Yesterday, I gained another 1.7 hours in my flight logbook!

I’ve advanced to solo pre-flights and s-turns. We reviewed steep turns, slow flight, and I’m becoming more aware of my subconscious actions and taking care to correct them (like leaning into my instructor at turns, instead of maintaining my visual line of sight). At least if I don’t catch these behaviors until after the fact, I’m acknowledging them aloud as a way to remember to not do them.

I especially need work on trim, pitch, and working with the rudder; there really is no way around learning these steps rather than to just do them. I’m slowly accepting the fact that I will continue to fail and mess up and that’s just how most people learn and it’s more than okay. (Perhaps I should incorporate a positive affirmation before my lessons, “I’m exactly where I’m supposed to be.”)

Last night, I drowned myself in videos on steep turns, slow flight, landings, and stalls. Per my instructor’s advice, I also dabbled in some spin videos. At the end of the day, spins is what I fear the most and avoid at all costs, which is why I think I’m so scared of steep turns. I’m still building my proprioception within the aircraft but it definitely helped with the idea of the dreaded maneuvers: stalls.

There are many things to learn and even more to remember but forcing myself to get back up and do it again is keeping me the most grounded right now.

I also learned about a very cool app called “Flight Aware” and was able to track our entire flight! I’ve watched it many times in an effort to study my ability to maintain altitude, my flight pattern, and the new s-turns. If you’re familiar with flight maneuvers, my instructor demonstrates the first set of steep turns and first set of s-turns and the subsequent ones are mine. Of course, I’m not quite ready for take-offs and landings just yet so those are him as well.

Here are some of my favorite photos from my view yesterday!

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Have a happy weekend, friends!