Flying Lesson #3 - Getting Up And Around The Point

Lesson 3 started off a little differently.

Again I did the pre-flight completely on my own, with no test at the end this time. I'm reasonably sure he was still watching me though.

The lesson started off differently as two others piled into the back of the plane.

We were taking an instructor and his student to Troy airport, KVLL, to pickup another plane.

So I did the engine start checklist and got the plane started and ready, Then I handled the radio to call ground to taxi, and then taxied to the run up area and did the take-off checklist. I still need a lot of work on taxiing, but at least I remembered not to try to steer with the wheel this time and just to use the pedals.

I called the tower and we were told to hold, which I acknowledged.

Then we got clearance to enter the runway and did a takeoff to the southeast. It was a pretty decent takeoff if I do say so myself.

I flew us to the airport and Sean talked me through observing it and then entering the pattern, on the downwind, as he did the radio calls for a pilot controlled airport, then he handled the base and final turns and the landing.

We dropped off our passengers and I handled the engine start, taxi and takeoff. I still need work on the taxi, but the takeoff was happily quite smooth and was better than my previous 2 so there's progress.

Then Sean demonstrated how to do a turn around a point and I practiced that and did pretty well.

Then he demonstrated S-turns across a road, or in our case electrical power pylons. This was a fair bit more difficult than going around a point and I'm going to need a lot more work on that, especially in picking out spots and knowing where the wind is coming from.

I certainly got a lot of banking practice in, but need more. You can bank on that.

Then we flew back to the airport and I handled the radios and we ended up getting another straight in approach on runway 27R.

That's 1.8 more hours of flight time.