Day 8: The good, the bad, and the redemption.

First of all, I apologize for the lengthy delay in getting a post up. A big reason is I didn't have my medical certificate until sometime in January, and I had a bunch of ground lessons since last November. I also had a bunch of flights cancelled due to the crazy weather we've been having, but now that is finally changing!

Oh one more thing to note: I won't be posting much on ground school anymore unless it's really interesting, because quite honestly those entries will tend to be quite boring and dry to most people. Besides, the actually flying is the fun part.

So on that note, let me just say that I have flow three times in the past week. Last Tuesday I flew with my primary instructor, Mark Pearson, and much to my surprise he informed me that it was his last time flying to me. Turns out, he just landed a job in Vegas where he will be doing flight tours of the Grand Canyon! How sweet is that?! Unfortunately, that put me in a spot where all the lessons I had scheduled for March were suddenly null and void, and on top of that I had to learn under a new instructor.

Either way, my lesson with him went pretty well all things considered. We just did the usual pattern work with a little bit of hovering practice, and overall I felt pretty comfortable.

Then came the next day where I completely sucked.

Now I really only have myself to blame, but to be fair the odds were against me. I had a brand new instructor, the winds were a bit up that day, we flew to a different airport for the first time, and we were at it for almost two hours non stop. Not a good combo for a guy with only three flights under his belt. Needless to say, I just wasn't feeling it that day and I couldn't even hold a hover, or even have a prayer at a smooth landing (Don't worry, although I wasn't landing well my instructor was taking over the controls constantly, that's how that game works). Anyway, I simply wasn't clicking with his style, and I never felt that whole time like I truly was in control. That's a terrible feeling.

That brings us to today, where I had yet another instructor named Bobby Lucas. I'm not going to say that he is a better instructor then the last guy, because they both know their stuff, but I just absolutely had much more control and clicked a lot better with him. Today I even took off from the tarmac almost completely unassisted into a nice hover, and his method of teaching takeoffs just made perfect sense to me. Other then that, it was a pretty standard day with a lot of pattern work, but we also did some hovering taxi work, where I would hover at about a jogging pace while trying stay a few feet above this yellow line. This is harder then it sounds. The trick is
to let your feet do the work while using the cyclic only to control your forward movement, much like riding a bike at slow speeds where you do less leaning and more steering (makes sense right?).

I will say, he does stretch me and demand more of me then my original instructor did, but as you guess that's a good thing. Hard is good. I have another flight tomorrow bright and early at 8 am, and I hope it goes as well as today.