Back in the Saddle

It's been a long time since my last flight. My commitments at home and work coupled with a nastier than usual winter and the short periods of light have made it hard to find time to fly.

Rather than sit around idle, I spent a lot of time focusing on the ground school material I've been taking online. I ripped the audio from a number of lessons into an MP3 format and have been listening to them in the car during the commute to downtown and back. I still made less progress than I had hoped and realize that it is going to take a considerable amount of self discipline to complete the content by July as I had initially hoped.

My wife tried to pull a fast one on me by booking a flight as a birthday present (bless her soul). The secret didn't last more than 20 seconds as I received an instant notification of the booking on my crackberry as soon as it was entered in the computer. After realizing she had booked me another intro flight in a C172 with an instructor I had never heard of, I quickly swapped it to a full training flight in the Eclipse with I5.

When I showed up for the flight I immediately told I5 that I was unsure where we would be picking things up since it had been close to 3 months since my harrowing flight in those gusty October winds. He told me we were headed to the practice area for a refresher flight and to be honest this was just fine with me.

I did spend some time the night before reviewing all of my notes and going through the checklists again for some familiarization. The walk around felt foreign and seemed to take forever. After it was complete I pulled out the checklist to see if I had done everything correctly and in the proper order. Turns out I completely missed the fuel inspection and had to go back to drain fuel from the tank and engine!

While waiting for I5 back in the club I saw a notice that the routes to and from the practice area had changed, I spent some time reviewing them and realized that they were using visual reference points that no longer included the power lines. I was happy to see this as we all know by now that I've always had trouble following them. Highways, Gas Plants, a Town, Rivers, Lakes, and a Dam were much easier to spot in my opinion.

When we called for Taxi we were assigned runway 34 and I noted we looked to be about #4 for the runway. I5 told me to ask for a departure from an intersection which was approved. On the way there I mentioned to I5 that I felt the check list went EXTREMELY slow. I was a bit shocked when he said he felt it was actually done in perfect time. Perhaps I'm too hard on myself sometimes? After a single departure we were cleared for takeoff from the intersection. We followed some traffic on departure which I easily spotted (isn't it always a trip when you see other traffic?) and we headed for the practice area.

I was pleased with how smooth everything went from the start to end of the flight. I had no trouble staying ahead of the aircraft. Straight and level, checklists, navigation, and radio work weren't a problem en route. Once arriving in the area we practiced slow flight, steep turns, power on/off stalls, and descending turns. They all went much better than I hoped they would. I realized how comfortable I felt in the aircraft from the moment he asked me to put the aircraft into slow flight and I was able to do it without much trouble.

On the way back everything was smooth as butter including a nice approach and touchdown. I5 told me that I was ready to continue with the circuit. I enjoyed flying with him (again) so much that I booked a flight for a few days later with him.

It was great to be back in the saddle.

14.4 Hours and counting...