Flyin' and Cogitatin'

So, I've been feeling some frustration with the process of learning to fly. While C. is a nice guy, I'm not entirely sure he is a good match for me. I'm a geek -- if I'm screwing something up, I need a complete explanation of what is going on, how the system works, and what I need to do to work the system. I'm not so good at the "just do this, and this will happen" stuff, especially since the "this" will change on different planes...

I've been feeling like I'm not making as much progress as I'd like, and I'm always "behind" the plane -- that is, something happens and I scramble to fix it, rather than anticipating the problem and fixing it before it can get very noticeable. I talked to the head of the flight school about it -- he suggested that maybe I take a quick flight with him and see what I could see.

It turned out to be a really fun experience. J. was considerably more relaxed, and it turned out that I had actually learned something -- I was able to do my radio calls, get on the runway (even though we were taking off on a different runway from usual), and fly out to the practice area with not much help. We did the regular turns and climbs and descents and a power on and power off stall.

Then we actually did something new -- whoa! We spiraled down and did S-turns above a road and turns about a point. I was delighted with this stuff, but then we actually went back and did a series of touch and goes on the runway, landing and taking off again. Woo hoo! My head was buzzing! This was just great.

Then I took another lesson with C. We talked a bit about ground reference maneuvers, and then went up and repeated the S-turns and turns about a point and did some squared off turns. It was great to be doing something new. Hopefully this'll carry over into future lessons, and I'll actually get something going!