Flying Solo at Nearly Half a Century

I think my deep personal self reflection began at the start of my 48th year of life as I watched my kids become young adults. As part of my life-review I decide to make some changes and tackle goals that I had put on the back burner. At the top of my list was to finally make the decision and commitment to complete something I started 25 years ago, getting my private pilot’s license.

Out of college and freshly married I sporadically took pilot lessons, but I wound up putting my “hobby interest” on hold due to a shortage of spare cash and the typical chores of life as a young husband and father. Early this spring I decided it was now or never, so I checked out a few local flying schools and got my flight physical. It wasn’t until I was talking to the doctor that gave me my flight physical that I decided upon what flight school and airport to take my lessons from. I chose Concord Municipal Airport in Concord, NH for a couple of good reasons, safety and financial reasons. Concord municipal airport has two relatively long and wide runways and has little air traffic. Second, it has no control tower.

Consequently I could learn to fly without worrying too much about bumping into anyone on the ground or in the sky, and I could spend more time flying rather than watching the Hobbs Meter turn (effectively the money meter) while sitting on the tarmac.

My first time up flying again was on a cold, high overcast spring day in a Cessna 172 Skyhawk with a young pilot that could practically be my son. Though young he was a qualified flight instructor who had thousands of hours flying various types of airplanes. I quickly learned he was a stickler for details, and for that I thank him. There is little room for error when flying an airplane and a non-attentive student pilot should not be sitting in the left seat of any airplane.

After my first flight instruction in nearly 25 years I was hooked again, however this time I was committed to following through and getting my private pilots license. After 15.7 hours of learning how to fly again, practicing take offs and landings, recovering from power on and off stalls, and handling emergency situations, I soloed in late May early one morning under perfect weather conditions. I had completed 4 take off and landings with my flying instructor that morning. After the forth landing he told me to pull over onto the taxiway because “I had used too much of the runway on my landing”.

I hadn’t thought so, but I wasn’t going to disagree with my instructor. We were half way down the taxi-way heading back to the end of the runway when he told me to pull over on the apron. He then said, “You’re out of here.” He went on to say my 4 landings were perfect and that I was ready to fly solo. While he endorsed my student pilot license and logbook, I tried to control my legs from shaking as I held the brakes. I was feeling both elation and trepidation. After what seemed an hour, which was actually just 5 minutes, he put away the paperwork, told me to do three take-offs and complete stop landings, and then return back to the apron and park the plane. With that, he exited the plane and I was sitting there all alone.

After a few minutes of running through my checklists, I was racing down the runway and pulling back on the yoke. I was flying solo!! As the ground fell away I began to relax and feel more comfortable. However, when staying in the pattern and performing takeoff and landings things happen fast and thus a pilot is very busy.

At 800 feet above the ground I began my left 90 degree turn onto the crosswind leg. At 1000 feet above the ground, traffic pattern level, I was turning left again for the downwind leg of the flight and radioing my intentions. Halfway down the downwind leg, I began to configure the plane for slow flight. I reduced power, turned on the carburetor heat, and lowered flaps 20 degrees.

As I looked out the left window of the plane and observed that I was flying parallel to the end of the runway I pulled back the throttle to idle and pushed the nose over for best glide speed. After only a few seconds, I saw that the end of the runway was 45 degrees over my shoulder and began my base-leg turn and radioed my intentions. At approximately 500 feet over the ground on my base-leg, I made my turn on to final and lined up for my landing. The runway came up fast, and as my instructor had taught me, I separated my upper and lower body into two halves.

I used my arms and the planes ailerons to keep the plane lined up over the center of the runway, and I used my feet and the rudder pedals to keep the plane parallel with the runway. As I came in over the runway I pulled gently back on the yoke and began my flare out. A couple of seconds later I heard the main wheels touch down. As the plane slowed down, I gently released pressure on the yoke to bring the nose wheel down. I had completed my first solo flight and landing.

As I taxied the plane back to the end of the runway I saw my instructor out in the field giving me the thumbs up. I returned the hand signal and went back and completed two more perfect landings.

As I parked my plane and shut down the engine, my instructor was at the door with a pair of scissors in his hands as I stepped away from the plane. After a big hand shake, as well as a hand shake from another pilot who had just flown in on a small private jet and who had watched me solo, my instructor asked me to turn around. While I faced away from him he proceeded to cut out the back of my shirt. This is a ritual that has gone on for about a hundred years in the aviation industry. History has it that when early student pilots first learned to fly they did so in open-cockpit aircraft where the instructor sat in the back seat of the plane. Since there were no radios the instructor got the student pilots attention by pulling on the back of his shirt. Once a student pilot soloed there was no longer a need for the back portion of the student pilot’s shirt, so to signify the milestone the instructor cut it away.

So with my first solo flight behind me, I’ve continued on with my flight training, sometimes flying solo, and sometimes flying with my instructor. Cross country flights and learning air traffic control radio operation are now the focus. With any luck, and a lot more learning, I hope to take my private pilots test and have my check-out flight within the next few months.