Today I went for my first lesson.  3 hours in total and .4 hrs of it in the airplane.  Not quite enough to get off the ground but got some sweet taxi time. 😉

We started off filling out some paperwork and getting to know each other.  We then progressed into learning fundamentals of the aircraft.  I have studied most of this stuff for years but it was good to hear a different perspective.

Next we called for a weather briefing.  It was early in the morning and there was fog between our field and the practice area so we had to wait a bit.  It looked like we would be good to go in the next 30 minutes so we moved on to pre-flight.

In the pre-flight walk around, we spend a lot of time going over what to do and how to do it correctly. Starting inside of the cockpit, we removed the control lock and turned on the master switch, dropped the flaps and turned on the lights.  Quickly, we walked around the aircraft checking to make sure the navigation lights and landing lights were functional.  After this, we turned the master switch off to conserve battery.

Next we checked the left side main gear, fuel, fuselage, elevator, rudder, flaps, ailerons, right main gear, leading edges of the wings, cowling, front gear, prop, spinner, oil, filter, exhaust manifold, pitot tube, fuel tank vent… and i’m sure a few other things from the checklist that I forgot about.

I asked a lot of questions and got a lot of background on things to look for.  By the time we were in the cockpit to run-up the engine and make sure it was working to spec, we only had 20 minutes left on the reservation of the aircraft.  So my instructor had me taxi to the other end of the airfield and back in order to get a feel for steering with my feet.  It was a weird sensation but it was something that I was use to from flight simulator.

Even though I didn’t get off the ground, it was pretty awesome.  I have my next several lessons scheduled and am looking forward to getting off the ground next time.