Flying

Over the last few days I have been able to get up in the air three times. It was amazing, a bit nerve wracking, but amazing nonetheless. The first day I had to make a special schedule in order to fly, but the weather was absolutely perfect on Tuesday night. Unfortunately, a few days this week we were simply unable to fly at all because of lack of VFR safe weather. My instructor firmly believes that it is much more important to be safe when flying than to rush things and take unnecessary risks. Anyway, Tuesday was more of an introductory session, I was able to do a takeoff and landing though because there was barely any wind. My instructor demonstrated stalls and a few other maneuvers. We flew from Cleveland to Perry and on our way back we made a touch-and-go landing at Cuyahoga County Airport. It is very easy to fly from Burke since you can follow the shoreline to get just about anywhere, except south. On Wednesday it was all up to me - I was required to taxi and takeoff by myself. Then we went up in the air to practice stalls. We did both power on and power off stalls, this is to prepare you in case you stall during take off or landing and how to recover safely. After that we practiced slow flight maneuvers where you fly without descending at about 40KIAS (knots indicated airspeed). You want to be able to hear the stall warners, but avoid stalling by using the throttle, rudder and yoke. It is very tough since you are in the region of reverse command so your yoke controls the speed and the throttle controls the pitch. We did most of our maneuvers over Chardon high school and the square. Thursday I was unable to fly due to scheduling issues, but today was perfect for flying. Although very hazy in the morning, our two hour flight included a lot of pure instruction time. My instructor was thrilled with my performance on the stalls. We also did steep turns with a 45º bank angle (which puts about 4Gs of force on your body). We also practiced maneuvers around the SPIRE institute in Geneva; turns about a point and rectangular course were the covered maneuvers today. On Monday I will have the opportunity to do some more stalls, learn how to do S-turns on a road and some other interesting maneuvers. Overall, it has been a very exciting time for the last week and I cannot wait to get my license in the near future, even though I may not solo by the end of project due to issues with the plane, scheduling and weather.