Date & Time: Wednesday, 11th June, 1997, 17:30 CDT
Where: From SPX, local flight
Instruction: 0.9 hours (ground) 1.1 hours (air, 0.6 solo, 0.5 dual) - - Total 2.0 hrs. Running logbook total: 15.4 hrs, 0.6 hrs solo
Aircraft: Cessna 172, number N1219F
Dual Instruction with Lee Simmons, and some solo.

A Nice Day For It.
   If you were observant, you may have noticed something new about the header of today's session, in white, above...
   Today was the day! After 14.9 hours of dual, Lee got out of the aircraft. It wasn't wholly unanticipated...we got through with going over the pre-solo written before we took off, and my landings had been nice for a couple of sessions, so it was on the cards. However, realisation that it would be just me alone in the airplane in a few minutes finally dawned for real when Lee said "Make this one a full stop".
   It was a good day for it too. Apart from the visibility being only 10 miles or so,  the air was smooth, and there was only a gentle wind of about 3 knots which couldn't make up its mind whether to go crosswind or headwind favoring Runway 13. We started off by going around the pattern a couple of times for touch and goes. My landings were reasonable, but not quite greasers, and I was getting it on the centerline. There was only us in the pattern, and a Warrior with another  instructor and student who joined us at our second touch-and-go. As we were ready to turn for final for the full stop, I saw another aircraft rolling onto 13 to depart. I asked Lee if he thought he'd be off before we got there. "It's your call" he said, and as we rolled out on final it was quite clear he would be long gone before we got there, so I continued on. I kept an eye on him to make sure he was going to get going straight away, and he did, so we continued on to land. We had someone behind us too, so when we landed, we kept our speed up until our turn off... at which point Lee got out of the airplane!
   "Give me one full stop, come back to me and if everything's OK, go again for a touch and go and a full stop", Lee told me as he endorsed my medical. He closed the door, and I almost forgot to latch it shut! Once the doors were latched, I went off back to the 13 end. I did my clearing turn, and heard the Warrior call base. By the time I saw him, he was just turning final so I thought I'd let him do his touch and go rather than be pressured to clear the runway quickly. I rolled onto 13 whilst he was on his roll out, cleaning up for takeoff, and shut my window (it was hot and muggy!). As the Warrior climbed out...it was my runway! I firewalled the throttle, and ran down the runway, gathering speed. I could feel the airplane starting to get ready to fly, so I rotated, and then climbed out. I stole a brief glance at the empty right seat beside me as I rocketed into the air. Lee wasn't kidding when he said it would climb faster - it felt like a whole new airplane! I made my radio call as I turned crosswind, and the instructor in the Warrior asked me "This your first solo?". "Sure!" I replied, and he gave me congratulations! At least the other traffic knew that there was a first solo in the pattern now!
   Before I knew it I was at 1,000 feet (pattern altitude) - I was just turning downwind at this point. With Lee in the airplane, I was never at 1,000 this early. I got into a cruise configuration, with my head on a swivel looking for traffic. All of a sudden the radio was so busy I could hardly get a word in edgeways. Most of it was at LaPorte, with just myself and the Warrior still in the pattern. I was now abeam of the numbers. "Okay, power back, carb heat, trim" I said aloud to myself, and the airplane slowed. "Flaps, 10", and soon I was at 65 knots and beginning my descent. I did my turn to base, "Flaps 20..." then final. I was a little high, so I pulled the throttle to idle, and came in to land. My speed got a bit low - down to just over 60 - and I could hear Lee's voice from previous lessons - "put the nose down...keep holding 65", so I did, and held 65. The landing was pretty good - nearly a greaser, and on the centerline. I switched off carb heat, retracted the flaps and rolled onto the taxiway to see Lee. "How was it?" he said. "Great!" was all I could say at this point. "Well, give me a touch and go, then a full stop and we'll call it a night".
   So off I went again. This time I waited for a twin Cessna to land before taking off. I rolled onto the runway after he landed, and then once he was clear, I firewalled the throttle and took off again, to join the Warrior. The second time round was pretty much like the first, with a lot of LaPorte chatter on the radio. My landing this time was a bit of a bouncer, but at least it was on the centerline.
   On my final run round the pattern, it seemed as if the whole world wanted to join in. As I lifted off, a Piper of some sort called inbound, near the powerplant to the East of SPX, and a helicopter announced that it would be passing by us too. There was some other traffic announcing its intentions to join us as well - and of course, the Warrior was still out there. As I got partway through my downwind, the aircraft that was inbound announced that it was going to be number two behind us. He must have been quite a bit behind my airplane because I could no longer see him. The Warrior, in the meantime, was on final, and I couldn't find that helicopter! Just as I was about to ask the helicopter pilot where he was, he announced that he was clear of the area. After all that talk, I was abeam of the numbers, and it was time to slow down for landing again. I announced that I was beginning my turn to base as soon as I started the turn just in case the airplane behind had lost sight of me. Then as I turned for final, I made another "beginning turn" announcement for the same reason.
   Everything went well on the approach. I was lined up well, just correcting slightly here and there for the gentle wind. Then I made a greaser of a landing! I got the flare height down very nicely, and kept trying to keep the airplane level until the yoke was all the way back. The stall horn started just as the wheels touched the runway. I kept back on the yoke and soon I was rolling along the ground after hardly a bump on touchdown. That was a nice greaser! I picked Lee up at the taxiway, who complemented me on my first solo and a really nice landing at the end.
   I drove down the dirt track home with a great feeling this evening, with the windows rolled down taking in the moist air gently blowing across the pastures. I could see some of that traffic coming into land who had been announcing whilst I was taxiing in, and thought about next time...when I'd be let out of the pattern on my own, and down to the practise area!

