My Flying

As it turned out, my big day! I went solo. A really really lekker feeling. Everything went nice and smoothly, and to quote a phrase: I love it when a plan comes together.

The day started off badly with a misfiring winch and the DI of the Twin finding a nasty looking crack in the fuselage that warranted a closer look and involved removing the wings and various other bits from the cockpit.

Furthermore, the instructor didn't arrive, so the Twin couldn't be inspected or even if it was ok, flown. Fortunately an off duty instructor F(1) arrived and offered me a flight in the motor Falke. I was up for 23 minutes and did three touch and goes on 26R with a light westerly blowing. He then says to me that he would send me solo if there was another instructor to check me out, and what happens? Like magic another off duty instructor arrives F(6), we do a check flight and he's happy.

So then it's me, the Falke (9 flights with 4 hours) and the open runway ahead of me. It's true what they say, you aren't really that nervous. You know what to do, have just rehearsed it a few times and off you go. As that wheel lifted off the ground I said to myself: now you HAVE to land by yourself. And I did, a little deep and one bounce too many, but I was back on the ground.

After that it was the celebrations in the club house and my flight in the solo bar stool. Three flights (37 minutes) = 151,50ZAR.

The solo bar stool is a stool rigged out with pedals and a stick that needs to successfully "fly" a circuit and land. It's a little trickier after a beer or two.