After overcoming that obstacle, I had no problem flying solo or taking Jeff for a $100 hamburger, but flying non-pilot passengers is a different story.  For almost the first three years after getting my license, whenever I flew with non-pilot passengers, they were assigned to the back seat. As pilot in command, I am responsible for the safety of the flight and my passengers, and that is a huge responsibility!

In early 2010, I noticed in an online aviation newsletter, an article about the Centennial of Women Licensed Pilots.

It was an initiative created by Canadian Pilot, Mireille Goyer, to celebrate the 100th anniversary of the first woman, worldwide, to obtain a pilot license (Frenchwoman Raymonde dela Roche on March 8, 1910)

Mireille’s idea was to for pilots worldwide to introduce girls and women to aviation by taking them for a flight in a small airplane. To encourage participation and to make it fun, she created contests, such as the “Most Female Pilot Friendly Airport Worldwide” and the “Most Dedicated Female Pilot Worldwide”.

I was intrigued, but if I were to participate, I would be sending a poor message by relegating my passengers to the back seat and having my husband in the co-pilot seat!

Then I decided to look at it differently. I took it as a challenge and an opportunity to overcome my fear of flying passengers without Jeff in the co-pilot seat. Along my journey, I had already overcome many fears – this was just one more. And conquer it, I did!

I registered on the website and during the week that contained March 8, I took 13 non-pilot girls and women for free flights in my airplane! I even let my front seat passenger on each flight fly the airplane for a few minutes. I was enchanted by their little squeals of delight when they felt the airplane respond to their touch! It reminded me about how I felt the first time that Jeff had given me the controls.

It was official! I was a real pilot, carrying real passengers.

I sent in the photos of the passengers and of my logbook to get the flights recorded in the worldwide total and learned that the challenge would continue for the rest of the year. So I continued, too! Between March and November, I flew girls and women at every opportunity and encouraged other local pilots to do the same. I diligently recorded our flights and sent them in to the Centennial of Women Licensed Pilots organizer.

Late in the year, I noticed that my airport, the Oshawa Municipal Airport was in second place for the “Most Female Pilot Friendly Airport Worldwide” title (the title was based on the most number of non-pilot female passengers flown at a particular airport). I decided to go for first place and organized an event at the airport, inviting women and girls to come for a flight on the Saturday before Christmas that year. With the help of 12 other pilots with their airplanes and several ground volunteers, we flew 118 women and girls that blustery Saturday. That did it! We won the title! And I came in third place for the  “Most Dedicated Female Pilot Worldwide”!

Since a centennial anniversary only comes around once every hundred years, the organizer of the event decided to create an annual week-long celebration called the Women of Aviation Worldwide Week. It takes place every March in the week that contains March 8, the date that Raymonde dela Roche got her license in 1910. I got involved right away and each year I have organized activities and flown women and girls. Beginning in 2014, I created an event at the Oshawa Airport called “Girls Take Flight”, an event that not only offers free flights to woman and girls, but also exposes them to aviation through presentations by inspiring women in the industry, aviation displays and activities, and aviation and aerospace career information. 2016 will mark the third annual Girls Take Flight” event at Oshawa and we expect more than 500 attendees!

We are truly “Flying it Forward”!

In some of my earlier stories, I described some of the strategies and tactics that I used for overcoming my obstacles, but conquering the fears was more difficult.

For example, even after I got my license, I was still afraid of an engine failure. Jeff and I talked about it extensively and he explained how unlikely that was. While he was describing why it was unlikely (maintenance schedules, etc.) I was reminded of a tool that I had used in my corporate life to analyze difficult situations.

While I realize that fear is largely an emotional state, there is a logical aspect to it and this tool can help with that aspect. It’s called a SWOT analysis. That stands for strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats. It is the last one, the analysis of the threats, or dangers, that is relevant to this conversation.

The process is simple and involves 5 main steps.

1. Identify the threat (the fear, in this case).
2. Assess the likelihood of the fear coming true.
3. Assess the severity of the impact, were the fear to come true.
4. Develop and practical methods to reduce the likelihood and the impact.
5. Implement those methods.

Let’s use, as an example, the fear that I had – that the engine would fail.

1. Identify. The analytical tool calls for us to be specific when we identifying the danger. The way I have stated the fear is fairly specific, but let’s be even more specific by saying that ‘I am afraid that the engine will fail while in flight’.
2. Assess the likelihood. How likely is it – high, medium or low? To answer that question I needed information, so I did some research and learned that the likelihood is extremely low. Most pilots fly for their entire careers and never have an engine fail in flight.
3. Assess the impact. How severe is it – high, medium or low? Well the answer is ‘it depends’. It could be low or it could be high. For example, there would be no impact if the engine were to fail when you are close enough to an airport to glide to the runway. But it would be very dangerous to lose the engine flying over the middle of Lake Ontario at low altitudes during the winter. So, for the purposes of this analysis let’s use a worst-case scenario and identify the severity of the impact as high.
4. Develop methods to reduce the likelihood and the impact (even though we have identified the likelihood as low, it’s not impossible, so we should find ways to reduce the likelihood even further).

The two main ways to prevent the likelihood of an engine failure are:

• Maintenance and inspection
• Fuel management.

1. Maintenance and inspection

Airplane engines are much better maintained than car engines and they are inspected far more closely and often. In your car, you can just pull over to the side of the road if something goes wrong with your engine. You can’t do that while you’re flying. Every year (or 100 flying hours, whichever comes first) an airplane undergoes a rigorous  inspection. The engine inspection includes, among other things, a cylinder compression test and the use of a borescope to inspect the various engine components. And more frequent maintenance is performed. For example, we change the oil in our airplane engine every 25 hours of flying and the old oil is analysed.

2. Fuel management – fuel quantity and quality

Before every flight, we physically measure the amount of fuel in the fuel tanks. And even though there are fuel gauges in the airplane, we don’t trust them. We use a dipstick to determine the exact number of litres in each tank. Also, we know that when we have full tanks, we can fly for 4 1/2 hours. However, we never fly longer than 3 1/2 hours per leg because we want to have one hour of reserve.

Not only do we check the quantity of the fuel in our airplane, but we also check the quality of the fuel before every flight. We do that by taking a sample out of each tank and examining it for contaminants.

So those are ways that we can reduce the likelihood of my fear coming true, that the engine will fail while in flight. But, what if it were to happen? So the next step in the process is to identify ways to reduce the impact or the severity of the impact. As I mentioned before, the severity depends upon where you are flying.

The two main ways to reduce the impact of an engine failure are

• Emergency training
• Route planning.

1. Emergency training

One of the emergencies that a student pilot trains for is an engine failure. The student is taught how to choose an appropriate landing spot, preferably a farmer’s field, how to quickly troubleshoot the failure and how to setup and conduct the landing. During the in-air flight test, that is one of the emergency maneuvers that must be demonstrated to the Transport Canada flight examiner.

2. Route planning

As I mentioned before, an engine failure over the middle of Lake Ontario in the winter would be dangerous. So, like many pilots of single engine aircraft, I never fly out over the Great Lakes during the fall, winter, or spring, even if it means extra hours of flying time.

And when I have a choice, I prefer to fly over farmer’s fields, rather than over places that don’t offer as many options for landing, such as metropolitan areas and forests. If I don’t have a choice, then I fly at a higher altitude, as that will give me a lot more time to find an appropriate landing spot. A golf course, or even a soccer field, is an appropriate landing spot in metropolitan areas. And even if I had to land in a forest, that is still survivable. I have a friend, who lost her engine over Toronto. She aimed for a soccer field, but when she got closer to the field, she noticed that there were children playing soccer on the field, so she changed course and landed in a tree. She came away with nothing more than a broken wrist.

