Flight Lesson #1

Today I finally met my flight instructor Jim. We went over all the first day boring paper work stuff and talked a little bit about aerodynamics and the four forces that act upon a plane. You know lift, weight, drag, and thrust. We also talked about attitude and how you use that to fly the plane. We went over the instruments and all the nobs and doodads. We finally brought out the checklist and talked about the flow we do when we use it and how to properly use it.We then headed out and I was greeted to the Diamond DA-20, 484MA, one of the two diamonds that I will be doing my flight training in.

We did our pre-flight inspection of the plane which took some time because Jim was pointing out a lot of things to look for during the inspection. Once we got into the plane Jim showed me how he does the check-list and how he flows around the instrument panel. Then he handed me the check-list and told me to call off each step and to point to it in the cockpit. This was a good learning experience because it shows me how to go through the check-list quickly but safely. He then had me do some taxing which I have to tell you is very hard if you never done it before. I was all over the place riding the brakes and had to keep revving up the engine to get moving again. We finally made it to the end of the taxiway where we went over more of the checklist. There is a lot of checklist to do but let me tell you how safe it makes flying.

Jim took over the controls and did a nice take off and headed to an alt of about 3,000 feet. I was handed the controls to work the 4 basic maneuvers. I was lucky enough during my Discovery flight to have worked on them so for the most part this part of the flight was easy. It was when we added trim into the picture that caused me to get full of myself and was messing up to the point Jim was yelling at me to watch my attitude. Part of this was because I was looking at the trim indicator to see if it was moving instead of outside the windows. All and all it was a great flight lesson and after about 1 hour we headed back and Jim took over and told me to watch how he does the traffic pattern and to see when he makes the radio calls.

We come in for the approach and make a nice landing and we go over the post-flight checklist and talk about what we will go over during the next flight lesson which is in 2 weeks which gives me long enough time do some reading. Some of the things I need to work on is looking more outside and paying attention to my attitude and also need to work on taxing.

Flight Time
Dual: 0.7
PIC: 0.0
Total: 0.7