First solo surprise?

Lack of flying activity combined with ‘my’ Cherokee being grounded for quite some time resulted myself being out of solo endorsement. Last time I got introduced to our club’s Cessna C-172 and now it was a time to train this puppy to play as I wish. Weather was cooperating (steady but not too strong wind almost directly down the runway) so after careful preflight off we went.

There isn’t really much to say as there wasn’t much going on. It was all pattern work. After first three tries that were more or less bad (although all were salvageable) I finally started to feel this bird similarly to how I felt the Cherokee. following five approaches and landings were good. I think there was even one greaser. Slowly but surely I started to think that there is slight chance that I may solo this one maybe on the very next lesson. But just as we took off after 8th touch Terry said:

‘OK lets do the emergency landing next time’

That was a surprise to me. In my book ‘let’s do the emergency approach’ means ‘you’re ready to solo, we just need to check off all items on the list’. And while last time it was ‘Oh come on, let’s solo this thing’, thins time it was a real surprise – already? Are you sure?. So we did too emergency approaches, both quite good although I had to use one notch of flaps on the very end of it. Then Terry asked to drop him of and give him three take offs and landing. Here it was – I soloed C-172 just below 2h. I actually started to believe a little bit that I can fly and that sometime in the future I’ll be a real pilot.

Solo patterns were uneventful. I had slight problem with counting which resulted in making four of them just to make sure. Then I parked the airplane and Terry endorsed my logbook. I’m good to fly solo for next 90 days. Strange (in a good way) feeling indeed. See you next time.

1.2h/0.0h inst : 14 to/ldg logged
31.6h/0.8h inst : 180 to/ldg total