First Flight

Well I finally got to go up for my first official lesson. To make it official, I got my logbook signed. I was even allowed to bring my wife and daughter up with me, which was quite a surprise. My daughter wasn't scared and just jumped right in the back and put on a headset and wanted be a part of the flight. The good and bad news to come out of that was that my microphone on my headset quit working so I had to swap headsets with her. At least my instructor and myself were able to communicate without any interruptions. Here is a shot of my daughter ready for action:

I have been sweating whether we would get to go or not because of some very bad weather the day before. Parts of Dallas/Fort Worth received as much as 6 inches of rain the day before. In our little piece of the world, we only got about 2 1/4 inches. As luck would have it, the forecast I had been looking at for the past 3 days said that Saturday would be good weather behind a cold front. Since most weather men in our area can't seem to get much right lately, I was very worried. Saturday arrived and it was gorgeous.

We did our preflight and finally headed to the Runway 35 run-up area to finish all of our pre-take off procedures. Now the moment of truth. Looking at the wind sock, it said we had about a 10 knot crosswind directly from the west and we are heading north. I was hoping my first flight would have been a little less demanding. My surprise was that the wind sock is on a hill east of the runway. The west side are where all of the airport operations and hangers are. They blocked the wind so I had a very smooth takeoff. I say it was smooth but that was only the first 30 or 40 feet. Then we got hit with the cross wind and I started having to really fly then.

My wife was in the back taking some pictures until my daughter took the camera away from her. At least I got about a dozen usable shots and about 4 dozen shots of the floor, her foot, the back of my head and anything else you can think of. Here is a shot of us heading east away from the McKinney airport (KTKI):

After all is said and done, we were up for about an hour and got a lot done. I practiced coordinated turns, flying around a point and crabbing into the wind to follow a path. My instructor told me that he doesn't usually push that much onto his students but I handled everything so well that he just kept pushing.

As we were heading back on a straight in approach we flew over the town of Fairview where they have noise abatement rules that require us to be at least 1500 feet and throttled back. I have a friend who lives there and tried to show my wife and daughter but my daughter decided that she would throw up instead. She did so well until we started our descent. When we got on the ground (a pretty good landing if I say so myself), we taxied to our parking spot and I had to run down to the FBO and get some towels and some water to clean up the mess. My wife jumped in and knocked it out before I could even get the first towel wet. I really hated to dump the post flight checklist on my instructor but he understood the extenuating circumstances.

All in all, a I had a great day. I just needed to get home to a quiet environment to replay everything back to remember all of the little nuances that are needed to fly an airplane correctly. After all, the end result is to get my license so I have to do this a lot more and get it right on my check ride.

As a side note, my instructor informed me that I was on the front page of out flying club website. We had someone come out to one of our ground school classes and take pictures last Tuesday night. The photographer chose to use a picture that had me and my girth prominently displayed in the foreground of the picture. Maybe the flying club will change the picture and gain some dignity again.

Total flying this time: 1.1 hours
Total Hours - 1.1

I Can Fly

For the last several years I have wanted to get my private pilot license. I made a promise to a friend I lost to cancer that I would pursue it. My problem was that I had a medical condition that prohibited me from ever getting my license (or so I thought). The fact that I hadn't done anything about it was starting wear on me. I had promised that I would see if there was anything that I could do to get cleared for a 3rd class medical but I just kind of blew it off. As time went by, I kept getting a nagging feeling that I was not living up to a promise I had made and it was really starting to bug me. It would be so easy to just blow it off and go on with life like nothing happened. So at the end of last year I sat down with my wife and let her know that I thought I needed to explore the idea of talking to a CME and see what my shot at getting through the process would be.

To be honest, I really didn't want to awaken any sleeping giants but I did make a promise. So I went against my procrastinating ways and made an appointment with the guy that everyone told me was the best at finding solutions to difficult medical conditions. I barely passed the basic portion because of my slowly deteriorating eyesight. I've been blessed with amazing eyesight but after turning 45, they are starting to go. Once we got through the easy part, I asked what it was I needed to do to satisfy the FAA.

So here we are 3 months later and I have passed all of the tests required by the FAA. I'll find out some time during the first week in April whether or not I have to jump through anymore hoops. The one thing that has happened is that I have now joined a flying club, started ground school and on Saturday March 31, I take my first lesson. So it is no more simulator for me. I'll be going up in N737TY a 1978 Cessna 172N for a couple of hours with my instructor (who happens to be my neighbor).

We'll have to see how things go after Saturday (if the weather holds) as to whether I'll have a future in this. From everything I've done already, this should be somewhat anti-climactic but I won't bet against it.