19th Lesson

I had to cancel my lesson last Wednesday because I was sick again, and the lesson for Friday got canceled because the winds were around 24kt gusting to 32kt. Yesterday Jim and I flew the cross country trip to Moose Lake and Princeton that I had planned last week. It was a beautiful day for flying - clear skies, decent visibility, and very light winds out of the south. The trip frankly, was pretty uneventful. It went exactly as planned, and I was able to find all of my checkpoints throughout. I'm feeling very comfortable with the whole thing now. Gotta work on my division of attention a bit more, as Jim is trying to keep me busy the whole time, and when I get distracted, I tend to let my altitude or heading drift a bit. I think when I'm out by myself this won't be as big of an issue, because I'll be able to pay attention to what needs attention, when it needs attention. Tomorrow afternoon, I'm going flying by myself in the local area. This will be my first unsupervised solo. I'm supposed to practice takeoffs and landings at Forest Lake, then fly out over the rural countryside at 4500 feet and practice steep turns and power-off stalls. I'm looking forward to it now. I've been doing all the takeoffs, flying, landing, and radio communications during the past several lessons anyway. Friday, Jim and I are going to fly a "cross city" if you will, and visit a few towered airports in the area. I need more experience at towered airports. The next step after this will be for me to fly a solo from Forest Lake to Anoka and back. Once I've done that, I will be flying a new cross country flight solo, which I need to pick and plan for. Starting to get really interesting now.