First solo flight completed

Hi y'all

Yep, I have made that first important milestone, my first solo and I feel great. It hasn't really sunk in yet. I am just going to add the good news to this blog and then go out for a celebratory meal. Pic at the end of this blog.

My morning was more relaxed than usual with my first lesson at 9am. I looked at the Metar and Taf for Naples on a website :-

http://gc.kls2.com/airport/KAPF

I also noticed that it gave the most distant airport and this was at Monkey Mia in Western Australia at 11,492 miles away. I only mention this because I was on holiday there almost a year ago to the day. Do go there if you get a chance. It is a beautiful natural area and you can snorkel on the fantastic beaches amongst dolphins. You just need to keep out of their way if they are chasing up and down the beach at 30 mph looking for Butterfish. I digress, as I meant to give you some info on things your mum might want to know (mine did).

These relate to The Wellesley Inn :-

Yes mum, they do change the sheets every day.

Yes mum, they do change the towels every day.

The breakfast area looks like this

An interesting colour scheme don't you think ?

The pool area


You can cycle all the way from The Wellesley to NAC on the pavement (sidewalk).

At NAC, Bea and Nikki (I must get a photo) worry about you and look after your welfare.

And lastly, yes mum I will take care.

Anyway after my breakfast I cycled flat out jumping the traffic lights along the way to get to NAC on time. The weather was good with sunshine and light winds with less of the chill. Once I had checked the weather and the aircraft we were off for touch and go's, flapless landings, glide approaches, and go arounds. We were using runway 05 and the light winds helped so that everything went well. Nikki got the tower to send some light signals when we were on final so that I could see how clear they were. The de-brief was short because I had apparently ticked all the boxes and at 1pm in my next lesson, after a couple of touch and go's it would be time for my first solo !!!!!. Nikki signed up my logbook (it is now 28.5 hours) and it turned out that my CAA medical was not endorsed to the FAA requirements so I walked across to the doctor over the road and got my student medical and paid over my 80 dollars. I took the paperwork back to Nikki so everything was now in order. With an hour and three quarters to kill I walked over to the nearby GA terminal building and into the vending machine area. The only choice of food that could be heated was 'BIG AZ BubbaTwins Chili Cheese Dogs' I had to think if I really wanted this but what the heck 'when in Rome'(well Naples actually). I parted with my $2.25 and heated it in the microwave. It tasted odd and sweet, and the list of ingredients is scary.

I got a diet pepsi from another machine and sat by the window looking at the jets using the GA terminal. I won't say anymore about the hot dogs so here is a picture of the view out of the window.

If you fly to Naples the procedure is to take your Lear jet (is this one ?) to within 100 feet of the terminal. Once parked, a man puts chocks both side of the nosewheel and a nice piece of carpet on the ground. Your stretched limo drives up to your aircraft and you walk down the steps, into the car and off you go.

Feeling sick from either the hot dogs or anticipation I went back to the school and checked the weather. It was a crosswind at 8 kts. I walked out to check over the aircraft as Nikki returned with another student. She said it was a bit bumpy up there and the wind was gusting so to delay my flight until 5pm.
Oh well, only another 4 hours to go. At least the weather is likely to improve and I am not waiting for days.
I cycle back to the hotel and catch up on some paperwork and email and phone my wife.
I used up some of the time drafting the first part of this post.

I got to NAC for 4:30pm and checked the weather and it was good but the wind had changed around and my circuits would be in a direction that I had only practiced once. I checked out the aircraft and then waited for Nikki to finish with another student. Finally we went to the aircraft and carried out more checks. Luckily the weather had changed again and I was back on runway 05 and would be landing with the fast setting sun behind me. At 5:15pm we went off and did a couple of touch and go's. They were interesting because my door turned out to be not properly closed and there was other traffic joining for landing. We had to do 1 left hand circuit and then the normal right hand. After landing we taxied back to the NAC ramp and I got some final instructions and good wishes from Nikki. Then it was the long taxi to runway 05. Suddenly I felt awfully alone in the cockpit and I knew I would not be getting some of Nikki's body language hints that I ought to be doing something. It was all down to me and the training now. During the power checks I had a problem with one of the magnetos. I had experienced this once before earlier in the week so I used the cleaning procedure. It worked thankfully as having to go back at this point would have been a downer. On the other hand there was no way I was going to takeoff with something not right.
I got takeoff clearance and was away. My ciruit positioning was mainly OK but downwind I had the sun straight in my face and it was difficult to see some instruments. At mid field downwind I was not getting landing clearance and having to lookout straight into the sun for landing traffic. So my approaches were all a bit high but once on final I knew exactlty what to do to correct the problem and all three landings were good.
I departed on the runway on A2 and got a 'good work' call from the tower. I did my after landing checks and called up Naples Ground and got conditional clearance to taxi back where I was requested to go to a certain point and pull over to the right and let another aircraft pass from the opposite direction. A little while later I was back at the ramp and Nikki was waiting and took some pictures. I was so happy to have done it.


After tidying up the aircraft it was back to the front desk where I got congratulations and shakes of my rather sweaty hand. Nikki needed to see another student for a while so I had time to cool down and have a drink of cold water. Then it was the shirt cutting ceremony (ah That's why I had been told to wear on old shirt) and more pictures followed by the de-brief and completing my log book.


I left NAC at 7pm to cycle back to the hotel. It was dark and I was only wearing a shirt with a very large chunk missing from the back but luckily it was a warm evening. I have rushed the last part of this post as I am starving and will be off to eat, drink and celebrate shortly.
There will be more pictures in my next post.
What a day, I will never forget it, or the support from the NAC team.

Peewit