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My First Month As A Student Pilot 2010-03-18
Week 1 Monday: Rain. Tuesday: Rain. Wednesday: No rain; no visibility either. Thursday: Take instructor to lunch. Discover I don't know enough to take instructor to lunch. Friday: FLY! Do first stall and second stall during same maneuver, cover instructor with lunch. Week 2 Monday: Learned not to scrape frost off plexiglass with ice-scraper. Used big scratches on windshield as marker to set pitch. Tuesday: Instructor wants me to stop calling throttle, "THAT BIG KNOB THING." Also, hates it when I call instruments 'GADGETS'. Wednesday: Radios won't pick up radio stations, so I turn them off. Instructor seems to think I missed something during the introductory flight. Thursday: Learned 10 degree bank is not a steep turn. Did stall again today. Lost 2000 feet. Instructor said that was some kind of record. -My first complement. Friday: Did steep turn. Instructor said I was ready for inverted flight, yet. Week 3 Monday: Instructor called in sick. New instructor told me to stop calling her "BABE" Did steep turns. She said I have to have permission for inverted flight. Tuesday: Instructor back. He told me to stop calling him "BABE", too. He got mad when I pulled power back on takeoff because the engine was too loud. Wednesday: Instructor said after the first 20 hours, most students have established a learning curve. He said it seemed there was only a slight bend in mine. Ah-ha!...progress! Thursday: Did stalls. Clean recovery. Instructor said I did good job. Also did turns around a point. Instructor warned me never to pick ex-fiancee's house as point again. Friday: Did pattern work. Instructor said that if downwind, base, and final formed a triangle, I would be perfect. More praise! Week 4 Monday: First landing at controlled field. Did fine until I told the captain in the 747 ahead of us on taxiway to move his bird. Instructor says we'll have ground school all this week on radio procedures. Tuesday: asked instructor if everyone in his family had turned gray at such an early age. He smiled. We did takeoff stalls. He says I did just fine but to wait until we reach altitude next time. C-150 will be out of shop in three days when the new nose-strut and tire arrive. Instructor says his back bothers him only a little. Wednesday: Flew through clouds. I thought those radio towers were a lot lower. I'm sure my instructor is going gray. Thursday: Left flaps down for entire flight. Instructor asked why. I told him I wanted the extra lift as a safety margin. More ground school. Friday: Asked instructor when I could solo. He laughed till he cried. What was so funny? Comment		External Links  Recent articles Dealing with Delays One of the advantages of learning to fly in the fall is the greater probability of weather delays A pilot learns to live with and accept delays of any kind... 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