My big scary flight

Finally, finally, finally I was able to do the dreaded solo flight out to the practice area to work on the upper air exercises (stalls, steeps turns, slow flight). I've been waiting since mid-January and I was so nervous about this. Sick with worry. But today, the weather was beautiful and it was time to suck it up and fake it till I make it.

Naturally, it wasn't nearly as bad as I had imagined it would be. I just went out there and did my thing. Being a nice day, the practice area airspace was a little busy. That was actually good, though, because I had to talk on the radio to manage separation from two other planes out there, and hearing myself on the radio, sounding oh so confident, helped me believe I could do it. At first, I just flew around and enjoyed the view.

Then I took a deep breath, pulled the throttle to idle, pulled back on the controls, back some more, stalled the plane and recovered. Whew! OK, that was OK! Next I did a couple of steep turns, allowing myself to keep the plane banked at just over 30 degrees (instead of 45) to get a feel for it. Good. Good. Then I eased the plane into slow flight, where you fly the plane in a very nose-up attitude at about half the normal airspeed (near the stall speed), the point of which is to practice handling the plane at a slow speed, such as during landing. I did well with that! Amazingly, I spent an hour out there playing around and it was fine!

Figuring that was pretty good for today, I headed back to my airport. That's where I had a little trouble. I had to do three go-arounds, where you abandon an approach or landing that isn't going right, and go up to re-join the circuit and try again. Even the landing that finally got me down was a bit iffy but it worked. My instructor saw me do that one. Once I had shut down and we were talking it about it, I noticed he was rubbing his hand over the engine cowling, as if he was comforting the plane after the hard landing I had inflicted upon it.

I feel great about the flight and am so proud of myself for doing 1.5 hours on my own! The experience was slightly tainted by my landing difficulties but I ended up flying again this afternoon with another instructor to do some landing practice. He said my approaches were bang-on and he gave me some great tips to improve the landings.

This is hard stuff. I know I have work to do with the landings. But I am pleased with myself for the most part today.