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Flying Lesson 2
Following my first lesson I had a solid week to think about it. All I knew was I couldn't wait to get back in the plane. I arrived promptly for my appointment and we headed out to the plane for the pre-flight inspection. He basically did the inspection, I more or less watched as best I could. The plane needed to be inspected from the exterior in a counter-clockwise fashion. My instructor tried to explain as he went through the motions. We proceeded to get into the plane and he showed me a small manual that is kept in the plane with an ordered checklist of the steps required before flight. We went through them step by step, started the airplane, and prepared to take off.
We had a pretty noticable crosswind judging by the flag blowing out near the runway. I received my instructions and then taxied the plane for the first time to our staging point near the start of the runway. The two pedals on the floor have two uses, the tops of th epedal operated the individual wheel brakes for control while taxiing, and the bottoms of the pedals are the rutter controls. Using the brakes to control the plane as we headed out to the runway took a bit of getting used to, but I actually felt like I was already improving by the time I had reached our temporary destination. After a pause and some more checks, we entered the runway, I centered the plane on the white line and we accelerated. With all my focus on getting the plane straight on the runway, I briefly lost sight of the fact that we were taking off, it happened so fast. This was my first takeoff and it felt great. Once at about 3000 ft we began to practice some turns into the wind using a straight stretch of our local highway as a guide. This was pretty intense, some turns went well, others did not. The crosswind actually made these maneuvers a little tricky for me.
We also performed two stalls. I had mentioned the stall before we went up and I told the instructor that it sounded pretty intimidating. He assured me that stalling the aircraft was not as intense as I was making it seem. We climbed to 4000 feet and he demonstrated a stall. He then had me perform a stall. I guess I had jumped the gun a little bit and I was relieved once I had been through them. It really wasn't scary in a way that I was expecting, as a matter of fact it was just more fun and excitement.
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We then began our return to the airport, landed, took off again and landed again. This was a very intense lesson to say the least. A whole lot of information combined with a whole lot of maneuvering. It left me craving my next lesson. I tried to schedule a lesson for two days later but his schedule wouldn't allow it. I will return to the airport to continue my adventure in seven days instead. I guess it was better to digest all the info I had just received.
By the way, I taxied the plane to the fuel pump, parked it, and shut it down before departing for the day to my humble abode.
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