Everybody should be able to pilot an aircraft
 

So, Thursday just gone I completed 4 circuits practicing take off, landings and touch and gos as per usual in a lesson in the circuit. However, on one of the landings, my instructor took control and taxied off the runway, im looking at my watch thinking c'mon this lessons an hour long and we have been flying 35 mins or so!

To cut a long story short, he said to me "right im getting out and you're going to do 1 circuit... On your own... Solo!

Yes Thursday 28th August 2014 was the day i piloted an aircraft for the first time... With my right hand seat empty. It was the best day of my life... An amazing experience that I believe everyone should have. Obviously not literally but the feeling was awesome and i hate using that word.

To the fellow aviators out there... Now i know why they say "you've got the flying bug"...

Happy flying
Pilot CR

Congratulations
 

Congratulations Captain Self.

Welcome to an ongoing collection of learning experiences. As you say, everyone should do it.

Safe Flying,
WKW

Congratulations :D I don't think anything's ever given me as much satisfaction as that first solo circuit

Two thoughts:
1. Oddly, not everyone wishes to pilot an aeroplane. Strange, but true.
2. You may well find your first solo cross country even more satisfying and exhilarating.


Welcome to the world's best legal high :)

Congratulations and welcome to the club of those with terminally empty wallets.... but at least the kick you get flying makes up for the emptiness of the bank balance :)

Well done!

Nothing tops the first time you pilot an aircraft on your own, though there's a long way to go to completing your PPL yet.

My first solo in 1978 still stands as a highlight of my life, even after all those decades of aviating.

Congrats pilot CR, you've only just begun! It is a great feeling having that seat beside you empty!

i have done two first solos. My first was in 1977, on the first C152 which was imported to Canada. With total time of 33 hours since new, my instructor was rather criticized for sending me solo in it!

I done my first solo 26th july, what a feeling!
Scared to death but it felt very satisfying.
my next lesson was 2 circuits with instructor then 35 mins of solo circuits, since then the weather hasn't been too great, had some heavy crosswinds but im booked for Friday and up to now the forecast is looking good.
Out of interest, how many hours have you done?

Thank you everyone for your responses :)

I had done 13 hours dual training before I went solo and I now have 40 mins solo flying. I'm next flying Sunday all being well with the weather so I hope for some more solo flying.

Pilot CR

Congratulations. Brings back memories from many years ago. Strangely, I think I am one of the few people who didn't enjoy his first solo. It came completely unexpectedly after only 4hrs 20mins, following ATC gliding 17 years previously. It caught me by surprise, and I guess I wasn't psyched up for it. Fine after I'd turned finals tho', and I had no further problems. Enjoy the rest of your flying career.

Congratulations to all those who have soloed recently! :ok:

It's been a while since we had one of these threads.

Congratulations, first solo is one of those flights that will be remembered forever, one of my top 10 life experiences !:D:D

Now on to the QXC (also in that list, maybe I'm a sad individual ?)

Aaah first solo.
Did anyone else have the feeling of once in the circuit glancing at the other empy seat and thinking 'gawd now i have got to get this thing down again'

I actually had the opposite thought. Having an aircraft to yourself is the bollocks. My instructor was a lovely chap but I was his first student. I loved flinging the thing around at low speed and high bank angles. Obviously my instructor didn't appreciate this.

He obviously didn't realize that I was Top Gun material and his slovenly 152 didn't cut the mustard.

We reached a compromise zipping through a valley following an ever tightening river.

Kelly wasn't waiting for me but I'd experienced a number of accelerated stalls and re-assessed my limits.

Get rid of the instructor as soon as you can. Then you will learn to bring he /she back for the things you really need to learn.

I started planning solo flights that required his knowledge. He was happy to answer my calls off the books.

I took the Cessna all around the Philippines, but then needed his help hot n high.

I know I'm rambling, but fly as much as you can solo. You learn so much more from your mistakes and especially being Sh87t scared.

Best,

SSS

That was a memory I was reliving just as you uttered it ;)

More to the point:

It sounds to me like a lot of responsible pilots would not appreciate this. :eek:

Reassessing personal limits is a good thing, after hundreds and thousands of piloting hours, but not after tens of hours. My hope for subsonicsubic would be that they reassess their limits again - much more toward the cautious and compliant! :=

For as much as I can remember, I did the first solo circuit almost without thinking whatever - it was just a confirmation of lots of drill. Even the much-warned-for difference in weight didn't come as a surprise. My instructor must have played the little game very well. Only in the days after did it slowly dawn on me that "yes I had done it". And what a great feeling that was!

No, once in the air it was fine. But sitting at the end of the runway, looking down it before take off, hand on throttle, I thought "if I take this thing into the air, I'll have to get it down safely again". But only for a second or so! ;)

Congrats!
I very nearly didn't get going on my first solo - as in - start moving.

The tower is quite far away from the apron we use, so we don't normally stop anywhere near it, so it was the first time I'd ever stopped on the taxi-way in front of the tower for my instructor to jump out.

After he did, I then spent the next 5 minutes (felt like a lot more!) trying to work out why my request to taxi wasn't being answered by the tower...

Now I had seen once before that at a certain hold, if the aircraft was pointing a particular direction the tower couldn't hear me - the aircraft / airport combination that I was in has a few radio blind spots. So in my problem solving I turned on / tuned in COM 2 (which I later found out has a different antennae position) which worked. Judging by the response from the tower - they could hear all my previous calls - I just couldn't hear them!

But after that - all went to plan. Discovered how much quicker even a bulldog climbs without 75kg extra weight holding it down :)

Great experience - take a photo and send it into Flyer ( FLYER Forums ? View topic - FLYER wants to help celebrate your first solo! ) and bask in the glow :D

congratulations, and i echo the empty wallet comment!

