30.09.02     11am   SHERBURN  CESNA 150 1 HOUR

Getting more nervous about having lessons and not being very good at flying, had to really force myself to go this morning, was hoping it might be cancelled so that I wouldn't have to go.  Used avoidance tactics such as email to manage to not read much of my pilots handbook before the lesson, so didn't feel very prepared.

Arrived to find that Jane Evans was booked to do something else so I had a different instructor Bernard a French pilot. This really scared me to start with as I thought I was really bad at flying and I'd be embarrassed. Jane then said I was getting along fine to him, I went out to check the plane over, thought maybe that Jane would be telling him that I actually wasn't very good. 

I can really see how easy it is for students to start to not turn up to lessons, and how sensitive they might be about not being good enough and how much confidence has to do with the learning process.

Checked around the plane and set the GPS in the back.

Taxied down the runway OK and then Bernard talked me through take off and let me do it myself. Putting the engine up to full throttle and when we got to a certain speed lifting the wheel off the runway, and we took off, it was amazingly easy the plane is structured so that it has a certain amount of lift at a certain speed and that's it. It kind of makes much more sense why planes stay in the air at all knowing how easy it is to take off.

Getting the hang of turning now the GPS data looks like a set of nice neat loops.

Did ascending turns and descending turns both left and right, all seemed quite easy really, just starting a descent and then doing a turn, and vice versa.

Bernard is much more relaxed and was more interested in my getting the feel of maneuvers, it was the first time I felt like I was flying through space rather than keeping an eye on the controls, it takes a lot of lessons it seems to get past the panic of not knowing where everything is, to this stage where it just begins to feel like movement in three dimensions.

There was a really bright sun today, which glinted off other aircraft and made them much easier to see, otherwise I think I'd have missed seeing them, although they were quite a long way off. They looked like small fish down near the bottom of a huge aquarium.

I was much more involved in the process of landing too, lining the plane up for landing and knowing what was going on. He was really reassuring saying "you'll get the hang of it" and "good" quite a lot, it made me feel much more confident. After we'd landed he said I'd flown well and had a good relaxed attitude to flying. So at last I'm beginning to feel much more confident about it.

Next lesson I'll do stalling, then only one more before I start to do circuits.

WEATHER: Very still, clear and sunny. Hardly any wind buffeting the plane about so it was very easy to steer and keep the plane going in a straight line.