A day of takeoffs and landings! Took off from Northwest Regional (52F) and headed west to Alliance (AFW) to practice the major thing I need practice on…. LANDING! Now keep in mind, I’m getting the plane down fine. Sometimes a little rougher than others, and crosswind landing makes things interesting. Nothing unsafe, but I am…

It’s FREAKING HOT up there.  Good gracious.  Today we did a little ground school while we were waiting for the plan to be returned to the hangar, then it was time to go!  Did I mention it was hot? So remember yesterday.  Hot = thermals = bouncy time.  Plus we had some wicked wind from the…

Long flight today! Took of from Northwest Regional, left cross, left downwind and departed northwest to the practice area. First off, it’s freaking HOT out there. No A/C. Secondly, when it is hot outside you get these fun thermals. BUMPY. Hard to maintain altitude. It’s a weird feeling… you are flying along and all the…

Lots of flying today! Only logged 2 landings (vs. the 6 from yesterday). Ground school took a while today. I was having problems with charts and classes of airspace, but now that I understand them both, there is just some memorization to do on VFR minimums. We took off and looped around the east side…

Ground school was quick today. Only spent about thirty minutes chatting in the classroom before it was time to preflight! Sometime after my flight yesterday (and NOT because of my landing) the magnetic compass fell off the windshield. My instructor was not sure if we were going to fly that plane today, but the mechanic…

Today was pretty fun! The ground school covered the basics of the airplane and the instruments. Learned a few cool tricks, like if your static system gets clogged (powers your Airspeed, Altitude, and Vertical Speed Indicator [VSI]), and you know the clog is PAST the Pitot tube, you can break the VSI to get your…

I’m going to try and blog after every lesson for those of you interested in my quest to become a private pilot. I had my first lesson today! First lesson was pretty much an intro as you would expect. We went over the forty (or so) pounds of books and material that I will be…