first flight

Earlier this morning I did my first ever flying lesson at Cal Aggie Flying Farmers flight school in Davis. We drove out to EDU airport in davis around 8:30, and we encountered a little bit of traffic on the way there, resulting in us almost being late. Thankfully we were just on time. First the instructor showed me some of the facilities offered by the flight school including the ground school instruction room, and the simulator, and airplane key room. After, we went out to the aircraft which was a 46 year old Cessna 152 registered N67405. My instructor lead me through the preflight checks including checking the aircraft surface for damage, and checking the fuel. Next we checked the engine oil, and flight surfaces to make sure that they operated smoothly before we started flying. We checked the wheels and brakes, making sure that the tires had tread and the brake disks and pads had enough meat on them to be effective. We checked the electronics in the aircraft, and then the instructor went back into the building to grab something, and I went over the checklist items to make sure he didn’t miss anything. We then set up our seats in the aircraft, and plugged in our headsets. We hopped in and began the preflight and startup checklists. Once we got the engine started up, my instructor had me taxi over to runway 35 which is a northerly facing runway. As a quick note, you do not use the yoke to taxi, since the cables connected to the yoke don’t connect with the nose wheel. Instead you use the rudder pedals which are connected to the nose wheel. It is quite common for instructors to mess with potential students on demo flights by letting them control the yoke while they actually steer the aircraft with the rudder pedals. Once we got to the departure end of runway 35, we did the run-up, which basically just means that we let the engine run at about 2300 rpm for around 30 seconds to ensure that the engine is running properly before we got to taking off. The instructor let me do the takeoff, so once we lined up with the runway center line I pushed the aircraft to full throttle, held a crosswind correction, and held the center line until we reached 55 knots which is the rotation speed. (55 knots is about 63 mph)  The instructor had to temporarily take control from me to make sure that the aircraft actually started to accelerate towards 67 knots which is the climb speed for the aircraft. As per the airport noise abatement procedure, and to avoid traffic from yolo county airport which is about 3 miles north of education field, we made a climbing 90 degree turn to the left, and then another 90 degree turn to the left to join the airport traffic pattern. Once we reached parallel with the runway, we turned west towards lake berryessa, where he had me climb to first 2500 feet, and then 3500 feet to clear the elevation. He had me make some turns and hold headings, just so I could get use to the basics of operating an aircraft. We then returned back towards Davis, and my instructor had me execute a 270 degree turn in a tear drop pattern to avoid yolo county airport and get back on the base for EDU airport. My instructor did the landing, and upon vacating the runway he let me taxi towards the fuel station. Unfortunately, they were refuelling the fueling station, so we couldn’t get any fuel, so we fired the aircraft back up and taxied back to the parking space. We hooked the aircraft up to its tethers, and cleared our stuff from the cockpit and returned to the building, where he entered my flight time in my logbook, and let me take pictures of some of the books I will need to study for my training. I really enjoyed the lesson, and hope that my flying skills get much better in the next few lessons, hopefully to the point of conducting my first landing. I really liked the instructor. His name is Alvaro, and he really reminds of my cousin Chris, who is an airline pilot for United. He really seems like the perfect kind of teacher for my way of learning, which is great. Next lesson is saturday morning at 6am so hopefully that goes just as well, if not better.

My current Challenge progress as of December 23, 2024.