my company took the luxury to provide one aircraft per crew (we were 5 crews / 10 new copilots during T/R) for base training... So one would get the first leg and the first 6 patterns (or as much as needed), than a full stop landing with seat swaping, than the other one would fly his patterns and the return leg back to home base. I was number two, my crewpartner did quite well during his patterns and i was almost wetting my pants in anticipation of me flying the real thing... Finally it was my turn, we swapped seats and i made my very first take off with sweating and trembling hands
... somehow the first pattern worked out pretty good with a nice landing, my confidence grew immensely and my trainer smiled and said: nice one, now lets go having some fun! And yeah man, we did
early steepturns after takeoff, tight visual patterns and landings in different configurations. Finally we landed, did the nav setup for the return leg and had a smooth flight back home... 40minutes flight time which seemed more like 5 minutes... Went home with a big smile. Now, half a year later the smile is still there
Oh, and 10 out 10 passed first time!