So, after going through the exercise of analyzing the likelihood and impact of an engine failure and doing whatever I can to reduce the likelihood and impact, I am less afraid of losing my engine in flight.

As the date for annual AirVenture adventure approached, I kept an eagle eye on the weather websites, in order to decide when to depart. We wanted to arrive at KOSH (Oshkosh Airport) by Friday, July 25th at the latest, in order to get a good camping spot, close to the show and the showers. By late Tuesday, it was looking like Thursday was going to be the best day to fly, so we scrambled to make that happen. On Wednesday evening, we took the back seat out of the airplane and loaded all our camping gear. A careful weight and balance calculation confirmed that we were below our maximum weight (by less than 50 pounds!) and well within C of G (centre of gravity).

On Thursday morning, we departed from Oshawa under clear skies and with a tailwind! The enroute forecast was for clear skies, so we planned to fly over Lake Michigan at 8,500 feet. That would save us more than an hour of flying time (and therefore, fuel)

It was Jeff’s turn to fly, so he took the first leg (Oshawa to Saginaw, MI). As we approached Lake Huron, I suggested that we save more time (and fuel) by flying over the Lake, instead of flying the shoreline. Since we were at 8,500 feet by then, Jeff agreed, but we were not wearing our aviation lifejackets. I was unable to reach them from the right seat, so Jeff had me take control while he dug them out. He had to move his seat back in order to reach them and when he moved his seat back the C of G was affected enough that I had to compensate with pitch control.

Once he had his lifejacket on, he moved forward and took control of the airplane and when I moved back to don my lifejacket, he experienced the same C of G effect. We reflected that it must have been the first time in 8 years of flying that we had moved our seats back while flying.

We arrived in Saginaw and cleared customs quickly, fueled up the airplane and downed a free hotdog. Then we put our lifejackets back on and hopped back in for the final leg – my turn to fly! There were some clouds over Michigan, but none over Lake Michigan, so I flew over the lake at 8,500 feet and then descended to get under a cloud layer that was over Wisconsin.

In “Hi, Welcome to Oshkosh”, I explained about the special procedures that are in effect for flying in to AirVenture, due to the number of airplanes. This year, though,we were flying to AirVenture early, so the special procedures were not yet in effect (they would start the following day). I contacted Oshkosh tower, just like I do for any other towered airport that I fly in to, and announced my attentions. I was cleared straight in to runway 27.

After I landed, I taxied on the grass and followed the flagmen to our camping spot, in the 5^th row – the closest that we have ever been to the show and also quite close to the showers! I jumped out and did my little Oshkosh dance and the flagman laughed and asked if it was my first time. Through tears of excitement, I choked out a “No” and Jeff told him “You should have seen her 8 years ago when it was her first time!”

We then proceeded to set up camp. After a minor disagreement about where to position the tent (Jeff won and it turned out he was right), we put up our brand new Eureka tent and made up our beds (to find out what happened to our old tent, read “Sloshkosh“).

We called Dave, the fellow who rents us bikes every year, but he was not going to be able to meet us that evening. The buses were not running yet, so we put on our walking shoes and headed towards Durango’s, our favourite Mexican restaurant just outside the airport fence. It had just started raining, so we put on our rain ponchos. About halfway into the 20 minute walk, the skies opened and the thunder and lightning started and it got quite dark. When we arrived at the pedestrian gate, it was locked! We continued on to the next gate, the one by Friar Tuck’s, but it was locked, too! By then, we were soaked and our feet were starting to hurt. And we were starving! We kept walking, getting farther from our camp site and, fortunately, the gate beside the Hilton Hotel was open and we had dinner in their bar. Whew! The waitress tried to get us a ride back to the campsite, but was unsuccessful, so we walked slowly back and collapsed into bed and slept solidly.

The weekend

We awoke to a cold, cloudy day on Friday. We had packed very lightly, including very light clothing and so we were freezing. Our sleeping bags purport to be good in 10 degrees, but that turned out to be a lie. It was 12 degrees and we froze! We hopped on the bus and went to Subway for breakfast and then over to Target and Pick’n’Save for supplies, including warmer clothes (duplicates of items that we have in our closets at home)!

Our friend, Newel, flew in on Friday and parked two rows away from us. His wife, Kay, and daughter, Jenny would be joining him on Monday. Newel, Kay and Jenny are the family that we camped beside on our first trip to AirVenture in 2005. We have somehow managed to bump into them every year!

By the end of the day on Friday, we had our bikes, groceries and warm clothes and we were completely organized.

On Friday evening we went to a great Italian restaurant with Mike Martin, a friend from the Buttonville Flying Club.

Saturday is the day of the ‘mass arrivals’, so we had fun watching them land and taxi. The Bonanzas were the most fun to watch – there were so many of them!

On Saturday evening, we finally made it to Durango’s for dinner, joined by Mike. On Sunday afternoon, Mike hosted a Happy Hour for the Buttonville Flying Club.

Monday was the first day of the show, so now the real fun could begin.

Of course, there is a spectacular airshow every day. The aerobatic displays and flights by warbirds are the most fun (my favourite this year was watching the Harrier). Airventure is also where new things are shown to the public for the first time. This year’s ‘firsts’ were Jetman, the man who flies with a jet pack on his back, and the Terrafugia, the roadable airplane. But it’s not just about the airshow and the airplanes. There is so much to do! Every day, in addition to looking at airplanes and exhibits and attending educational and entertaining forums, there is socializing.

Daily Highlights:

Marguerita Monday. After touring the exhibits in the hangars, picking up lots of free goodies, I met up with Jeff and we went to Mike Martin’s campsite for another Happy Hour. Then we biked over to Dick and Nikki Acker’s campsite for their annual Marguerita Monday. We feasted on tacos and Margueritas and met lots of great people.

Space Tuesday.

In the afternoon, I was wandering around the main square when I saw Canadian astronaut Chris Hadfield, who was slated to appear later that evening at the Theatre in the Woods program. He was talking with some EAA officials and he noticed me ‘hanging around’, holding my camera and asked if I wanted a photo. I introduced myself and had my photo taken with him. This was very exciting for me, as I’m a huge fan of his. Of course we attended his program that evening!

Young Eagles Wednesday. In the morning, I attended the Young Eagles leadership conference, where EAA officials and leaders from around the world shared ideas. In the evening was the Young Eagles volunteer appreciation dinner, where we sat with friends from Michigan and Oshawa. After the dinner, we went back to the flight line to watch the night air show. The night air show features acts by airplanes that either have bright lights attached or they shoot fireworks off the tips of their wings. The finale of the show is a wall of fire followed by fireworks.

Tram Thursday. This year, Jeff volunteered at Airventure by driving a tram. He did 2 six hour shifts – one on Thursday and one on Friday.

Fun Friday. In the morning was the group photo of female pilots. Our shirts this year were ‘raspberry’.

On Friday evening I went to the International Visitors Party where I met some very interesting people from Australia. After the dinner, I went to the Fly-in Theatre to watch the world premier of the movie Disney Planes. The crowd was huge – an estimated 10,000 people with their lawn chairs and blankets. The movie was fun!

On Saturday morning, I presented a forum called “Love at First Flight”. It’s the story of my journey from burned out corporate executive to award winning private pilot and describes how I overcame the challenges and conquered my fear to achieve my dream.

The forum took place in the museum, so I wasn’t expecting a good turnout. I was pleasantly surprised that about 20 people came and I got some very positive feedback afterward. I’ll definitely offer to do it again next year.

On Sunday morning, we packed up our fantastic new tent and flew home, over both lakes (Michigan and Huron) at 9,500′, with a tailwind, stopping at Jack Barstow in Michigan for fuel. We arrived at Oshawa well before dark.

I hope you have enjoyed this rather long description of our ninth trip to Airventure, which was the best one yet!

