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Just before my 12th birthday, my mom saw a small article, in the newspaper, that told about a program offering kids an opportunity to fly in a small plane. As I had always been interested in aircraft, my mom thought this might be something that I would enjoy and so she took me down to our local airport on the day of the event. My first experience flying was one I will never forget as I not only got to fly, but I did so in an open cockpit biplane. I was fairly certain, even before I took this first flight, that I wanted to learn to fly, but after 20 minutes of flying around in that old biplane, there was absolutely no doubt in my mind that flying was what I was born to do. |
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Ground & Flight School
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I am currently attending flight and ground school at Rogers Aviation, located at Flabob Airport, with Dave Rogers (in photo at left) as my flight and ground school instructor. My ground and flight instruction began on January 9, 2010 and if all goes as planned I will have successfully completed my instruction and will be ready to perform my solo flight by my 16th birthday, in July of 2010. The plane I fly, during flight instruction, is a Tecnam P92 Echo Super, Light Sport, which is provided by the Wathen Foundation. |
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Pre-Flight Checks
As soon as I arrive for my flight lesson, my flight instructor has me go out to the airplane and perform the pre-flight inspection. The pre-flight inspection is very important as it ensures that every aspect of the airplane is ready for flight.
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Take Off, Fly & Land
I am learning how much there really is to do before you even get the airplane off the ground, like taxing out and identifying correct runway, communicating on the radio and getting the plane’s controls set correctly for take-off. Once up in the air there is still the radio communications, making sure you are on the proper frequency, monitoring all the gauges and looking out for air traffic. Landing is even trickier, especially at Flabob Airport where we have a big mountain we need to stay away from. I will get it all down, but it is going to take lots and lots of practice.
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First Rain Flight
3/6/2010
My first time flying in the rain was great. My parents were nervous, at first, but then my dad realized that it was better to learn to fly in the rain, with an instructor in the plane, than to have my first rain experience when I was out on my own. I don’t think having the instructor in the plane mattered to my mom, she was nervous. It was a great flight, the air was smooth and pretty much like any other flight, just with a lot of clouds around. We had to cut the flight lesson a little short as the temperature was dropping and we were nearing fog conditions.
Landing on a wet runway is very different. I lined up on the runway real well and touched down, but my instructor had me leave the nose up to knock off air speed as we could not use the breaks real hard. My dad said it looked like my best landing so far (I landed on the right end of the runway for once he said). I think my mom stayed nervous until the plane was parked. My instructor was glad to get a rain flight in, he said they are pretty rare here in Southern California.
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Emergency Landing
3/15/2010
On my fifth flight my instructor told me we were going to practice emergence landings. Now if you’re a pilot and if you can remember when you had to learn about emergence landings you might recall you were suppose to fly 500 feet above the ground then power up and pull out, but my instructor told me we would be flying much closer to that ground than 500 feet. When I herd that I asked him why and he told me, because it gets me “friendly” with the ground so if I ever had to do an emergency landing I will not pause or think I’ll be unable to land safely.
After doing my pre-flight we were ready to go. When we were in the air, over Lake Mathews, my instructor said to me “I’ll take the controls and show you how to perform an emergency landing once, after that I want you to do it.” So, after my instructor did the practice emergence landing he had me line up with the same field. When he pulled the throttle back, I looked for a spot to land and spotted a nice flat green patch of land. I set the flaps to full and once I was lined up I performed a slip, because I was to high so when you do a slip it faces a bigger part of the body of the aircraft to the direction you are flying creating more drag to slow you down.
After I performed my first practice emergency landing I asked my instructor at what point in my training will I have to find my own field and practice emergency landings? Once I said that, my instructor pulled the throutol back then told me GO FOR IT. So I found a spot, nice and green and flat, and proceeded to practice my emergency landing. As I was lining up to my spot, my instructor asked me “Why are you going to land next to a bunch or rocks?”, to which I replied, “They are not rocks, they are sheep and that’s the only place I can land so I’m going to buzz right over them so they will move and so I can practice my emergency landing.”
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The Importance of Pre-Flight Inspections
3/29/2010
Many people don’t use a checklist, when they pre-flight their airplane, but I always do and here is why. Recently while doing my pre-flight inspection, on the Tecnam, I was walking checking the flap hinge, on the right wing, and I noticed a dark spot on the wing. When I looked closer I found that their were three rivets missing on the wing. I pointed this out to my flight instructor who told me it was on the rib of the wing and they came out because of stress.
As a result of me discovering the missing rivets, the aircraft was grounded for inspection and repairs. After contacting the airplane manufacturer, about the problem, they ended up having to remove the entire wing to make the necessary repairs. The Tecnam was down for several weeks, grounding me from my flying lessons but had I not discovered the missing rivets, things could have been a lot worse.
Shortly after the Tecnam was return to flight, I again discovered a problem, this time with the front landing gear, which again grounded the Tecnam for a short period of time.
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