of anything else, that's really it. Until next time!


Edit: I neglected to mention something else. As we were doing our runup, I mentioned some videos I had seen where they do short take-offs and landings, and without my even suggesting it, Sean asked if I wanted to try one. So we did! I'm not sure how short of a take-off it was (I might ask when I go in on Tuesday), but I know it took us a fraction of the time to get into the air as it normally does. It was pretty neat.