March 6, 2008 - First flight with ATP

First flight.
Originally uploaded by jacksonwages

Today I got to the school at about 8:00am. One of our instructors was off for today because he has another job that he has to do, the other doesn't come in until a little later, so we decided to just study from our materials. I seem to be getting really good with the wind direction/speed vs ground speed & heading. BUT... I'm still having trouble with the weather.

Anyway, at about 3:00 this afternoon, we finally got an airplane AND an instuctor... the other guys elected to let me go up first. So, I went out with our instructor and did about a 15 minute preflight. Then we wre ready to go, but, the right side mic button was not working, so the instructor was unable to communicate on the radios. That left me having to do all of the radio work. That was ok, I just didn't know what to say, so he worked me through it and we managed to take off after about 15 more minutes of trying to get his to work.

So we taxi down to runway 14 and take off right behind Ben (another ATP student on his cross country phase). We then head to our practice area. Dave has pretty much allowed me to have the controls the entire time, with the exception of one time when I tried to bank the plane a little bit too steep for his liking, during climbout. Then, because it is my first ATP flight, he pretty much just shows me the edges of the practice field area. We then do a few simple maneuvers. We did some climbs, decents, s-turns, and a turn around a point. Then, because the visibility was only about 10 miles, and we were probably about 15-20 away from the airport we used the PFN VOR to find our way back to the airport. We did a full stop landing, taxied back around to one-four and took off again, this time, remaining in pattern. We came back around and landed again, this time we took it all the way back to SheltAir (the place where the school is located).

All-in-all, I'm satisfied with the day. I logged 1.5 hours, and I learned a TON about the way the airplane functions, and radio communications.

WOOT!