Well this was an exciting lesson to say the least. Tonight’s lesson comprised of a few new areas.

First off, we discussed the traffic pattern on the ground before getting into the plane and flying away. But also before flying away I got to do the Pre-Flight check list on my own (none too exciting but something new). After making a complete fool of bumbling self on the radio to both ground and tower at Lunken, we were off and heading NorthEast towards Clermont County Airport. By this time it was almost 8 o’clock and darkness was coming quick. Once within 5 miles or so of Clermont County Airport we went over the procedures of radioing at an uncontrolled airport… this I felt more comfortable with, no pesky ATC folks to get on my case. (I must point out though, for the terrible time I had on the radio tonight at Lunken, the folks in the tower were very nice and understanding)

‘Clermont County Traffic, Skipper 3729 Delta entering left traffic pattern of runway 22 on the downwind at one-thousand eight-hundred, Clermont County’

Richard took the controls and demonstrated flying the traffic pattern to the landing, with immediate takeoff (a touch-and-go). Once off the ground, he gave the controls back to me for my turn. At about one-thousand two-hundred feet we turned into the crosswind (radioing all the time) and climbed to one-thousand eight-hundred turning into the downwind. This time I kept the controls as we descended, turning into the base and then to the final.

Now before, my parents asked me… Jason, did you land the plane? Did you do it by yourself or did the instructor help you. My answer all the time was, I don’t know… I think I did most myself, but he helped too.

Well I’m here to tell you, yeah… those landings were mostly him. This one was all me. We touched down pretty hard… hah. From there on we did two more touch-and-go’s before heading back towards Lunken.

In the end I flew an hour, and it was pretty dark when done. It was a fun lesson. On Saturday we’re going to be working with Stalls… scary eh? I’m still enjoying the lessons greatly.

As for singing flyboy, I haven’t had a chance to even look at the website since I posted, I know there are a few broken parts, especially for those unfortunate souls who use IE instead of Firefox, but tomorrow night I don’t have much going on, I’ll probably work on it a little then. I still have to figure out a few more details before the site goes public with actual ability to make donations/purchases. All in good time though.

I’m getting pretty tired, its been a long day. Dan, Katie and I are running the 10K for the Flying Pig Marathon not this Saturday, but the next… and I’m a little worried about it. Dan and I ran 3 miles tonight, so we went almost half the 10K.

Have a good middle of week, Later!