Cleared direct Gateway.

The day didn’t start off very well. We had to iron out a few maintenance issues before we could fly. I ended up not getting as much practice in as I intended. But I felt more confident than I had on Tuesday. I taxiied in with my instructor and did a quick swap for the chief instructor. The flight could not have gone smoother. I executed the pattern perfectly. And all except my first landing were within a foot or two of the centerline. After the third landing, he hopped out, and I was off on my own!

I SOLOED!!!! Wow what an awesome feeling! 3 quick laps around the pattern and I was back on the ground getting my shirt cut. The high didn’t hit me while I was in the air but later on while I was driving home. I went home for a bit, ate lunch and took a shower then went back to the airport.

 

When I got back my instructor and I planned out my first VFR cross country flight to Pinal Airpark (KMZJ). I stumbled upon Pinal about 5 and a half years ago when I came out to Arizona to look at colleges. Pinal is a giant graveyard for old airliners. I could not get close to the airport from the car so I always wanted to fly into there. So you can imagine how happy I was when I was informed we would be flying there. My instructor grabbed the controls so I could grab a few pictures which I will post later.

Our intention was to land back at IWA, wait for the sun to set and do a night flight to Tucson (KTUS), come back and do some night landings. But I was beat, my instructor was feeling sick, and the weather did not look like it was going to cooperate. So we canned the flight. I went home and enjoyed 11 hours of sleep.

This entry was posted on Friday, July 27th, 2007 at 10:33 am and is filed under 60-Day PPL. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.