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Pressing the ‘push-to-talk’ button on my control yoke, I called the radio operator at the Collingwood Airport.

“Aircraft calling Collingwood, go ahead”, was the reply.

“Collingwood Unicom, this is Cessna 172, Golf Mike Whiskey India, 12 miles to the east, 3,500, inbound for landing, request airport advisory.”

“Golf Mike Whiskey India, this is Collingwood Unicom. Winds light from the west, runway 31 in use, traffic reported in the area.”

“Golf Mike Whiskey India”, I acknowledged.

“OK” I said to myself out loud. “So I’ll approach from the north, fly overhead and join the mid-left downwind”. My husband Jeff, in the passenger seat, smiled delightedly. I announced my intentions over the radio to other aircraft in the Collingwood area and made a right turn to the north, positioning myself over the gorgeous shoreline of Georgian Bay.

This was a milestone flight. Two weeks previously, I had passed my flight test and this was my first flight carrying a passenger. Of course, my first passenger was Jeff – which was fitting, as it was that first flight that he took me on that had sparked my interest in aviation.

The flight was from Oshawa, our home base, to Collingwood, for my first ‘$100 hamburger’ flight, as Pilot In Command. $10 for the hamburger and $90 for the fuel to get there! It’s really about the flight, not the food – ask any pilot. Any excuse to go for a flight!

We didn’t actually eat hamburgers, as the “Beyond the Clouds” restaurant at the Collingwood Airport serves a great ‘all day breakfast’. So we had $100 omelets!

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Woohoo!! My nephew, Alex passed his flight test yesterday afternoon, April 17. I’m so proud!

He messaged me on Facebook yesterday morning to let me know that his test was booked for 1300. I asked him which aircraft he would be flying and when he told me he would be flying F-SCG, I told him that was the luckiest airplane at the airport. The real reason that I wanted the aircraft ID, was that I planned to listen in on LiveATC.com.

Sure enough, later in the afternoon, I heard through my computer speakers “Buttonville Tower, Cessna 172, Foxtrot Sierra Charlie Golf, 15 miles north, inbound landing, full stop” and the subsequent exchange. I phoned my sister and we listened together until after he landed on runway 15 and was instructed to exit and contact the ground controller. Very exciting! About a half hour later, we received the good news!

I have not had a chance to talk to Alex about his test, so I’ll take advantage of the inspiration that his success has given me and I’ll write about my own flight test.

After the aircraft maintenance setback that I described in ‘Oops, Wrong Rudder’, GMWI was back in commission at the end of February and I got back into the air. A month without flying, however, meant that I needed to brush up! After a few more lessons and solo flights and delays due to weather, I finally had my ‘pre flight test’ at the end of March. That went fine and my actual flight test was booked for a couple of days later, which was two days before we had planned to leave for our annual trip to Florida.

Preparing for a flight test is nerve-racking! In addition to the flying part, there is a ground portion, where you show the examiner all of the planning that you have done for the flight. Also, the examiner watches as you conduct the pre-flight inspection and asks lots of questions. They can ask whatever they wish, so it’s like preparing again for the Transport Canada written exam, which I had already passed several months previously. Most of the planning can be done ahead of time, but as with the cross country flight planning, some of it has to wait until the day of the flight because of the weather.

Then, after hours of planning and studying, the flight test was cancelled due to poor weather. We rescheduled the test for three weeks hence – to a date after our return from our trip to Florida.

Then a few weeks later, I went through the entire thing again, but this time, the weather was perfect! I finished off my planning on the morning of the test and drove to the airport. Then I waited. The examiner did not turn up. Several agonizing hours later, we found out that there had been a mix-up in the scheduling. We rescheduled once again, for a few more weeks hence.

By the time May 2 rolled around, I was a wreck! Jeff was out of town that day, so I was on my own. Once again, the weather was perfect and after finishing off the planning, I drove to the airport. I had never been so nervous in my life, neither before nor since that day. As I drove up Thickson Road, I said to myself (out loud, even though I was alone in the car) “I’d better pass, because I never want to go through this again!”

This time, the examiner did turn up at the airport. He made me feel very much at ease and complimented me on the thoroughness of my planning, asking very few questions before suggesting that he head over to the airplane (Teresa told me that if that happened, it meant that he was very impressed and felt that he didn’t need to go in lots of detail).

At the hangar, we went through the pre-flight inspection and the examiner asked me a few more questions. I got most of them right, but one partially wrong (I knew why the fuel tanks needed to be vented, but did not know that the fuel caps offered a secondary method of venting the tanks – darn!). But I was really glad that I had created and studied the chart on the impacts of various systems failures on instrument readings. I was able to tell him what the airspeed indicator would show if the pitot tube became blocked after take-off.

Then came the part that I was terrified about – the flight itself. I was most nervous about the precautionary and forced approaches. The examiner coached me, much as my instructor and pilot friends had done, to take it one step at a time and once one part was over, forget about it and move on to the next. I knew that even if I failed a particular maneuver, it was advantageous to still try my best for the rest of the maneuvers, as a ‘partial fail’ means that only the failed parts need to be redone. He also surprised me by suggesting that if I make a mistake that I should not tell him, because perhaps he did not notice!

While we waited for the engine to warm up, we went through the plan for the flight. Since two take-offs and landings (one normal and one ‘specialty’ of each) need to be demonstrated, he suggested that we start off with the specialty take-off, conduct a normal landing, a touch-and-go and then do the specialty landing when we returned at the end of the test. That presented me with my first dilemma. I had never done a touch-and-go – all my circuits had been ‘full-stop’. I wasn’t sure what to say, but I then I remembered that I was Pilot In Command and I told him that I was not comfortable doing touch-and-goes and that I would prefer to do a ‘full-stop’ landing. He didn’t even blink.

I conducted a perfect simulated short field take-off, turned crosswind, then downwind and made my first mistake! I forgot my downwind check. I did not realize it until I had exited the runway and went to push in the carburetor heat knob. It was already pushed in, meaning that I had not pulled it out (which is part of the downwind check). I said to the examiner “I know you said not to say anything if I made a mistake, but there is no way that you did not notice that I forgot my downwind check”. He smiled and nodded, but in a very nice way. So, I thought I had partially failed right there and that I would have to fly everything perfectly for the rest of the test to even get a ‘partial’!

But I didn’t fly perfectly. I was a high on my forced approach and he instructed me to break off the maneuver at a higher altitude than I expected (it’s a simulation, so you don’t actually land in the field, you break off when the examiner says). I took that to mean that I had failed that part, too and I was disappointed that he had not given me the opportunity to demonstrate how I would have bled off the excess altitude by conducting a slip. Then he asked me what I would have done to make the field, so I was able to tell him.

Arriving back at the airport, I did an admirable simulated soft field landing and we taxied to the hangar. After I turned off the engine, he turned to me and stuck out his hand. I took it automatically, while he said “Congratulations”. With a dazed expression, I said “You mean, I passed?”. “Of course”, he laughed!

I was so excited! I got out of the airplane and did a little victory dance as the examiner laughed delightedly. I guessed that he had seen that before!

In the debrief, I discovered that I had flown a very good test! The forgotten downwind check simply reduced that circuit’s performance to ‘satisfactory’. And when I questioned him about being high on the forced approach, his response was “You would have made the second half of the field”.

In fact, I had done so well on the flight test, as well as on the Transport Canada written exam, that I won the 2007 Award of Excellence from the First Canadian Chapter of the Ninety-Nines. The award is presented annually to a female pilot who has achieved academic excellence and flight proficiency in her Private Pilot or Commercial License, in the region of the First Canadian Chapter of the Ninety-Nines.

Now I can’t wait to hear Alex’s story of his flight test!

