Looking To The Sky

Instructor Changes

Yesterday, I had my first flight with my new instructor who replaced my first instructor, James, who had to go back home to England for knee surgery.

James will be someone I continue to talk with about flying and life in general. He has been a great instructor and friend. I wish him the best as he gets his knee fixed and spends a few months back home recuperating.

With the loss of James brings new opportunities and teachings from my new instructor, Rick Payne. Though he comes across a bit as a strict instructor, it is just due to the fact that he wants pilots to be safe and have a great understanding of the planes people are flying and the skies they’re flown in.

Rick has been flying for a few years, and just recently became a CFI.  In this time he has trained in both helicopters and airplanes.  I truly believe that he will bring a lot to my training.  Though only flying for a few years, he certainly has the know how and skills of a seasoned pilot.

Our initial flight together was really more to see if we were going to be able to fly together.  It’s a good idea to know whether a student and instructor will be able to work together and through our first flight we could both tell that it would be a great time.

We flew from Twin Oaks and headed south of Aurora State around the St. Paul area to do some practice flying (this area is considered the South Practice Area).  I flew up to around 2700ft and I did some maneuvers so he could see where I was at.  I was happy that he was appreciative and impressed with my control of the plane.  I flew some 360 degree turns in each direction at a 30 degree bank.  Both of these turns went very smooth along with me keeping my altitude throughout.

Since it was a short flight, I took off flying us back to Twin Oaks and getting into the pattern.  I hadn’t flown 734KU for sometime and I could tell unlike 2108Y, KU wanted to stay in the air a lot more.  KU also was more powerful and had electric flaps.  Both of which threw off my control of the plane when coming into land. I ended up doing a go-around the first run and the second I was going too quick so he ended up landing.  He showed me a couple tricks too when coming in too fast.  Decreasing the power and slowing down by raising the nose of the plane to keep my altitude, but slowing down as well.

After landing we did some talking about how it went and what we’re going to be doing next.  Overall it was a great initial lesson with a new instructor and I look forward to flying with him some more.

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Before flying today as we waited for 734KU, Rick and I heard one odd sounding plane coming into Twin Oaks and taking off.  Along with these I took some pictures of some aircrafts.

Logs:

Flight Time: 0.8 Hours
Ground Time: 0.5
Landings: 1

Categories: Private Pilot Completion

Tags: Cessna 172, flying, James, K7S3, Maneuvers, N734KU, Rick, Training, VFR

Cancelled Flight Above The Clouds