Conclusion.
   I've done it! I thought the claims of how the airplane flies after the instructor has left would be exaggerated by people's excitement of the first solo. Not at all - it really makes quite a difference losing about 200lbs of instructor. I only weigh about 150lbs, so the airplane was carrying quite a bit less.

What I learned.
   Why the first solo is so memorable! It really is quite a feeling when you look right whilst checking for traffic and having an unobstructed view through the window.
   When all that traffic is buzzing around, keep calm, remember RAT (reference, altitude and traffic), keep your head on a swivel and if necessary ask people where they are. People have suggested that you form a mental picture of traffic which you see and hear on the radio in your mind - I did that tonight, and it helped me out as I went around the pattern.

Date & Time: Thursday, 12th June, 1997, 17:30 CDT
Where: From SPX, local flight
Instruction: 0.4 hours (ground) 1.3 hours (air, 0.7 solo, 0.6 dual) - - Total 1.7 hrs. Running logbook total: 16.7 hrs, 1.3 hrs solo
Aircraft: Cessna 172, number N1219F
Dual Instruction with Lee Simmons, and some solo.

Solo with a crosswind!
   We started the session with Lee in the right seat and me doing three touch and goes and 1 full stop (at which point, Lee got out again). Houston Hobby and Ellington Field's METARs were in agreement on the wind before I left - 190 at 09 knots. This favored 13, with the wind 60 degrees off to the right. However, once I got to SPX, the picture had changed a little. The winds had moved around more to about 170 degrees, giving a lesser crosswind component. Time to do some mild crosswind touch-and-goes in about 6 knots of crosswind component (it was difficult to tell, because the wind changed from 190 through to about 150 as the windsock flies). My touch and goes were reasonable (with one bouncer, which was not my best landing!) I looked at the changeable wind situation before I took off with a little trepidation - in our previous crosswind touch-and-goes, I would concentrate all on the flare at the end and forget about the drift. However, I wasn't like that tonight. I kept my feet and my left hand moving on the controls to keep me on the centerline. My last touch and go was a nice, smooth touchdown with the only fault being that I was slightly right of the centerline. For the final landing, Lee told me to treat the last taxiway turnoff as the touchdown point (ie the last third of our 5,000 foot runway). I got a bit pre-occupied with getting there (I had to drag it a bit), so although the touchdown was smooth, I was off the centerline to the left. It just goes to show that you can only make a great landing after getting a good setup on approach.
  As we pulled out to the airport lounge, Lee got out and told me to fly off to the practise area tonight. I had decided beforehand that since my groundschool class had just covered lost procedures using the VOR (ie you're "unsure of your position" (pilot speak for being lost) and you need to find where you are). I got my chart out ready, folded it and put it on the seat that Lee had just vacated. I folded it to show me the area I was in, which has 3 good VOR's to use - Trinity, Houston Hobby and Scholes (Galveston). I decided I would try some inbound tracking, and maybe try a FROM radial from Hobby as well. I taxied out, after waiting for another aircraft to clear the taxiway, did the usual clearing turn and radio call, and made a nice takeoff.
   I exited the pattern just as an aircraft was calling inbound from the powerplant. I kept a lookout for him, even though it was unlikely he would get near me. I just wanted to make sure he wasn't trying to enter the pattern by pointing at the numbers from 31 - my instructor had warned me that sometimes people will do this rather than the usual midfield entry. Shortly after, he announced his entry (using the water tower that gives a nice 45 degree midfield entry for 13), so I could relax a little.
