Flying Solo

On Monday I flew my first solo flight in Goodyear! After a lesson of circuits with my instructor, he deemed that I was ready to go, and so I fired the plane up and took it around a single circuit on my own. Once back on the ground, I was duly led to the swimming pool and thrown in by my classmates as is the tradition here at OAA! It was a great  experience, and now all of my course have flown solo, so we can really begin to make some progress. Most days we will be flying 2 flights, one dual with our instructor and one solo.

Tuesday was a lesson of circuits with my instructor, and then one hour of solo circuits, all in preparation for my first Progress Test which was on Wednesday. I was really nervous before hand as I wasn’t sure what to expect flying with a different instructor, but everything went really well and I managed to score a 2. The scores are based on 3 being average, above 3 better than average, and below 3 worse. So overall, I was thrilled with a 2 as only a few people on my course scored that well.

I also had a lesson with my instructor this morning, flying a few of the departure and arrival procedures out of Goodyear, and practising some forced landings in the desert. This is officially the start of my navigation lessons, which means we will start flying around using charts etc. I also have a couple of solo lessons in the circuit to complete before I start flying solo navigation lessons, which sound a bit daunting!

It has been a relatively quiet week, most of our trips out have either been to a restaurant or for food shopping. The weather at the moment is pretty interesting, it is quite humid and the monsoon season seems to be coming closer. The last couple of days have been dominated by cumulonimbus clouds, and we have experienced a couple of thunder storms and some rain today. The CB clouds here grow to huge heights, about 45000ft quite often. They also tend not to move much but stay static and just grow and grow, and last night we were treated to lightning  like I have never seen before. Also, the new course arrived from Oxford on Monday, so we are not the new kids any more. It’s nice to see some old faces again, though it’s hard to believe we have been here nearly 6 weeks already.