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In Plan D, I described my long solo cross country flight. After that, it was just a matter of improving the consistency of my performance in all the required maneuvers in order to be confident that I would pass my flight test. I had acquired the knowledge and the skills, now I just needed the experience. I was hoping to get my license before our annual flight to Florida in April, 2007, so that I could do some of the flying. Things were going well, and according to schedule, when we hit a snag.

One cold day in January, my instructor, Teresa, called to say she was sick, but that she had found another instructor to take the lesson that was booked for that day. I had not flown with Sean before, but within minutes we were comfortable together. The plan was to practice stall recovery. A stall in an airplane is not where the engine stops, it is where the airplane stops flying because the wing loses its lift. In order to practice recovering from a stall, you first have to force the airplane to stall (something that you would never do on purpose, except to practice recovery, and then only at a safe altitude).

Two things went wrong on that lesson.

After a few straight and level, power-off and cruise-power stalls, from which I recovered correctly, Sean had me conduct a full-power, climbing stall. I had never done one of those before and it felt like we were pointing straight up! As we approached the stall, Sean reminded me to anticipate a more noticeable stall and probably a wing to drop and to be ready with the correct rudder input. When it happened, I was still taken aback by the abruptness of it. And, sure enough, the left wing dropped and I immediately applied the left rudder! The next thing I knew, we were pointed straight towards the ground! I pulled the throttle all the way to idle and I must have hit the right rudder, because the next thing I knew, the wings were level and I pulled smoothly out of the dive, with my heart pounding! A calm voice beside me said “Nice spin recovery”.

I had hit the wrong rudder when the wing dropped. You are supposed to hit the rudder opposite to the direction that the wing is dropping. The way that I try to remember it is that whichever wing is pointed down, hit the rudder pedal that is ‘pointed’ up – the one closest to the sky, or the ‘top’ rudder. So, we tried it again. I did it incorrectly one more time – same scary result. After that, I did it correctly several more times and then the second thing on the lesson went wrong.

On one of the recoveries, something felt…I don’t know what…different, odd, wrong. We looked at each other and I said “What was that?” Sean said “I don’t know”.

“I don’t know” is not something you want to hear from your instructor in response to that type of question. We cut the lesson short and headed back to the airport – along the way discussing it to try and solidify how we would describe it to the mechanic. We couldn’t – it was not tangible enough. We decided that it may have come from the back of the plane, but we couldn’t even be sure that it was anything at all. It could easily have been an odd gust of air going over the elevator, which was deflected more that it normally would be in flight (due to the stall recovery).

The ensuing inspection found nothing that could explain what we thought we felt. It did, however, find a broken strand on the elevator cable. A new cable was ordered and the airplane was grounded. And so was I! It took almost a month to get the new cable from Cessna.

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In “From The Ground Up” I described how I was overwhelmed by the daunting journey that I had embarked upon when I announced that I would learn to fly. The story introduced the fact that I needed strategies to overcome the obstacles and described the first strategy: Make a plan, work the plan, and work it hard! Repeat.

A previous story, “A Tale of Two First Solos” described two tactics that I used to master the art of landing the airplane: Research and Networking.

The strategy in this story is Improvise, or in other words, Make a plan, work the plan, change the plan. Repeat!, using my long solo cross country as the example.

In order to obtain a pilot license, a student must fly cross country for 5 hours (meaning taking off and landing at multiple airports, alone). To accomplish this, the candidate normally conducts two solo cross country flights: a 2-hour flight and a 3-hour flight. I had already conducted my short cross country flight – from Oshawa to Lindsay to Peterborough and back to Oshawa, with no problems.

Of course, then the weather got in the way and it was another several weeks before I was able to conduct the long one. In the meantime, the Oshawa Airport had closed for runway construction, so we had relocated the airplane to the Greenbank Airport, a grass strip airport about 12 NM north of Oshawa. I had never flown off or onto grass, so my instructor took me up for a few circuits the day before I was to fly the cross country flight.

I woke up early on the morning of the flight and got all the latest weather information that I needed to plan the flight. The key piece of information that I needed was the forecasted direction and speed of the winds at the airports that I would be flying to and at the various altitudes along my route of flight. Using the flight computer, I calculated the compass headings that I would use for each of the four legs: Greenbank to Collingwood to Muskoka to Peterborough to Greenbank.  

Now… it’s pretty hard to get lost flying in Southern Ontario. Almost as soon as you are airborne, you can see Lake Ontario to the south and the CN Tower in downtown Toronto. By the time you are at circuit altitude, you can see Lake Simcoe to the north-west. And there are lots of other recognizable lakes and cities and towns. I was not worried about getting lost. I had all my compass headings figured out and I had flown to all of these airports before, except Greenbank.

Plan A was to fly the compass heading. Also, I had a map, with the route marked in pink, open on my lap, so I could check along the way to make sure I was on course. Sure enough, my planned compass heading had me pointed to halfway up Cook’s Bay at the south end of Lake Simcoe. From there, I just stayed on the same heading and landed at Collingwood. After taking off from Collingwood, though, my next planned compass heading wasn’t working quite as well. The line on my map was drawn parallel to and a bit north of the shoreline of Georgian Bay, but as I flew using my planned compass heading I found myself a lot north of the shoreline. Time for Plan B.

Plan B was simply to fly the route using the map. I flew along the south shore of Georgian Bay and, after leaving the shoreline behind me, I used highways, railroad tracks, power lines, towns and other lakes, to stay on my track. That worked perfectly. Also, the Muskoka airport is easy to find as it’s just north of a fairly large town and the runway is very long.

As I approached the area, I listened on the Muskoka radio frequency to get ready to work myself in with the other traffic and discovered that the runway that was being used for take-off and landing was opposite to the one that I had expected based on the forecasted winds. The winds had shifted and were significantly different from what had been forecasted. Well, that explained why my planned compass heading was no longer working. No problem. I adapted and landed at Muskoka.  

I took off from Muskoka and, sure enough, my planned compass heading for that leg was useless. So, I pointed the airplane to the south-east and, using my map, I flew to Peterborough.

So far, the three airports that I had landed at were airports that I had flown to before. Also, they had paved runways, so they are clearly visible from 10 miles away.

Neither was the case with Greenbank. I had never flown to the Greenbank Airport, I had only done circuits there. Also, the runway is a grass strip, a green grass strip, in a green field, surrounded by other green fields. I knew, from talking to other pilots, that I could possibly be almost on top of it and not be able to find it.

Plan C. After taking off from Peterborough, I pointed towards Lake Scugog, which is the lake near the Greenbank airport, turned on my GPS and pressed “Nearest”, then “Airport”. The result it gave me was “Peterborough”. Oops, of course, since I had just left from there, that would be the nearest airport. I waited until I thought I was more than halfway to Greenbank and tried again. “Nearest”, then “Airport”…the result was “Lindsay”, which was a different airport a bit to the north! Darn. Sure enough, I was closer to Lindsay than to Greenbank. A few minutes later, when I was sure that Greenbank was the closest airport, I tried again, but still got Lindsay as the result. Uh, oh, maybe Greenbank is not in the GPS database – it is, after all, a very small airport.

Plan D.  By this time, I was approaching Lake Scugog and Greenbank was just on the other side of the lake, about 10 minutes away. I looked at the map for inspiration and I found it on Scugog Island, which is a large island in the middle of Lake Scugog. There are two main roads on Scugog Island – a north/south road and an east/west road.

 Both were marked on my map. I noticed that if I drew a straight line along the east/west road and extended that line to the west, it pointed directly to the Greenbank airport. It was like an arrow, saying “this way to Greenbank”.

The road was quite a bit south of my track, so I flew south and as I approached Scugog Island, I found the road and lined myself up with it. I carefully flew straight along the road, to the west side of the island, looked straight ahead and even though I was still 4 miles from the airport, I saw it clearly! Plan D had worked! I flew overhead and joined the right downwind for runway 16, as if I flown there dozens of times!

