Week One Summary

Well… I’ve come to the end of the first week of training… Many, many hours reading and studying… 6 flights in 6 days, 10.7 hrs logged with a total of 5 landings and about 10 takeoffs. It’s been a busy week to say the least!

So far everyone is asking is it fun, exciting? And my answer thus far is I can’t say that’s it’s fun – yet. Overwhelming and humbling are probably better words to describe my feelings.

Conceptually, I GET flight concepts and aviation theory; however, the plethora of checklists, maneuvers procedures and departure/landing profiles is really tripping me up and most of the time that I am in the air I feel completely overwhelmed with tasks upon tasks and the constant buzz of communications (“coms”) so much so that I must say unfortunately that isn’t “fun”.

I have always felt that I could pick almost any task or skill pretty quickly but this is the hardest thing I have ever done in my life and while the challenge is good, it’s very humbling.

A few bright spots have been my flights with a guest instructor, Phillip, who brought with him a different demeanor and teaching style that meshed very well with me. The experience is also helping to build overall confidence. I am now very comfortable with preflighting the plane, filing flight plans and obtaining weather briefings.

Below is a picture of a Harrier jet that was just heading off to take off as we were landing… Pretty exciting to be sharing air space with these birds!