Starting Over Again

Today was an interesting chapter in my pursuit of the allusive pilot certificate. After my last rant, I managed to get in touch with another instructor, who happens to be the president of the board, and made a date to fly today. I reserved N737TY, the old plane I flew before it went away for 5 months. It was good to get back in it, especially since it has a new Garmin GNS 430W in it. Along with a new GPS, it has a new engine and a rebuilt firewall. In my previous rant (that was not fueled by alcohol), I was frustrated at my inability to fly. Calvin helped ease a lot of my frustrations and get me back on track.

I thought I needed to start back at the basics just to get a whole new perspective on what I am doing. So I told him that I wanted to do some basic ground maneuvers. I started with S-turns around a road and slowly got myself back into flying shape. I was rusty but I wanted this to be a kind of re-birth so I listened to how he explained what I needed to do to make the maneuvers better. We then moved on to turns about a point and I finally got a much better explanation of what I was doing wrong.

We got the plane back from a guy who was in my ground school class with me and it had about a half of a tank. While we were pre-flighting Calvin suggested that we head toward Greenville and get some fuel there to offset the incredibly high fuel cost at McKinney. The fuel at Greenville was only $4.00 compared to $5.69 at McKinney. I got to save $1.69/gal for 24.2 gallons. We then headed back to McKinney and were given clearance to enter the pattern on a right base for runway 35. Here is where the old habits kick in and although my approach was good, when I flared, I pulled back to hard too fast. That is what you get for not flying for a month. Of course a month is relative, but when you have as few hours as I have, a month without flying is an eternity. So I got busted for a less than stellar landing but we did survive and the airplane was still in good shape.

Calvin told me I needed to get back in the saddle and continue flying. I need to be flying with an instructor before I solo again. I knew this was coming, hence the reason for asking for Calvin's help. I can't tell you how much it helped to have a new and fresh point of view in my head while flying (I also liked his very calm and soothing voice). I will be flying again soon and more often, after an agreement with my boss who is letting me come in late once a week. I like to fly early in the morning to keep the brutal Texas sun from baking me too bad.

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