Next story

For the few weeks after my first solo, all my solo flights were ‘in the circuit’, meaning that I was only allowed to fly solo when I was practicing take-offs and landings. Then came the day that my instructor decided that I was ready to fly solo away from the airport. She may have thought I was ready, but I wasn’t so sure.Flying solo is supposed to build confidence. However, I found that getting into the airplane to fly solo  away from the airport required overcoming a lack of the confidence that flying solo is supposed to build (sort of like a ‘catch-22’). I had struggled with confidence, on and off, since I started learning to fly. There were times when I felt that I would never master a particular maneuver (especially landing), but with my instructor was by my side, I was not frightened….except during my ‘spin recovery’ lesson. That frightened me in spite of having my instructor with me.

 Now I was expected to fly solo to the ‘practice area’ north-east of Port Perry (20 miles north of the airport) and perform many of those same maneuvers without an instructor by my side (but not spins, thank goodness).

 I recall one day when I was climbing into the airplane to do a solo flight. Jeff and the fellow in the hangar next to ours were watching me and I heard John say wistfully to Jeff  “I wish my wife would learn how to fly. But she’s just too nervous”.  “I know how she feels”. I muttered to myself.

 So how did I force myself to climb into the cockpit on the day that I first flew solo away from the airport (and on many subsequent days) in order to do what was necessary to build the confidence? How did I do the thing that I feared in order that it may no longer frighten me? How did I confront and overcome my fear?

 I had already developed and used some strategies for overcoming obstacles. For example, I used perseverance, research and networking to master the art of landing the airplane. Now I needed some strategies to conquer my fear of flying solo, in order to achieve my dream of becoming a pilot.

 First, I focused on the end goal – my dream of becoming a pilot. I visualized the pilot license itself – a piece of paper that proved that I had met the requirements of becoming a pilot, something that a very small percentage of the population achieves. I visualized flying with Jeff as my passenger. I visualized flying the Fisk approach to Oshkosh as ‘pilot in command’. I visualized the lifestyle that Jeff and I would have, flying all over North America, and taking turns at the controls. I visualized all the things that have since come true and that you will read about in my future stories.

 Second, I drew upon my sense of obligation. I had announced that I was going to get my pilot’s license – I had made a commitment. And also, I did not want to disappoint Jeff or my instructor, Teresa. Flying solo away from the airport is a step in the process and they were expecting me to do it. They expected me to do it, whether I was afraid to or not.

 Next, I took it one small step at a time. The first time I flew to the practice area, I did not do any maneuvers – I just flew around and got a feel for flying by myself. After about a half hour, I radioed to the Oshawa Tower Controller that I was returning to the airport for some circuits. Nothing scary or remarkable happened on that flight. On the next solo flight, I did some steep turns and slow flight – two fairly simple maneuvers that I knew I was good at. I was struck by how relaxing it was to do these exercises without an instructor beside me. Strange. On the next flight, I added a couple more maneuvers and next thing I knew, I was doing forced and precautionary approaches by myself. And I was doing them with confidence!

 Then it was time for my solo cross country flight!

 In order to obtain a pilot’s license in Canada, a candidate is required to do 5 hours of solo cross country flight. This is accomplished by conducting 2 solo cross country flights – a short and a long one.

My short cross country route was Lindsay, Peterborough, then back to Oshawa. I flew the route with my instructor on one day and on the next day, I was to fly it by myself. Unlike the Oshawa Airport, Lindsay and Peterborough did not have control towers, but I was quite familiar with the procedures and the radio calls, as I had been to both airports a few times with Jeff and now I had also been there with Teresa.

 On the day after I flew the cross country route with Teresa, the weather was great. I took off with confidence and headed north for the 20 minute flight to Lindsay. As I approached the airport, I heard reports on the radio frequency that there was a bit of a crosswind, which could be a bit of a challenge for me. Teresa had said that if that happened and if I didn’t think I could accomplish the landing, I should simply overfly the airport and continue to Peterborough. I could re-do the flight another time (safety first!). Fortunately, at the time that I landed, the wind conditions were within my comfort zone and I landed smoothly.

 I jumped out of the airplane and headed into the terminal building to get my logbook stamped by the airport manager (to prove to Transport Canada that I had completed that leg of the flight). The airport manager, who I was familiar with, said to me “Lesley, you are on your solo cross country, aren’t you?! Congratulations!”

 I was very excited as I rushed back out to the airplane! Then, halfway across the ramp, I stopped short. I stared in awe at my Cessna 172. I had seen the airplane many times before, but never had I climbed into it alone except at Oshawa. That little airplane suddenly looked huge! I was overwhelmed by the fact that, in order to get my license, I was required to get into that large ‘vehicle’, start it up, taxi, take off and fly to Peterborough, by myself! Who was I kidding? Maybe this wasn’t for me. I could call Jeff and he could drive to Lindsay in about an hour, I could drive the car home and he could fly the plane. I actually considered doing that!

 I stood stock still – long enough that I realized that if anyone was watching, I would look foolish. Believe it or not, that is what got me moving – embarrassment! I walked tentatively, casually towards the plane, one step at a time….and with every step, I felt myself getting a step closer to my goal. By the time I got to the airplane, my confidence had returned, and once I was in the cockpit, all my fears had vanished.

 I flew to Peterborough, then to Oshawa. My short solo cross country was a success!

Next story…

When Jeff first handed the controls to me on that first flight, I did not find it difficult to fly the airplane. I was just flying along straight and level, with some gentle turns thrown in and it was just like driving a car. So when I announced that I was going to get my pilot’s license, I really had no idea what I was getting into.

I did realize that there was more to obtaining a pilot’s license than flying the airplane. I knew, for example, that I had to pass a Transport Canada written examination that comprised several topics, many of which were somewhat technical. Even thought I’m not technically minded, I’m fairly intelligent, so I didn’t think it would be overly challenging. I even planned to teach myself the necessary topics, using the textbook “From the Ground Up”, with Jeff  as help if I had any trouble.

I quickly realized that I was delusional. In fact, within a couple of weeks of beginning the journey, three things became apparent that almost made me quit.

1. Flying the airplane was not as easy as I thought (or as Jeff made it look).
2. There was no chance that I was going to able to teach myself all the required technical material.
3. I was afraid.

In my presentation about managing transition, I explain that transition is about change and any big change comes with obstacles and fears. In order to achieve your dreams, you need to overcome the obstacles and conquer your fear.

The first two were simply obstacles. OK, so it was going to be harder than I thought, but I knew that I could develop and implement strategies and tactics to overcome the obstacles.

The third point, however, was almost crippling. I was so afraid, that I found excuses for avoiding flying lessons. In fact, in the first 5 months of learning to fly, I only had three lessons!

This next series of stories will deal with a few of the strategies that I used to overcome the obstacles and how I conquered the fear.

1. Make a plan, work the plan, and work it hard! Repeat.

The example I’ll use for this strategy is Ground School. I was not disciplined enough to apply myself to studying the textbook, sitting on the deck at the cottage. And there was a lot of material, much of it too technical for me. I admitted that I needed to get into a classroom. I would enroll in the ground school class that started that September at the Buttonville airport, I would sit in the classroom for 40 hours and be a sponge, I would do whatever small amount of homework that might be necessary and I would pass the Transport Canada exam. That was the plan.

Of course it was not that easy. It had been many years since I was in school and that fact was made clear when I met my fellow students. Most of them were at least a full generation younger than me. Even some of the instructors were 20-30 years younger than me!

