Private Pilot License – Basics

Having settled on Breighton for my airfield home I set on with lessons. The first part of training is the key foundations. Its learning ‘straight and level’ which sounds a lot easier than it can be, along with turning, climbing and descending, different speeds and lots of combinations of all of them!

Along the way other general bits are introduced such as leaning the engine, more reliance on you to do the preflight, refuelling and the bit I found most scary – radio work.

The radio shouldnt be scary, especially when still at the home airfield how ever it somehow is. I think its the specifics of the words used, combined with not knowing what to expect yet knowing you need to respond to some of the phrases. In reality a lot of peoples radio work is far from perfect, the people on the other side of the radio accept this and even more so when at your home airfield they know you are learning.
I think the key is to think about what you are going to say, what you expect to receive back and to have a pen to write it down so you can process the information and form the reply properly.

Among this the biggest milestone I found was my first take off on my own. That felt like a big step the first time the plane lifted off entirely under my guidance.

Logged time: 8 Hours