First Solo!!

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Friday, 13 November 2009 00:00

Just as the title suggests, I flew my first solo today! Totally unexpected I might add. I was booked in to do my second lesson of circuit emergency procedures with Ray, one of the instructors. Turns out he was going to be doing a fairly long flight with the Queensland Fire Service, firespotting over South West Queensland & Graeme (the Chief Flying Instructor) had been doing paperwork all day, so he suggested he come out with me. I had no problem with this, I'd flown with Graeme before and found his advice & awareness very specific & held it in high regard. We took off & flew the first circuit, doing to the emergency procedures. We came into land & he had me fly a go around. While climbing out (all of about 2 full seconds after I'd gone full throttle) he cut reduced the throttle to idle to simulate an engine failure & I reacted instinctively with the steps to get the aircraft on the ground asap. He was satisfied with this & had me re-commence my go around. We then flew the circuit & I brought it in to land. I touched down nice & soft, retracted flap, went full throttle & took off again. We then flew another circuit which went pretty much the same, another nice landing, however, Graeme asked me to stop the aircraft on the runway. (????) He then took over, called on radio that we were back taxiing down runway 11. I asked what was happening, he pulled out the folder to log all hours flown & said we had a slight problem. As I was taxiing back down the runway thinking why are we taxiing back down the runway then & not getting off the runway (I was oblivious). He had me turn the aircraft at the end of the runway 180 degrees & called our departure on runway 11. Looked at me, said to do exactly what I'd just done and that he was getting out of the aircraft!!! He asked me to wait until he'd cleared the aircraft until I started my takeoff. Once Graeme was sufficently clear of the aircraft I pushed the throttle forward to full power (in a Tomahawk you need all you can get!), kept her centred on the runway, said a little prayer & then started talking myself through the procedures I'd been trained on. When the airspeed got to 60knots I eased back on the control column, the nose raised & then the VH-PBO lifted off planet earth with only ME at the controls! (you think I was nervous... how do you think the plane felt?!)

I flew the circuit, talking myself through every single thing I did. I came around onto approach, which got a little sloppy as I neared the threshold. My airspeed dropped a little too quickly as I crossed the threshold so I milked the throttle a little (I didn't want to bang the aircraft down onto the runday - I've done this before & it's not very nice). This increase in throttle gave me a little too much airspeed then, so I just held her level until she started to sink, then flared & touched down nice & soft, just like the 2 times before! I slowed the aircraft, taxied off the runway & made my radio call that I was clear of all active runways. After taxiing to the re-fueling area & shutting down, Graeme came over to me, I opened the door & he shook my hand & congratulated me on my first solo. I remember him saying, "that can never happen again in your life", he's right, you can only first solo once.

As we were refueling the plane he asked how many hours I had. I said "at the start of today it was 7.8", to which he said, "well you solo'ed at 8.4, that's pretty good". I asked what the average was & he told me it was between 12 & 13 hours, some as soon as 10 hours. I took that as a complement. I told Graeme that when I started this endeavouor, it was my goal to fly my first solo before my birthday, but that about a month ago I realised it may not happen... well, it did! (my birthday is in just over a week - for those who had forgotten)

So there you have it, I have flown a plane, on my own as Pilot in Command. If only Toowoomba had known, although it may have caused a mass exodus from the city ;-)

On a side note, if you go back to my first lesson & have a look at that photo, you'll find that VH-PBO is the same aircraft that I flew on that day, now the same that I flew my first solo in. The initials PBO will always be special now (Jo thinks that's a little nerdy - 1/2 of you probably do too - but your first solo is one of the milestones of a pilot's flying life).

Since before I undertook this adventure, I have wondered just how it would happen... well now I know.

Here's a photo of Graeme & I just after the solo... (click on the photo go get a better look)