So yesterday evening was my first time flying in nine days… it was almost like meeting up with an old friend.
I got to Lunken about 17:30 and talked with Gary for about an hour in ground school sort of deal. We went over writing up a flight plan both on paper and on the computer (which is super easy). We also called the weather-briefing center. The guy I talked to was super nice and helped explain everything to me as we went along, telling me what to listen for, what other options were for the weather briefing and the sort. I have realized that most everyone who deals with your flight (ground control, tower control, weather brief…) are all really friendly and are there to make your life easier. When first starting lessons with Richard, he made comments about how the people in the tower can be jerks sometimes… I am yet to see it though. I have made my fair share of mistakes so far and they have been very kind and friendly about it.
An hour passed and about 18:30 Captain Dave came in and asked if we were going up. He told us that someone had reserved the plane at 19:30… which we weren’t aware of. We were going to fly up to Xenia and do some grass field landings and probably be gone for 2ish hours. Well so much for those plans… hah. I decided to go ahead and go up by myself. Gary agreed saying it would be a waste of my money to bring him up since we didn’t need to go over anything around the airport. So I went out, did my preflight and taxied for my second solo flight. It felt like I hadn’t been in the plane a while (nine whole days!). While doing my run up the engine was running kind of rough when I brought the throttle back to idle, but I figured it wouldn’t cut out on me while I was in the air cause the wind would help keep the propeller going. I took off and got up in the pattern.
In the 0.4 hours I was up in the air I did two T&G’s along with my full stop final landing. It was a fun time. I really enjoy Gary as my instructor, he is quite the character. I appreciate him thinking of my finances ahead of his own finances, it shows great character.
That’s all for now. I fly again next Wednesday and Thursday. The reason I hadn’t flown in nine days was because of the visibility being poor. Those fires down in Georgia are giving Cincinnati a haze and smog alerts all day now… no good. And then the other lesson I ended up not having was because we got in the plane and couldn’t get it started… yuck (there were fireballs coming out the exhaust pipes :-D) That plane is in the shop now.
Later!