I need to fully understand material in order to absorb it, so my preference is to sit right up front and ask lots of questions.  It quickly became clear that it would not work out that way. Since there was too much material to teach in 40 hours, the instructors assigned reading before each class, but I had already tried learning from the textbook and that hadn’t worked. Also, the instructors only skimmed the surface, racing through Powerpoint slides and there was hardly any time for questions. And unfortunately, the flight school had a rule that they were not allowed to hand out copies of the Power Point slides, so the students had to madly write notes. It’s impossible to listen, absorb and write, all at the same time.

Also, several of the topics were technical and therefore very difficult for me. For example, I had to learn about airplane engines and electrical systems, two topics that neither interested me nor came easily. For those two topics, I decided to learn just enough to pass the written exam, as the type of flying that I would be doing did not require me to understand them in detail. Jeff would be the resident expert on those two topics.

Two other topics that I struggled with – Navigation and Aviation Meteorology did interest me. For that reason, and because I knew that they are crucial in private flying, I wanted to fully understand them. Unfortunately, the instructor that I had for Aviation Meteorology was not able to answer most of my questions and basically read from the Power Point slides. I tried to fill in the gaps by carefully studying the textbook and asking Jeff my questions, but I just couldn’t understand it. With Navigation, the instructor was very good, but there just wasn’t time in the classroom to answer all my questions. Also, I could not get the hang of the E6-B (a manual flight computer that is used in Navigation – basically a very complicated slide rule). At the end of ground school, I was more confused about Navigation and Aviation Meteorology than when I had started.

My solution was to repeat those two topics the next time ground school was offered. Ahead of time, I read my notes and the textbook and when I got into the classroom the second time around, all I had to do was listen and ask questions. It came much more easily. And once I understood the basics of the E6-B, I had Jeff give me additional exercises and problems to solve. One night, we were out for dinner and while we waited for our meal, I calculated headings and air speeds  from wind speed and direction examples that Jeff provided. The waiter thought we were nuts!

But it all worked! On the practice exam, I got the highest mark in the class. And when I wrote the Transport Canada written examination, I was confident that I would do well – which I did!

Next Story

“Rock your Wings“, “Hi, Welcome to Oshkosh” and “Easy-Up, Easy-Down”  was the series of stories that described our first annual trip to Airventure in Oshkosh Wisconsin in 2006. This story is about our seventh and latest trip, in 2012!

This time, we were lucky with the weather on the days that we were flying, but not so lucky on some of the days that we were at the show, as we were challenged by heat and thunderstorms. I wish they would move Airventure to mid September!

Getting there

Since we always camp at the North 40 and we like to get a good camping spot (i.e. close to the show and to the showers), we planned to arrive no later than the Friday – a full three days before the show opened. The weather cooperated and we departed from Oshawa on the morning of Friday July 20^th. It was my turn to fly. With a slight tailwind, we arrived early at Saginaw, where we cleared customs and grabbed a free hot dog before donning our lifejackets for the flight across Lake Michigan (the ceiling was unlimited, so we planned to overfly the lake to save 1½ hours of airtime).

Since I flew into Oshkosh last year, this was Jeff’s leg, (my turn again next year!!). As we approached Ripon (the town over which the aircraft are supposed to set themselves up, properly spaced, we saw two other aircraft that were going to arrive at Ripon at the same time as us, so we broke off, circled and joined the queue behind them.

As we approached Fisk, the controllers told us to follow the railroad tracks and switch to tower frequency. The tower controller cleared us to land on the numbers, runway 9, which is more or less straight in. He then cleared another airplane to land, but we didn’t see who that was until we were on a long right-slant final, and we saw a Ford Tri-motor on a tight left base, which put us head-to-head. The Ford driver spoke up first “Uh…tower, there’s a Cessna…” The controller’s response was “Cessna, follow the Ford, cleared to land on the threshold” Jeff maneuvered us behind the Ford and I got out the camera.

Camping

When I tell non-aviation people that we camp under the wing of our airplane, they are amazed! It sounds so romantic. And it is, even when there are 1,000 other airplanes and tents on the field.

We bought a new tent for this year, as the zipper on our old tent was damaged in a storm at Oshkosh last year. It was very easy to put up and was just the right size. Then we contacted our friend in Oshkosh who rents us bikes every year and he brought us our bikes. We were all set for the week!

We were looking forward to staying dry this year, as we had carefully chosen a tent that we were convinced would hold up better to the weather than our last two tents did. The new tent was called a “Coleman Weather-Tec”. For the first five days we did stay dry, and we were confident that we had chosen well.

On Thursday, I was having lunch with some Canadian and U.S. Ninety-Nines when a violent thunderstorm hit. After the worst of it was over, my friend Mireille and I headed back to the North 40. While we were on the tram, we saw: an airplane flipped over, a huge sign knocked down and some porta-potties on their sides. Yikes! I commented to Mireille that I hoped my new “Coleman Weather-Tec” would still be standing.

It was flat – and everything inside our tent was soaked. There were dozens of flat tents in the North 40. I later leaned that our friends Victoria and Bob (newlyweds!) had their tent completely destroyed. They had to borrow a tent for the rest of their stay.

Fortunately, Jeff was able to unbend the poles without breaking them and we got the tent back up. Then, the sun came out, so we took everything out of the tent and hung it up to dry and by early evening, everything, including our sleeping bags, was dry! We were back in business and ready to enjoy the rest of the week.

Ninety-Nines Award of Inspiration presentation

The Ninety-Nines Award of Inspiration is presented annually by the Board of Directors of The Ninety-Nines. This year’s recipient is my friend, Mireille Goyer, of the British Columbia Coast Chapter, West Canada Section. Mireille won the award for her dedication for introducing girls and women to flying worldwide. Since she was not able to travel to Providence for the International Convention, Susan Larson presented the award to Mireille at the breakfast at the Ninety-Nines tent at Airventure on Thursday July 26. Congratulations, Mireille!

Partying

One of the great things about Airventure is the partying. Every year, as I get involved in different organizations, I have more opportunities for free partying, such as:

• BBQ lunch hosted by Mike Martin of the Buttonville Flying Club
• Young Eagles Awards dinner
• Canadian EAA ice cream social
• Ninety-Nines breakfast
• Women of Aviation Worldwide luncheon
• Friday night International Visitors Party

The Airshow

Well, actually, Airventure is one continuous airshow. Alarm clocks are not needed at the North 40. As soon as the airport opens at 6:00 a.m., the airplanes start taking off. There’s nothing like a radial engine to wake you up and get you pumped for a day of aviation immersion. The formal airshow doesn’t start until later in the day, but all day long, there are interesting airplanes to see, both on the ground and in the air.

My favourites this year were the Tora, Tora, Tora warbirds airshows on the Friday and Saturday and the night airshow on the Saturday night. All three airshows included a ‘wall of fire’. The Saturday night airshow was capped off by a spectacular fireworks display. It was worth staying for the entire week, just to see the night airshow!

Only 49 weeks to go until Airventure 2013!

Next Story

It has been a few weeks since I posted a story and I just received some news that inspired me to get back to writing. My nephew, Alex, flew his first solo this morning! Every time a pilot hears the news about a student’s first solo, they are reminded of their own first solo. So this story is about two first solos; mine and Alex’s.

Of course, 20 year old Alex soloed after far fewer hours than his 50 year old aunt. Some women don’t reveal their age – I don’t reveal how many hours it took me before I was ready for my first solo. Aside from all the physical reasons such as weather, the airplane maintenance schedule, etc., I believe that the main reason was that I simply was not in a hurry. The whole concept of flying the airplane by myself, without an instructor, before I got my license….well, it terrified me. When I first learned that one of the requirements for getting a pilot’s license was 25 hours of solo time, I almost gave up right then and there. They don’t let you drive a car by yourself before you get your driver’s license, but they make you fly an airplane by yourself before they will give you a pilot’s license.

