First flights and ground school

Day 1:

Well, the day finally arrived and I arrived at the flight school to begin my first day of school. I'm still very excited thinking about it.
I got all the paperwork out of the way and proceeded to my first class where we touched on basic flight maneuvers, concepts of lift, instruments on the aircraft and over all basic info that would get me started in the great world of flight.
I learned some very interesting things on how lift is created (think vacuum) air pressure systems and how they effect the planes instruments and how the plane flies.

Once we finished class we went up in the plane. The wind was gusting from the west which would mean 270 degrees (have to learn my cardinal directions) which meant for a bumpy ride.
We practiced flying around a certain point in a circle while maintaining a fixed banking turn (turned out to be more like an oval due to the wind blowing so hard). We then practiced holding a traffic pattern and tried to stay on course in spite of the wind.
I learned about radio controls and how to communicate with the tower. Since I'm flying out of the Atlanta area which has one of if not the busiest airports in the world it helps to know how to communicate with everyone in a very busy sky. It's a little intimidating until you start understanding what it means, then it makes a whole lot of sense.


Day 2:

Today started out with more ground school at 8am in the morning (early for a Sunday). Different instructor this time around. We went over the next chapter in my book and went over the quiz which I got mostly right.
There's an immense amount of information to learn with all this and it's hard sometimes to keep up, but I'm getting there. I'm fairly exhausted (mentally) when my 4 hour session is done as there is an information barrage that I constantly have to organize, process and act upon. But it's going well and I'm having fun doing it.

Today we went over more instruments, basic load/weight characteristics of the aircraft and how it behaves in different types of situations depending on the load, bank and other factors.
lots of emphasis on taxiing the airplane and navigating through busy airports.
If anyone wants to get an idea of some coursework I'm doing right now, go to: http://flash.aopa.org/asf/runwaySafety/
This will give you a course and then run you through a test to see how you did. It's like learning all the road signs for driving without ever really having seen them before.... let me know how you do. :)

Anyway, the flying portion that day was much easier on my stomach or I'm getting used to it faster than I thought I would even though some of the flight maneuvers we did would have sent me hurling previously.

We tried some steeper turns, banks, and overall flight characteristics of the plane my. my instructor was very keen to show me how a plane can more or less fly itself once you have everything set right. He proved this by putting the plane into a vertical stall, yes, pretty much straight up until the plane lost air speed and started pointing down to the ground... kinda cool really. It felt like a roller coaster ride, just without the screaming people all around you. heh heh.
The point of this was to prove the plane would right itself, which it did after a series of bobbing up and down for a while. Think of it as a big wave that gets smaller every time it crests.

We did some climbing turns, descending turns, turning to cardinal bearings, more radio communication.

We found a few planes out there while we were flying around. One guy was performing aerobatics, hanging on the prop, spins, hammerheads, etc. Very cool to see from the same level or above. Needless to say, we stayed clear of him.

after almost 2 hours of flying around we headed back to the airport, radioed for landing clearance and began our approach to runway 27. Overall a great flight and a great experience. I'm looking forward to the next flight. Next class is Tuesday evening where I will most likely cover ground school. All the instruction so far has been 1 on 1 which has been great.

More to follow soon........