   It wasn't long before I got to the practise area. Our practise area is over some empty pasture by Galveston Bay (with a useful pile of sand for doing turns around a point). To randomize my heading, I did a spiral down towards our pile of sand, then practised a turn around the point, and did a climbing turn back up to 2500 feet. First off, I'd try tracking inbound to the Trinity VOR. I checked the frequency on the chart to find it already tuned in. It's quite a job looking at the chart and for traffic at the same time! I turned the OBS knob to center the needle with a TO flag showing. After a little experimentation, I found the best way of looking outside for traffic and finding a radial was to slowly turn the OBS knob, whilst looking outside, and glancing at the needle to see if had moved, and home in on the radial. I got the radial set (I was on about the 60 degree radial), and turned around and intercepted it. I only followed it a little way since I didn't want too far from the practise area (or too far across Galveston Bay, for that matter). I then tuned Hobby's VOR in, pressed the button on the NAV radio to swap the frequencies, and used the same procedure to find what FROM radial I was on. I then tracked it for a couple of minutes.
   It was time to go home, since someone else had the airplane after me. I headed back up Highway 146 (a nice road that brings you home), made my usual radio announcements and the midfield 45-degree entry to the pattern. My landing was another really nice one - although a slight crosswind gust pushed me off course when I was about to flare, I got it back on the centerline. I ballooned a little bit in the flare, but took the right corrective actions and made a landing you could hardly feel! I also landed close to the numbers, and I could easily make the first turnoff from the runway, which was nice since someone was following me. The next person who had the airplane booked was just on his way to the ramp as I shut down, so that saved me having to tie up!
   Next time (or for the next 3 or so times), I will be doing the entire sesison solo. I think I'll do some more VOR work, this time using two VOR's to pinpoint my location. I haven't done much with the ADF yet, so I'll give the ADF receiver a try - unfortunately, I probably won't be able to track it for long enough to practise 'bracketing' procedures (ie tracking inbound and correcting for the wind using a 'trial and error' method for finding how much the wind is pushing you off course), but getting familiar with the way the receiver works will be helpful for future reference when I get onto the dual cross country stage. I'm sure I'll think of other things I can practise before Saturday, too. The plan is after I've done a few sessions on my own, I'll do some night dual, and then do the cross countries.

Conclusion.
   It sure does feel good to solo! Also, for some reason, my full stop landings have always been better than my touch and goes. I wonder why? Well, I'll do some touch and goes on my own next session and see if I can make those landings into really lovely touchdowns. However, people keep telling me that most of their landings aren't perfect...but as they say, nobody can reach perfection, but if you strive to reach perfection, you will attain excellence. Seems like a good goal to me!

What was learned.
   It's been a few sessions since I've flown with an appreciable wind, and it was interesting how the headwind component made my glideslope on final steeper (slower groundspeed with the same rate of descent). Each time I thought I was too high, it turned out that it was not so (on our dual touch and goes, on the first time around I had to drag it in because I was in fact too low - I didn't make that mistake on final again...until we were doing the landing at the third turnoff, where I had to add power to keep flying down the runway and not land before I wanted to). The lesson learned here is not to follow the procedure like a robot. It might only need 10 degrees of flaps to land instead of the 20 degrees I'd been using most of the time, or it might take a shorter final to make a good power off landing.
   Looking at charts and tuning radios and looking outside all at the same time is quite a job! Looking outside comes out at the highest priority - and you can get the radios and OBS knobs turned to the desired point by just glancing down every few seconds whilst you look for traffic. It's taught me one thing about charts - they can be a bit awkward to look at to read things like numbers, and if I was really lost, the pressure would surely be higher than my simulated lost excersise. So, for my cross countries, I'm going to make sure that even if I'm flying solely by pilotage and dead reckoning, I have a list of navaids I can tune to along with my visual checkpoints just in case I do get lost, so I can read the numbers from a more convenient source. Of course, I'll have the map on the right portion anyway, but anything that can speed up the process that you can do before you even start the engine has to help.