Also, in spite of having resigned from my job to learn how to fly, I only managed to have three lessons before the end of that first summer. I was surprised when I looked in my logbook the other day and noted that my fourth lesson was not until November 20! Why the delay? In September, I returned to work, part-time, and my flight instructor left for a flying job in Moncton. Then, in October, we decided to move the airplane to the Oshawa airport, so it would be closer to our home. Also, I had decided to take the ground school course, so my Saturdays were spent at the Buttonville airport in the classroom.

In November, I met my new instructor, Teresa. She had been Jeff’s instructor when he had gotten back into flying, and Jeff felt that she would be perfect for me. He was right! We ‘clicked’ right away. Teresa’s style of teaching was just right for me. I tend towards drama and panic, whereas Teresa is the opposite – she is calm and reassuring. I recall one lesson where I felt that my performance had been particularly poor. When I got home after the lesson, I made a list of all the mistakes that I had made. At the beginning of my next lesson I showed it to Teresa and said, melodramatically “Here are all the things that I did on my last lesson that could have killed us”. After reminding me that she would not have let us die, she took the list, looked it over and made a list of her own. She handed it back to me and said “And here are all the things that you did well.” Her list was longer than mine.

The next big challenge was mastering the art of landing the airplane. Take-off is optional , landing is mandatory. A student is not allowed to go solo until they are able to consistently land safely, landing after landing. After many lessons consisting of nothing but take-offs and landings, I just wasn’t getting it. The landings were all, in Teresa’s words, “safe and unassisted”, but many of them were less than elegant. Some landings were smooth, some were hard, some were flat, some were hard and flat – the secret to making them all smooth eluded me. Teresa tried every trick in her book, including sending me for a lesson with a differetn instructor. That didn’t work. I got on the internet to do research, but that didn’t help either. So I turned to my network, my fellow pilots. I asked every pilot that I met at the various flying clubs that I belonged to what advice they could offer.

Finally one of the pilots asked me where was I looking just before touching down on the runway. “Well, at the runway, of course”. “Yes, but where on the runway?” was his next question. When he heard that I was looking at my intended touch-down point, he said “Ah, that’s the problem! You should transition your gaze to the far end of the runway”. The very first time I tried it, it worked and it still works every time. I was ready for my first solo!

On June 8, 2006, Jeff accompanied me to the airport….with his camera. Teresa and I went up and did two circuits (a circuit is one take-off and circle back around for a landing). After the second circuit, she told me to taxi over to the terminal and shut down the engine. She got out of the airplane, told me to lock the passenger door, smiled and wished me luck. Jeff, watching from outside the terminal, waved and gave me a thumbs up.

Sitting in the quiet of the cockpit, gathering my thoughts, I realized that I had never sat in the plane by myself before. After restarting the engine, I radioed to the ground controller to ask for permission to taxi to the active runway for one circuit (a 6 minute flight). As I taxied to runway 12, I felt calm and confident – I was ready for this. I’m sure the grin on my face came through in my radio transmission when I told the tower controller that I was ready for take-off. I squealed with delight as I taxied onto the runway and advanced the throttle to full power, feeling the familiar thrill as I eased back on the control yoke and became airborne.

I climbed and at 500′ above the ground, I made a gentle left turn for the crosswind leg of my circuit. At 1000′ above the ground, I leveled off and turned left again, to join downwind – the longest leg of the circuit. I conducted my downwind checks and for the first time since taxiing onto the runway, I remembered that I was alone in the cockpit. I reported to the tower that I was turning base (another left turn) and began descending and reduced my speed. I held a consistent airspeed of 70 knots and at 500′ above the ground, I made my last left turn, onto my final approach. The controller cleared me to land. I could almost hear my instructor’s voice, reminding me that a good approach makes for a good landing. I slowed the airplane to 65 knots, then 60 knots and held it steady.

As I passed over the threshold of the runway, I focused my gaze on the far end of the runway and raised the nose to further slow down the airplane. I landed smoothly and applied the brakes. On the radio, I heard, “Mike, Whiskey India. Oshawa tower. Exit at Charlie. Contact ground on 118.4. Congratulations on your first solo.” Suddenly, I was choked up. “Thank you. Mike Whiskey India.” I squeaked back.

After shutting down the engine, I jumped out of the airplane and then continued jumping, I was so excited! What an amazing feeling. I had flown an airplane – by myself, without an instructor! What an accomplishment! I highly recommend it. Jeff and Teresa congratulated me as we walked to the terminal and just before we went inside, one of the flight school staff tossed a huge bucket of water at me from behind….freezing cold water! I had heard that getting soaked by a bucket of water was the way that they celebrated first solos at Oshawa, but they still managed to surprise me!

My nephew, Alex, had a similar description of his first solo today, and there were also differences. After 8 circuits (including some ‘overshoots’ and ‘simulated engine failures’), his instructor had him taxi to the terminal and he hopped out. Like me, Alex felt confident, and in fact, he said that he felt less nervous with his instructor not in the airplane.

Unlike my experience, however, there was other traffic in the circuit, as he was flying at a busier airport and on a Saturday. That did not affect his flight, however, He said that it was one of the best circuits that he had ever flown. Everything went perfectly – altitudes, airspeeds, everything! And he made a very smooth landing. In Alex’s words “I greased it”. I asked him if there was anything unusual about the flight and he said “No, other than the psychotic upper winds, everything was perfect”

The first solo celebration ritual at Alex’s airport is similar to the one at the Oshawa airport, in that they throw buckets of water at the student. They have an additional one, too. They have a bathtub with wings and wheels on it and they put the student in the bathtub, fully clothed and with hot or cold water in the tub. In Alex’s case, it was hot water (on a very hot day) and they wheel you up and down in front of the hangars. What fun!

As he was describing the flight to us, he did not seem very excited and when I asked him how he felt, he shrugged and said that it was just like any other flight. I reminded him that he had just flown an airplane by himself, without and instructor, and that was a huge accomplishment. I asked him “So, how would you describe your first solo flight?” His response? “Definitely satisfying”

Next Story

From the title of this story, you might expect that I will be describing my experience of learning how to take off and land an airplane. Not so – in fact there are no landings in today’s story. In my next story “A Tale of Two First Solos”, you will read about how I mastered the art of landing an airplane.

In Welcome to Oshkosh, I wrote about our first arrival at AirVenture and taxiing to the spot where we would be camping for the next week.

The next while was spent positioning the airplane, tying it down and setting up our campsite. Since we were inexperienced campers, we had fortunately purchased one of the new “Easy-up” tents. It works a bit like an umbrella, as the poles open out from a central point at the top of the dome and, there is a mechanism there that, once snapped into place, holds the tent open. We had it set up in no time, fastened to the ground with the ropes and tent pegs that were provided.

Camped next to us were AirVenture veterans Newell, Kay and their daughter Jenny, from Minnesota. We were lucky to have them to guide us, as we were totally unprepared, logistically. We had brought a cooler, but that was the extent to which we had considered the meal situation. Newell and Kay showed us where the closest restaurant was – a Hardee’s – and told us about the grocery store and other restaurants a bit farther away. They also explained about the shower facilities and the transportation options.

Off we went to Hardee’s for ‘dinner’, a delicious, mega-fat, fast-food experience. Hmm, we would have to go farther afield the next night to find something more compatible with our normal diet. After dinner, we went to the grocery store to buy ice and breakfast food.

By then, we were exhausted and ready for our first night in a tent. We slept beautifully!

On Monday morning, we awoke refreshed and excited about AirVenture’s opening day! After a quick breakfast at the campsite, we donned our sunscreen, hats and walking shoes and headed towards the flight line! We had noted in the schedule that a Corsair (Jeff’s favourite airplane) would be arriving at 10:00 a.m. As we approached the flight line, Jeff caught sight of the Corsair. We ran like hell and got there just in time to experience the Corsair’s fly-bys and landing. To me, the Corsair was just an airplane, but I was getting caught up in the excitement of the moment and laughed with delight when the Corsair did a high speed pass. I glanced at Jeff to share in his reaction and was surprised to see him wiping his eyes! Totally out of character – he was more excited than I was!

