Well it was finally here, the day of my Discovery Flight. I slept fine the night before, with one exception, I sat up suddenly at 0200 thinking I had forgotten to set my alarm. I had made plans with CFI Bob to be at the Sumter Airport at 0800, which is about 50 minutes or so from Manning where I live. The thought that I was off duty today (federal holiday) meant I could have slept in, and maybe I forgot to set the alarm. After waking suddenly and finding out that the alarm was set, I went back to sleep. I did have to get up a little earlier than I anticipated, as I was picking up a good buddy who is also going to get his Private Pilot's License as well. Todd and I had worked together in a ministry at church and we didn't even know we each had the same desire of learning to fly.
Once I picked Todd up in Sumter we headed to the airport. I was an unusually chilly start for a South Carolina winter morning. CFI Bob had to go to Columbia, SC for a meeting laterin so we moved the original scheduled time of 1300 up to 0800. CFI Bob met Todd and we got into the ground educational portion of the Discovery Flight. Sumter Airport has a nice training room setup for their CFIs to use. We sat there for the next hour and a half talking about the "basics" of flight and discussing the AOPA curriculum that we would be using for the pilot training.
After the ground instruction we headed out to preflight the nice 180 h.p. 2001 Cessna 172 (N5001U). What a beauty of a bird to take lessons in. The preflight instruction went well, but there was still some significant frost on the leading edges and the windshield. The sun was working hard to break through the broken ceiling and CFI Bob suggested we might want to come back later in the day. We finished up with the preflight and the sun had now won the battle and was diligently melting away the frosted Cessna. Thanks to the friendly FBO staff at Sumter, Todd and I were able to borrow two pair of headsets for the flight.
CFI Bob taught us the instrument panel and checklists. We started up the Skyhawk and had a taxi lesson. Wow...difficulty #1, taxiing is no easy task. I probably looked like a drunk driver weaving down the taxiway. A few more checklists before taking off, which I was able to do...I took off from Sumter! We climbed out and practiced some straight and level flight, a few banks to fly headings and then returned back to Sumter Airport. CFI Bob made the landing but had me hold slightly on the yoke and pedals to "feel" what he was doing during the right hand pattern and landing.
YAY!!!! I'm now officially a student pilot, after years of reading about this stuff, it has finally come to a realization in actual flight. What an awesome day, one that I will not soon forget...Happy Birthday Dad!
No comments:
Post a Comment