Today I was excited, really excited.
I woke up to the blistering sunshine coming through the blinds in my bedroom - A smile bigger than the moon shook my face,
It was an afternoon flight today, so I was able to take more of a relaxed approach to the day, and think about what I would be doing in the sky today!
It's not a particularly short journey to Newtownards from my house, so I was able to sit back and relax on my way to the aerodrome and embrace what was to be a great lesson, that's if the weather was anything to go by!
I arrived at the flying club, it was fairly busy, the apron was extremely busy, so much so that a number of aircraft where parked up on the grass.
I would be flying with Kiwi again today, something I was looking forward to. After our quick brief regarding what we would be covering in the lesson - He sent me out to do the aircraft walk-around.
I left the building and make the relatively short journey out to the apron, after locating my aircraft, I reached in to the cockpit and got out the 'Tecnam P2002JF - Checklist' and started at the beginning of the list with the 'Pre-Flight Inspection' basically at this point I'm
looking for a clean undamaged aricraft, along with the right tyre pressures, fuel quantity and the fuel drain. It doesn't take too long to get through the checklist and prior to me finished, kiwi makes his way out to the aircraft and gets into the cockpit while I finish off the walk-around.
I then get myself into the captains seat, bring the seat forward and put on my seat harness.
We continue with the (Internal) Pre-flight inspection, with a bit of help from kiwi, I think I managed quite well! We start the engine, and run through the checks that accompany doing just that.
After all that, we taxy to the 22 hold and wait for a Cessna to land and clear the runway, seconds later, we are next in line for the runway and we take off from a somewhat busy airfield.
I could hear a few of the pilots in the area requesting a VFR to Darby, Blackpool and I think I can recall one of them heading back to the Isle of Man.
Anyway, we reached our selected altitude and recapped on the things I covered last lesson, we begun to have another, more in-depth look at using trim, we talked about the primary reasons why trim is important and how we can combat it, he set the trim, and then made me correct it. I got the hang of it quickly - If the aircraft wants to go up, well then trim down and if the aircraft wants to go down, then trim up, simple really.
We then moved on to climbing and descending - A really important part of learning to fly, luckily, it wasn't too hard to manage.
Near to the end of the lesson we begun to cover flying straight and level, the weather was great, there was a good horizon, and I coped fairly well. Unfortunately the lesson was coming to an end so we didn't get to spend too much time on flying straight and level.
We headed back to Ards, and if I had to choose one bad thing about flying the Tecnam, it's the length of time it takes to descend. The moment we turned around to head back to Ards, we immediately had to begin our descent.
Upon getting to Ards, I still had full control of the aircraft. Kiwi got me to turn onto finals after reaching base, fly the approach, and to my shock, I landed the aircraft. I was amazed. Kiwi turned around to me, and shook my hand, "Congratulations on your first landing, well done" he said. I couldn't stop smiling.
NB: You can see that landing, entitled, 'My First Landing' right here!
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