First flight in 141 days!!

That's right, today I flew for the first time since 21 January. I've been doing ground school the past few weeks with my new instructor, Y. We've finally finished all the material we need to cover and it was time to knock some of that rust off and get back in the air.

The plan was to follow a flight plan from Addison (KADS) to Lubbock (KLBB) and divert somewhere to do some practice takeoffs and landings. After a couple of delays kept us from getting off the ground when we wanted the plan changed to just going straight to Denton (KDTO) to do the practice takeoffs and landings.

The only time I get on the schedule was for 1 to 3 pm on a 100-degree Fahrenheit day so as you could imagine it was pretty bumpy up there. But despite the heat and bumpy air I managed to do OK. I felt pretty comfortable in the cockpit and remembered to use my checklists. I got the radio calls mostly right.

But the rust was definitely there. I had some trouble maintaining my altitude (though I could blame a little of that on the bumpiness) and my turns to final were consistently late and low. Despite that Y was pretty happy with my performance. He suggested that we do another flight to do the airwork .. ground reference maneuvers, slow flight, stalls, steep turns, etc ... and then a mock checkride flight.

After that he'll likely endorse me to do some solo flights before scheduling the real checkride. I'm almost there!!

This flight: 1.2 hours
Takeoffs and Landings: 5
Total: 53 hours