My first flight lesson.

[Wingtipvortex]

Well, it's been a while since I finished my ground school. It had always been my idea that I would rather finish that first before I started flying because I have harder times with "book-stuff" than "doing-stuff".

That was a couple months ago now and since then I had stalled ('cuse the pun) partly because I was planning to take a week vacation and I did not want to spend the money.

Instead, at the end of my trip down at Hilton Head SC, I had some money left over, so I took my first flight lesson down there. And boy was it beautiful!!

It was a mild and beautiful day, and we took off from the local airport in a Cherokee 160. We did some basic introductory stuff, like standard rate turns, climbs and descents, maintaining altitude, etc. I believe it really helped that I had done a ground course because most of what my instructor talked about was familiar.

Now I am back in my neighborhood in Northern VA and I have another lesson set up for this sunday. I am freshly motivated by that beautiful first flight in SC and plan to (this time) take regular lessons until I get my PPL, hopefully in a little more than a year.

I have a picture I want to attach but don't know how to do it. It asks for a URL address which I have no clue what that that is and the conventional attachment only allows 100KB. My picures about ten times that.

Any computer savvy pilots here that can tell me how to do it?

[ThrashN]

Originally Posted by Wingtipvortex

Well, it's been a while since I finished my ground school. It had always been my idea that I would rather finish that first before I started flying because I have harder times with "book-stuff" than "doing-stuff".

That was a couple months ago now and since then I had stalled ('cuse the pun) partly because I was planning to take a week vacation and I did not want to spend the money.

Instead, at the end of my trip down at Hilton Head SC, I had some money left over, so I took my first flight lesson down there. And boy was it beautiful!!

It was a mild and beautiful day, and we took off from the local airport in a Cherokee 160. We did some basic introductory stuff, like standard rate turns, climbs and descents, maintaining altitude, etc. I believe it really helped that I had done a ground course because most of what my instructor talked about was familiar.

Now I am back in my neighborhood in Northern VA and I have another lesson set up for this sunday. I am freshly motivated by that beautiful first flight in SC and plan to (this time) take regular lessons until I get my PPL, hopefully in a little more than a year.

I have a picture I want to attach but don't know how to do it. It asks for a URL address which I have no clue what that that is and the conventional attachment only allows 100KB. My picures about ten times that.

Any computer savvy pilots here that can tell me how to do it?

I just started my flight lessons also (2.6 hours of flight time) and I'm having a blast.

To post pics you need to host them somewhere, www.photobucket.com is what I use. Create a account and upload your pics. Your pics will have a URL under them, copy this and when you post a message use the image button (it's the yellow button 4th from left to right) and paste the URL that you copied.

[Wingtipvortex]

Thanks will give it a try.

[Wingtipvortex]

Actually, they're only shots on the ground, since my girlfriend the cameraman, er, camera person, did not want to stick around to watch me take off or land.

I hope I got this right, here goes.

This one is a shot next to our training plane while my instructor did some preparation. I look like....and felt like at the time....some overgrown kid with a big toy.

Image of Preping the aircraft. - Photobucket - Video and Image Hosting

Then it got all serious when my instuctor started the preflight. This shot was taken when he was explaining to me about the airplane preflight check.

Image of Preflight. - Photobucket - Video and Image Hosting

This one was after we landed, taxied to the hangar (It was the last flight of the day) and my instructor had already exited the plane to open the hangar door and fetch the tow hook. You can see that I didn't really want to get out of the plane.

Image of Still in awe after the flight! - Photobucket - Video and Image Hosting

Well that's all I am showing. I plan to take (or have taken for me) more pictures as I progress toward my PPL, and I will be sure to post them here periodically.

Thanks ThrashN.

[ThrashN]

You've almost got it.

Copy the direct link info (to the right of the photo)

Click this button Paste the info you copied from photobucket

and you'll get this



Nice plane

[Wingtipvortex]

This was the part of learning to fly that I would not have minded if my instructor waited until I was a little more experienced, but nevertheless it was fun once I got used to it.

We did not have time to do power on stalls so that is for next flight. We did power off stalls instead and this is supposed to give me practice in anticipating and dealing with stalls in the landing/approach configuration. There was not much to it if you follow instructions. The trick is to work the rudder and controls to keep the nose pointed to a constant heading. (Not very nice to change directions on approach. You can't land on a control tower...)

The spin practice is called "Spin awareness training" and I was told that a decade ago most instructors made you go through a fully developed spin (2-3 revolutions) but since then it has become normal to practice only the start of a spin, since for a PPL it is only important to know how it starts so you can AVOID IT ALL TOGETHER!! LOL.

Well the first spin was a little hairy because it DROPPED and my body just didn't know what to expect. Kind of like when you get to the top of a roller coaster and you take that first fall. But it only took that one and I actually got hooked on that feeling. My CFI is actually of the school of thought that everyone should practice spins so he told me we will do more developed spins some other time. Well that's about it here is a pic from the cockpit. Thanks again to ThrashN for showing me how to post pics.

[ThrashN]

I did stalls my last lesson. I was not looking forward to it, but I had a lot of fun with that lesson. I don't know if we'll do spins or not, I guess I'll see what we do this week.

[Flyboy1]

Im a student pilot with just over 20 hours in the plane. Did you do spins or just the incipient spin? I think they are some of the funnest parts of flying. I love that gut feeling you get.