It Begins… Going After my Private Pilot Certificate

If you’ve been following my blog for some amount of time, you may recall a few aviation and private pilot related posts. Well, my lovely wife booked a discovery flight for my birthday. Every single time I had a discovery flight on the books, something always managed to come up. I would end up working on the day I was scheduled to fly, or I’d be ready to fly and bad weather would show up. I had my discovery flight pushed probably 3 times in a row, week after week. Still no discovery flight. That was 2 years ago.

Last week, I was just looking back on how everything happened, so I called the airport on Wednesday and was in the air on Friday. I guess 3rd year’s a charm or something because the entire process was extremely smooth. I showed up and met my instructor, signed a quick form, grabbed a headset, and dove straight into preflight. My CFI went counterclockwise around the airplane and thoroughly examined just about every nut, bolt, and rivet. We sumped the fuel to ensure there was no contamination, then continued our preflight inside the cockpit. A few minutes later we fired up the engine and were taxiing for runup.

With runup checks complete, we were ready for takeoff. It was an absolutely beautiful morning with buttery smooth air. We were flying for about 30 minutes and ended up taking the controls and doing a few shallow bank turns. There were some similar principles that I remembered from the simulator, but it was a different world feeling the weight of the yoke while in the air. I had a much greater sense of speed and spacial awareness than could ever be acheived in the simulator. After our short 30 minute flight, I was hooked. That same day I went home and bought my private pilot study guide and got to work. My goal is to take the FAA written exam first so I can go ahead and have that out of the way before I start pursuing my flight hours. I feel it may be a little more efficient to have my book knowledge and theory down first before trying to get any flight hours in.