Enjoyed a short 30 minutes in the air today for my first officially documented flight lesson.
Decided to get the old bucket out and finally do something in there I'd made a goal to do in my lifetime. In this case, get my private pilots license. Maybe when i'm 80 i'll have saved enough to glue some popsicle sticks together and get one of those high tensile rubber bands and I can have a airship all of my own. hahaha

Flew out of Middletown, Ohio in the well known 172. Weather was great scattered cloud cover at 3500 feet. We did most of our flying around 2500 which was really around 2k due to the fields height above sea level. I guess I picked up a few things all these years flying various simulators. . .
I found the primary flight controls! winner It was a proud moment, until my instructor started asking me how I liked my eggs or something, goin on about the yoke. I guess he didnt have breakfast..... readytoeat

Thank you for hanging in there, and now that the terrible jokes are concluded, I'm happy to say it felt really quite natural. Rudder pedals for steering on the ground was sloppy but nothing extreme. Just experience and feel which comes with time. I almost likened it to driving a car for the first time only this is some 18 year later and I wasn't too concerned...surprisingly. I recall being quite nervous in the car all those years back.

Once we took off with a slight cross wind, we climbed up to 500 feet so we were then high enough and out of the way for the takoff / landing strip we came right and familiarized with the controls again now that we were happily bouncing along ascending to our cruising lesson altitude. Once explained and demonstrated I duplicated the instructed input/correction. My Instructor did do the great favor of setting the trim wheel for me to adjust the airflow for the elevator to allow a more stable platform for me to make my way with. Very kid glove stuff obviously, 20° Bank left or right/ maintain, level aircraft , maintain. I suppose it sounds rather blase' but I was having a blast. Kept it all bottled up and professional of course but It was great. Landing I'd have to say was the intimidating part. Just watching. He said I could assist him a little, which I think in reality meant i could gently place my hand on the yoke, ha. But really he gave me quite a bit of freedom and command of the aircraft for a good portion of the lesson which was a confidence boost for me.

The only down side Is now i'm really sold on following through which creates all kinds of new challenges like Sharing real flying time with the wife and my WOFF time, and the costs obviously. However It's something I know I've wanted since i was 5 years old, so off we go chaps!


On a final note I'm glad that Hun didnt snipe me from above. I kept checking the 6 for that Fokker DVII that always gets me in WOFF but he left me alone today winkngrin


RAF28Jenks
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RBWL 3 - 2002