Learning To Fly - SOLO!

You have the whole story in pictures, below, but here are a few things that went on. First off, when I looked out the window in the morning, I saw frost on the rooftops and immediately checked the weather. Van Nuys was actually doing better then we were, they were in the 50's and we were at 39. Ok, that works. So we drive down, all three of us. I took two days off this week, to coincide with my Hubby's days off, so me being with them, was a bonus. We get to Van Nuys and it's absolutely beautiful, blue sky, some high clouds, no wind. A few planes going up, but mostly a pretty quiet day. They take off immediately, no nonsense at all and I just had a feeling that this was going to be it. So I call my brother in law and let him know that my son is up and that if he is driving across the valley on the way to work, that it just might be his nephew soloing. So we continue to monitor the situation and see them do 2 Touch and Goes, but on the second one, they pull over to the Hanger area and park. The teacher spends a few minutes doing official stuff and obviously talks to my son and then he gets out, radio in hand. He walks over to us and says something like "Don't worry about him, he knows what he's doing." He does his run up and while we wait, my brother in law walks to the hanger. He got in...by having the right last name. We are more then happy to see him and he is so happy to get to see this moment. There is a big plane at the top of the runway, he takes off and finally my son. As he passes us by, I remember saying a quick prayer. Nothing wrong with a little higher power. :-)
He doesn't immediately turn to the left and I remember telling his instructor "Now you did it, he's flying to San Diego." It ends up that he was told to keep going south before making the left turn. So finally he makes the turn and we see him heading back North following the freeway and then he comes around, right on time. He comes in on the glide path and as he gets down on the runway, he picks up the plane for a second and then gently touches down. Rolls over to us acting just so cool like this was nothing at all and then takes all the congratulations we handed out. Pictures of us all followed and when he turned around, I could see his shirt was all wet from sweating, so I don't think he was as calm as all that. lol
We asked him if he was talking to himself in the plane and he said that he said to himself something like "Sweet Baby Jesus, this thing is flying." It had to do with him not having the added weight of the instructor, in the plane. It just leaped into the sky. He also said it was so very quiet up there without his teacher. Then onto the ceremonies. The teacher wrote a congratulations message on his teaching board and then said to my son that tradition holds that he should dump a bucket of water on him, but since it was so cold, he will skip that. He lets the owner of the plane know that he has a new pilot and he hands the phone over to my son, who gets congratulations from the owner as his instructor hands him the key to the hanger. Then his instructor, who also soloed at 17, tells my son about how his own solo went and mentions that the one thing he remembers doing in the plane is singing the song "Whistle a Happy Tune", while he was making his touch and goes. Then he says that he wants my son's shirt and they were thinking of giving it to him next time he comes down, when I realized that I had two shirts on today. So I take off my top shirt, leaving the long sleeve shirt on and hand it to my son, who on the way out of the airport makes a quick trip to the mens room and changes shirts.
My son mentions that he was so happy to see his uncle was there, to share in his big day. His uncle use to fly with a friend, when he was younger and shares my son's love of flying. Actually, he shares it with many members of my family, which is a good thing. So we head out, my brother in law heads over to work and we get some lunch on the way home, to celebrate. A good end to an exciting day.




Pulled over to the side, with his instructor giving him last minute information.













Pulling out on his own.










Instructor watching him taxi to the runway, scanner in hand.











Take Off. OMG, is our insurance premium paid up?*










Flying the back side of the pattern.*










Landing. Big sigh from this crowd.*










Pulling into the hanger area, cool as all get out. This wasn't hard at all...yeah right. You should have seen how sweaty the back of his shirt was.







Instructor is the first to get to the plane.












2 Pilots.











Instructor takes his shirt for some formal flying tradition. I let him borrow my Steely Dan Downunder shirt for the occasion (good thing I was wearing 2 shirts today).



*To see the flying shots at all, you really need to right click your mouse and open the picture in a new window. Unfortunately, it will still be small, but at least you can see something.