So, today Feb 16, 2012, at 5:05PM I met Jay at the Spanish Fork airport. He had me do three take off's and two landings ,touch and go's, with him setting next to me in the co-pilots seat, practicing an aborted landing and making me do another go round and finally come to a full stop. He then had me taxi to where LuAnn was parked watching. He then told me I was on my own. He wanted me to do three touch and go's on my own. He looked me in the eye and said "are you ready?". I guess I said yes because he gave me a thumbs up and walked away.
I closed the canopy and was on my own. I have taxied by myself to fuel the plane, but never to the end of the runway. He told me to treat it like an initial flight, going through the full run up. Good practice anyway, running through the checklist on my own for the first time. I get the plane in takeoff configuration, and make the call "Katana 986 charlie tango departing runway 3-0", throttle to full and begin to roll.
The rest is history, three laps around the track, and a fourth for good measure. I thought Jay meant thee touch and go's and he meant three takeoffs and landings. I'm sure he thought I wasn't coming back. Total time 1.1 hours, .5 hours as pilot in command, boo yeah!!!
To say that everything was perfect would be a gross overstatement. My takeoffs were fine and my landings were ok. But, then again that's why I'm taking instruction. I can begin to see why you never want to own an aircraft that was used for instruction. Students learning to land on their own can be hard on aircraft. I don't think I was too hard, but I have a lot of room to improve. Now that was good day.
