Friday, September 22, 2006

Up & Down

I had a great flight. Actually, the shine is still on and I'm wet behind the ears and I'm fulfilling a dream, so they're all great flights.

Because my employer expects me to actually work for a living, I'm not available during the business day. Because of my volunteer work with soccer, this week and all of this weekend are fully consumed, meaning a long gap between lessons. And so I asked the instructor if he could start a lesson at 7AM. No problem. I like this guy, and this school.

The phone rang at 6:10. Brendon was up, had checked the weather, and we might have a problem. At this time of the year there is a good chance of fog first thing in the morning, and there was patchy fog reported in the area. Everything looked good out the window, but Carp Airport is closer to the Ottawa River, so there may be local fog.

I arrived at 6:55. Today was climbs and descents (exercises 7&8).

The chalk-talk, paperwork and pre-flight took an hour. One would think that ascents and descents are simple - point the nose where you want to go, and go there. Like seemingly everything in flying, if you do it right it looks simple, but behind the simple is a lot of knowledge, technique and practice. Most of which I don't know - yet.

But you'll read all about that stuff in just about blog and student manual. I'm Canadian. I want to talk about the weather.

This morning was simply wonderful. The air was cool and crisp. No haze, no smog, bright sun, few clouds, no wind, no chop, no traffic. We bobbed up and down (we were practicing ascent&descent, remember?) and enjoyed the bright sun and the changing tree colours. It was a joyful day to be up and around.

Oh yeah - I did the landing too. Setup was good, the flare was a bit clumsy, but we got on the ground with only one minor bounce.

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