Date & Time: Saturday, 14th June, 1997, 14:30 CDT
Where: From SPX, local flight
Instruction: 1.0 hours solo. Running logbook total: 17.7 hrs, 2.3 hrs solo
Aircraft: Cessna 172, number N1219F

In the heat of the afternoon...
   I was originally scheduled for my first completely end-to-end solo for the morning, at 9 am. I looked outside before leaving, and it was a lovely looking day. The weather information for the area put the winds for 170 at 7 (Hobby and Ellington, with Galveston showing 190 at 6). I got to the airport. The winds were most certainly not 170 at 7 where I was standing! The windsock was going from a 45 degree crosswind over Runway 13 to a direct crosswind, with some fairly stiff gusts. I preflighted anyway, since Lee said he may be around, and besides, this wind might calm down. The wind did calm down eventually, but I only had 1/2 hour left on my booked slot by this time so I decided to call it quits. I went to the airport office to see when I could next fit myself onto the schedule, and was told the person who was going at 2:30 pm had cancelled. Well, that was a bit of luck! I put my name down in the newly vacated place.
   At 2:15, I got to the airport to find the previous person had just finished. It was hot! I preflighted, and had terrible trouble trying to figure out how much oil was in the hot engine. Hot weather and a hot engine conspired for me to have 3 or 4 goes at trying to find out how much oil was in the engine (oil was almost the complete length of the dipstick. I tried my usual automotive trick of wiping the dipstick clean and trying again, but it didn't seem to work). Eventually, I got a reading I could be certain of, but by this time I was really sweating - the weather reports I had looked at before leaving indicated a temperature of around 90 degrees F, and the OAT guage inside the 172 confirmed this.
   I made a nice, smooth takeoff. The winds had completely died, and surprisingly, the turbulence wasn't too bad today (normally this heat gives the sort of air that makes you work). My first priority was to cool off, so I went directly to the practise area and got some altitude. Whilst I cooled off, I tried using the VOR's to pinpoint my position, using the two NAV radios the 172 comes equipped with. It's not very hard to do, and it could prove very useful on my upcoming cross-country flights...
   I had by now cooled off, so I went to do some touch and goes. The first couple were pretty nice landings, but I was high and had to use full flaps to touch down at the point I desired. I noticed the wind was starting again, but was nothing to worry about - it just needed a little work to keep it on the centerline. The next one I bounced a little - a gust caught me a little by surprise during my flare, but it wasn't too bad. The next time I came around, I had a really good approach set up. The power was back to idle, I had 20 degrees of flaps, and I was going right for the numbers. However, then my glide path seemed to steepen a little. I added a little power to reduce my sink rate, and I was back on track. Somebody was waiting in the runup area, and was intending to depart after my touch and go. I thought to myself, "This will look nice for the guy on the ground watching me" and concentrated on getting the flare just right. But the Lady of Fate was to have nothing of it. All of a sudden, a gust pushed me off the centerline and the airplane yawed. I tried to correct, but I was too late, and was headed off the centerline, and towards the grass! I was just around the point of flaring at this time, but I broke it off and immediately firewalled the throttle and pushed the carb heat in. As my airspeed gained in my go-around, I retracted the 20 degrees of flaps. At least I managed to track the centerline in what had now become a low pass!
   My remaining three landings were so-so: not bad, but not amazing either. One was off the centerline, and I did some minor bouncing on the last two. At least I was going straight.

Conclusion.
   It was a great feeling to solo again. Even in this heat! I'm itching to start some cross country work - next time I do some dual will be some night flight - away from the practise area and the pattern which will be good. I'll probably do this some time the week after next.

What was learned.
   I learned quite a lot today - I made my first 'no-go' solo descision in the morning, and I learned that I have the ability to bury my pride and go around with another pilot watching. I feel much more comfortable now I know good judgement prevailed in two instances today. Before I soloed I made a resolution that if anything didn't look or feel right even if it was only gut feeling, I'd go around. I don't want to become another NTSB statistic! I've read plenty about what happens to pilots who try to rescue botched landings rather than go around, or go around far too late when the wheels were quite firmly staying on the ground. 
   I know what was wrong with my bouncy landings - I'm not reacting quickly and smoothly enough to gusts. I can remember the bottom falling out in the flare, but not moving the controls until the bounce. I'll have to cure that one - although the bounces were never hard today, I cursed myself for becoming a bit of a passenger whenever it happened.
   Oh yes - never try to impress people who are waiting in the run-up area: you'll end up going around or bouncing as soon as you try too hard to do a greaser in front of someone else! ;-)