Back in the Sky!

Let's start from where I left off: the last lesson I was supposed to have in the Warrior never happened -- bad weather. Go figure. Luckily, since then the 152 has been cleared for flying, so Chris and I set up a lesson for this morning... pending weather.

I woke up to a clear blue sky, and was at the airport by 9:30 doing my preflight to calm winds and no clouds. I find Chris (still finishing up with his last student) so I go pre-flight the 152. The tool used to measure fuel was absent the plane, and Chris said it needed more. Of course, the fuel truck was out of service, so I was convinced this meant I wasn't going up. Turned out Chris had a tank of fuel in the hanger and a hand-crank pump. What luck!

As we got in the plane, Chris said "we'll do 0.5 of touch-and-gos, then maybe I'll send you up for some yourself." A chance of going solo? I wasn't expecting that, nor was I sure I wanted to yet. We got ATIS (which was basically perfect weather) and got ready to take off. Everything was great, though I was a little rusty, but not too bad at all. The new engine has a LOT more power. I kept finding myself giving it too much throttle, since that was the amount I USED to have to give it. Now the 152 flies more like the Warrior (though still not quite that nice). We did 3 landings (Chris wanted to do 4 prior to take-off, but we ran out of time for several reasons, none serious) and each one I did better with. We taxied back and Chris didn't send me solo (maybe because some of my rust was showing, maybe because he had another student coming, I'm not sure), but that was fine with me.

To sum it up: the flying was a nice "get back into it" lesson. Nothing new really learned, just cleaning the rust and getting used to the new power under the hood. Chris says we're just going to do 30 minutes of flying per lesson until I get my written done, when the excitement will really start again. I'm going to try to get that done within a week -- two tops. I'll post again later about that test.

Now, to hit the books!