Safe Flying, ES

Mine first solo was October 10 1976. I still have a pretty vivid memory of that first circuit and landing all alone.

Well done mate, the first of many gr8 flying experiences you will have,m it definately starts with the first Solo - an amazing experience.

then you have solo nav 1 & 2 and the you have your big x/c qualifier - that is amazing.

then your skill test, easily one of the best feelings across anything or spectrum i have felt, the pride is awesome!

After that it continues, the first time you land away, or go to a fly in, fly a new plane, do a conversion on to tailwheel, learn Aero's, get your IMC etc... it just doesn't stop.

Taking your family up etc...

it just continues, have fun and fly safe my friend!

regards

Tris

Congrats Pilot CR!

Thank you all for your comments, its great to see i have joined a group of people who care and congratulate one another on their success. :)

Thank you all
:)

Pilot CR

Solo beers? ;)

PilotCR, you are welcomed to the group. You will find an amazing amount of good will and mentoring here. The opportunity to draw from a worldwide base of knowledge and experience, really supplements well, what one can learn sitting around the club house on a rainy day!

Yup, Proon. It's all sweetness and light here - honest! ;):eek:

Exactly my thoughts... however my first solo was actually a series of solo Touch and Goes and upon touching down, my instructor came over the air and gave me the instruction to throttle up and go for another circuit which I obligingly did, forgetting the first rule of Touch and Goes - flaps first, throttle second.

You can imagine what happened.... The plane accelerated and rose around 10 foot off of the runway just at the same that that I selected flaps up only for the plane to start sinking.... Fortunately I didn't wrestle with the yoke but lowered the nose slightly and remember struggling along about a third of the runway with the stall horn screaming, hoping the plane would gain speed to start properly flying.....

Since then any touch and go was always: flaps first, throttle second. It's one of those mistakes you'll usually only make once..... like taking off with the door not securely latched ;-)

I was taught to complete touch and goes with flaps set to 20, without altering the flaps during the roll and retracting at a safe altitude (200-300'). The 150 generally performs perfectly fine with 20. It would be a different story hot and high in America however..

Yeah, there is "the other side" too, but, like the eccentric aunt, we just smile and nod!

Though if you practice to do it wrong, that it what you'll learn to do. One day you will shoot off the end of the runway, and as you wonder what just happened, it'll come to you, you flew the way you trained, and forgot the flaps.....

We'll talk "Configuration Assurance" shortly.....

can everyone play a piano?

sure, everyone should be able to pilot an aeroplane, but I have met people so ditsy and stupid in their thinking that aeroplanes should never be within their remit.

the air has no respect.

wave your hands around, the air is pretty thin.
work within its characteristics or you die.
as yoda famously said, "there is do or don't do, there is no try."

I think the use of poor grammar has caused confusion. I would like to emphasise that I meant "forget the flaps" as in to complete touch and goes with flaps set to 30, without altering the flaps during the roll and retracting at a safe altitude. I apologise for any confusion.

So you don't practice landing with full flap? Sounds foolish to not practice with the proper landing configuration, and to learn how to change to take off configuration during the take-off roll.

Everybody should be able to pilot an aircraft
 

In a crosswind, flaps 20, on a calm Day flaps 30. No, I believe that by not altering the flaps during the roll, is one less thing to think about and therefore safer.

Thinking, even during the roll of a touch and go, is important. Of course preplanning is good, and changing configuration on the go is not so good, but if you've decided to do it, it's worth practicing properly. In particular, once you have hold of the flap knob, feel for it's shape, and mentally confirm it is the flap knob before you move it. It's not so vital on a 152, but does get important when flying an RG. Complicated, I know, but one must master it!

What's just as important is learning the differences between variations of the same model you're flying - I learnt to fly on a C172R; in that aircraft, flicking the flap switch upwards meant the flaps retracted fully. Fast forward to my first flight with a C172M, I decide to practise a few touch and goes to get the feel for the aircraft before taking guests with me. Either way, I landed, flicked the flap switch upwards and then opened the throttle.

Those who've flown an M will already know what happened.... The plane took to the skies quicker than I expected but refused to gain speed, it was creeping along at around 70 - 75 knots with full throttle, even though I'd lowered the nose to increase speed, even though the altimeter was showing no noticeable rate of climb, the airspeed indicator stayed nailed where it was - why won't this spam can accelerate, I was thinking to myself?

A quick glance over my shoulder showed the flaps half way between 30 and 40 degrees, no-one had told me that C172M have flaps that only move as long as you're holding the flap switch and I'd got so used to doing things "the way I always do them", I didn't bother checking the flap position indicator.......

That characteristic was the result of a required change of the flap selector switch, to do away with the feature of the switch remaining in the "retract" position. Two reasons: Too many pilots would go from 40 to 0 in one go, and the aircraft would settle dangerously on a go around. More to the point, the flap switch remaining in the "retract" position after the flaps were fully retracted caused an unsafe condition if the flap motor "up" limit switch failed. The motor could continue to run, and at best blow a breaker/fuse, and worst, burn out the motor.

The pilot directly controlling the flap position is preferred - configuration assurance - as you have learned. ;)

I remember my first solo in a Chipmunk!

On the downwind, selecting the first 'notch' of flap and turning onto base I selected the second 'notch' which didn't quite 'drop in' (those who know the chippie know how the flap lever worked!!!)

The result was that the flap lever sprang forward as I turned finals and dumped all of my flap leading to a very rapid recovery requirement on finals, overshoot, quick explanation over the radio and another attempt!

All my instructor said was 'well, you'll always check the flaps are engaged and seated from now on won't you'. How very true!!!

Congratulations PilotCR, the main learning starts from here. :ok: