Anticipation and anxiety were running high as I realized today might be the day I would solo. After all, my instructor had told me I’d been making very good landings for quite some time and that mornings usually provided the best wind conditions for first solo flights.
After a couple good landings and some brief discussion, my instructor said, “I have the airplane.” I responded as I had been taught to do with “You have the airplane.” (When there are two pilots in the cockpit, it should always be clear to both of them which one is handling the flight controls.) We landed and my flight instructor pulled the airplane off the runway and onto a taxiway, where he got out. A wave of panic initially swept through me, but I knew this was something I absolutely had to do for reasons I would not have been able to articulate at the time.
I carefully checked my gauges, made a clearing 360 degree turn at the end of the runway to look for other traffic, and then announced my departure from the uncontrolled airport. It was hard to tell which sounded the loudest – the thumping of my heart or the airplane engine. I advanced the throttle, making a flawless takeoff, and began my climbout.
My flight instructor had warned me that the airplane would virtually leap off the ground without his 220 pounds onboard and he was right. The airplane became airborne very quickly.
While climbing to a pattern altitude of 800 feet AGL (above ground level), I kept myself busy looking for other traffic. Not until I reached pattern altitude and trimmed the airplane for level flight did it really sink in that I was the only occupant of the aircraft. Fear momentarily washed over me, but it vanished just as quickly as it had come, as I realized making a safe landing would be entirely up to me.
After reaching pattern altitude, I lowered the nose of the airplane, reduced power, and adjusted the elevator trim tab, which lessened the amount of pressure I had to exert on the control yoke. I then made a right turn to crosswind and then to downwind using a standard rectangular traffic pattern. When I was adjacent to the end of the landing runway, I reduced power and added the first 10 degrees of flaps as I’d been taught. A few seconds later, I turned onto base leg, added another “notch” of flaps, and adjusted the trim tab. Things were looking good. As I rolled out on final approach, I added another 10 degrees of flaps. Everything still looked good. Then I heard my flight instructor’s voice even though he wasn’t in the airplane. “Don’t add the last 10 degrees of flaps until you know you have the landing field made.” Did I have it made? Yep. Down came the last 10 degrees of flaps and I touched down right “on the numbers” at the threshold of Runway 31 at Gnoss Field in Novato, California, after a little more than 11 hours of flight training.
My first landing was a little rough, but it put a grin on my face. My second landing was smoother and my grin grew broader. By the third and final landing, I was smiling so broadly that my face actually hurt. It was during the third landing that I felt something inside of me shift gears and I intuitively knew my life would never be the same after this solo flight.
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