According to the statistics published by the AOPA, there are only about 600,000 pilots in the
On Tuesday, I felt like I truly joined them as made my first solo flight.
As flights go, it wasn’t anything terribly special. Three touch and goes in the pattern with my instructor to make sure I was having a good day, with the third landing being a full stop. We taxied back to the flight school, my instructor got out, grabbed his hand-held radio and signed my logbook, then I fired up the DA-40 again.
This, of course, was the point when I found out that the fuel injector system in the DA-40 doesn’t like being shut down and hot-started within fifteen minutes. I’ve grown accustomed to an engine that reliably holds its RPMs as soon as it starts, but not this time. This time it started with a bunch of 50 RMP swings, which made me a bit nervous. But the roughness went away at flight RPMs with a slight leaning of the mixture, so I figured take it to the run-up area and if it was cleared up by then, I wouldn’t worry.
I calmly dialed in the ground control frequency, and pushed the transmit button. And was immediately rewarded with a squealing bit of feedback while I tried to talk to the controller. Time to switch to the handheld mic that I’ve never used before.
Honestly, after that, things seemed to go pretty easily. The Diamond climbed a bit faster with just me on board, and while my landings weren’t great, they weren’t bad either.
I made three touch and go’s, then brought her back to the flight school. In the same number of pieces I left with.
Boo-yah.
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