Saturday May 11th and finally the weather lifted. I drove out to Stapleford for 4 and met with my instructor Sue. She's been flying for over 15 years first as a hobby then as an instructor. We had a brief chat about the main controls and what they do - helpfully x-plane and the ground school work I'd already put in gave me a bit of a head start - then headed over to G-BOOI or (Golf Bravo Oscar Oscar India as I am getting to know her by).
First up was refuelling as she was a bit parched and after getting out of Lord Sugar's way in his very nice SR-22 we were ready to taxy. Pre takeoff vital checks done, we taxied onto 04L, Sue gave it full throttle, and 8-10 seconds later at 65 knots she eased the yoke back and up we went.
The idea of the first lesson was really just to get a feel for the controls note how different movements affect multiple things, getting used to scanning the outside of the plane rather than staring at the instruments. In fact believe it or not, once you have it trimmed for level flight you can pretty much let go of everything and it will fly where you point it (wind permitting)!
The hour seemed to go by far quicker and after a brief change of heading to avoid meting the Easyjet flight into Southend - we would definitely have come off worse - we turned back for home.
I flew most of the "circuit" that is the airspace immediately above the airfield, with my instructor just taking the controls for the landing.
End result = big grin on face and aching to go up again.
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