Well this morning was truely an awesome morning -- I woke up early, started my day reading "happy 16th birthday" text messages left on my cell-phone and then headed out to the airport to fly with the Chief CFI of my flight school for an hour.
After that was all set and the Chief CFI gave me the thumbs up, my CFI signed my Student Pilot Certificate and signed the two logbook endorsements and the next thing I knew, I was all by myself! What an awesome experience.
I was initially given clearance to taxi to runway 34 here at KHPN (Westchester) and later departed that runway, but then Tower had to switch me to runway 29 (ALD: 3154') due to numerous IFR biz-jets inbound on the "Sound Visual 34." When you do left-closed-traffic on runway 29, the tower requests that you fly your downwind over the numbers of runway 34, which sets you up on a tight downwind, but it all worked out; 3 smooth full-stop landings.
That tower sure had me busy, changing my runway, changing controllers on me (3 times), looking for AirTran B717s, Cirrus', Falcons', and Challengers', and other traffic, but I was on the ball and caught it all -- and am proud to say: I solo-ed this morning.......on my 16th birthday.
As I look back in my logbook:
First Lesson: 12/15/02.....N5286C.....Dual Received: 0.7
First Solo: 11/20/06........N5286C......Dual Received: 0, Solo/PIC: 0.7
Same plane, same student (or kid...), same dream, 4 years later; first solo.
Here are some photos:
http://hpnpilot1200.org/gallery/firstsolo
I also recorded the audio output from the intercom, but apparently my digital recorder only had 5 minutes of power left, so it only caught my start-up and taxi.
Jason
Login
Register
FAQ
Search