Our first day at AirVenture was so fun! There was so much to do and see. It’s huge! I had fully expected to spend much of my time sitting around the campsite reading my paperbacks, but I quickly realized that that was NOT going to happen. I won’t try and describe all there is to do and see at AirVenture, and I certainly recommend that you visit the website to see for yourself. http://www.airventure.org/

Even better, go to Oshkosh!

After our first full day of AirVenture, we were exhausted! We had sore feet and we were starving! The sky was darkening, so we wisely grabbed our rain ponchos before heading out to the Mexican Restaurant that Newell and Kay had told us about – a 15 minute walk. While we relaxed over a delicious Mexican meal, we could see the sky getting darker and darker. Then came the rain, followed by wind and thunder and lightning. By the time we had finished our meal, it was raining hard and it was quite dark, as the sun had gone down – oops, forgot the flashlights! We put on our rain ponchos and went out into the rain.

As we approached our section of the campground, something looked not quite right. As we got closer, we realized that it was the porta-potties that were about 20 meters from out campsite. In the row of a half dozen porta-potties, only two of them were still upright – the rest had been blown over! Then we rounded the tail of our airplane and at first, we did not see our tent. Where did it go? Oh, there it was! But instead of being a dome shape with the dome at the top, our ‘easy-up’ tent, although still attached to the ground, was turned inside out, like an umbrella.

‘Easy-up, easy-down’!

The tent was full of water. Our air mattress and duffle bags of clothes were almost floating in the bowl of water.

Fortunately, the ‘easy-up’ mechanism had not been damaged and we were able to get it back up again, so we at least had a roof over our heads. We slept in our only dry clothes – the ones we were wearing, directly on top of a bare air mattress.

Daylight revealed that we had fared better than some. The next day, we actually saw tents in the garbage dumpsters and we heard stories of people sleeping in their airplanes. Newelland Kay described how they had laid on their air mattresses with their feet up against the poles of the tent to prevent it from collapsing.

The day was hot and sunny, so we went to Target and bought rope and clothes pegs and strung the clothesline between the wings, struts, propeller and tail of the airplane and hung our clothes and sleeping bags out to dry. Jeff also reinforced the tent with additional ropes to prevent a recurrence. By that evening, we were back in business and we stayed dry for the rest of the week!

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In Rock Your Wings, I described our first flight to Oshkosh and my unexpected emotional reaction when the air traffic controller instructed us to rock our wings. After we rocked, the controller said “Nice rock” and gave us the rest of our instructions, advising us that runway 27 was in use, that we should follow the railroad tracks and join the right downwind for runway 27. He told us which of the Oshkosh tower frequencies we should switch over to. A few minutes later, we had the airport in sight!

Joining a right downwind for runway 27 meant that we were to fly slightly to the north of the runway, parallel to it, in the direction opposite to the way we would land. This gave us a chance to get a great look at the action – the airplanes landing on the runway and taxiing on the grass towards the rows upon rows of airplanes with tents beside them!

After we passed the ‘landing’ end of the runway, we were instructed to make our base turn (towards the runway). Jeff did so and began to configure the airplane for landing; extending the flaps, slowing down and descending. Just as Jeff was making our right turn onto the final leg, he noticed a faster airplane coming from our left, at a lower altitude. He was travelling in the same direction that we were just turning to – towards the runway for landing. We heard the controller clear someone to land on the green dot and then we were cleared to land on the orange dot. As soon as we were lined up with the runway, Jeff cursed and said “Do you see him?” See who?! I had not seen the airplane that Jeff had glimpsed as he made the turn towards final.

The other airplane was conducting an IFR (instrument flight rules) arrival, which means that they were coming straight in to final approach from the east. He was lower than us, on a 3 degree glide slope, compared to our 6 degrees. Now he was hidden from our view below our airplane…and we were descending!

There was never any danger, as the controller had us both in sight and he had cleared both of us to land. However, with our lack of experience in this high-traffic type of environment, we were not comfortable. Jeff immediately arrested our descent by applying some power at the same time as extending the rest of the flaps. The extra flap angle had the desired effect of reducing our speed over the ground and increasing our forward visibility and a moment later, we saw the other airplane shoot out from beneath us and proceed towards his landing target – the green dot – phew! Jeff resumed his normal landing approach and touched down smoothly on the orange dot.

Quite exciting!

We were then instructed to immediately exit onto the grass and follow the linemen to our parking spot. Taxiing on grass is not as easy as taxiing on pavement and it was a long way to taxi, so I helped Jeff pull back on the control yoke to lighten the load on the nose wheel. We followed the linemen (and women) all the way to the very last row of the campground, as the campground was getting full. Once we arrived at our parking spot, Jeff shut down the engine and we opened the doors. We had made it to AirVenture!

I climbed out and immediately started jumping up and down, literally squealing with excitement. “Hi, welcome to Oshkosh!” I heard someone say. I turned and saw the camper receptionist grinning at me. “Is this your first time?” he guessed. I wonder how he could tell?

I couldn’t even speak. I nodded excitedly and he laughed with delight.

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Five years ago today, on May 2, 2007, I became a Licensed Private Pilot! I can’t believe that I have been a pilot for 5 years!! I decided to celebrate the milestone by writing the story of my first flight lesson, which, even though it took place almost 7 years ago, I remember like it was yesterday – especially the moment when the wheels left the ground. But I’m getting ahead of myself.

At the end of my last story, Life is too Short to be a Passenger, I announced to Jeff that I wanted to learn how to fly the airplane. I have never been one to just ‘go along for the ride’ in life….

That was 7 years ago, after Jeff took me flying in our airplane for the first time. Over the weeks that followed, Jeff and I talked about flying, and the adventures that we could take in our airplane. I knew that learning to fly would give me the knowledge and feeling of control that I would need to overcome my fears and truly enjoy our new lifestyle.

But at that time, I was working between 60 and 70 hours a week. I didn’t have time to learn how to fly!

A new possibility was emerging in my mind – the possibility of a very different life – one that did not include my high stress, senior management job. The fact that my 50^th birthday was looming certainly came into play. My mother had died from breast cancer when she was 53.

I knew I couldn’t learn how to fly AND continue with my current job, so I had to choose. It was a very difficult decision, and we spent hours going over finances and budgets.  In the end, happiness won out! At the end of April, a few weeks after those first flights, I handed in my resignation at work, giving two months’ notice. My manager was shocked! I explained that the stress, the hours and the commute were too much and that I wanted to start enjoying life. “Besides”, I added, “we just bought an airplane and I’m going to learn to fly it”.

As we all know, one of the ways to set and achieve a goal is to write it down. Without realizing it, I had done that, when, after my second flight, I had written in Jeff’s logbook “Since we own an airplane, I might as well learn how to fly it”. Well, that was one thing – a note in a logbook that a few people might see. My manager, however, took it much further than that! When she sent out the announcement about my resignation – to the entire company on the company’s internal communications portal (which goes to thousands of people), she stated that I was going to get my pilot’s license. Up until that point, I had no intention of getting my pilot’s license. I had thought that I would take a few lessons, learn how to land the airplane in case Jeff had a heart attack when we were flying, that sort of thing. But get my license? That sounded too difficult. I just wanted to fly! I didn’t want to study, write exams or take a flight test or anything as formal as that.

I became an instant celebrity! People at work were stopping me in the hall and dropping by my office to congratulate me on my decision to become a pilot and to ask me all kinds of questions (which I had no answers for). And my staff and colleagues were proud to be associated with someone who was going to be a pilot. I was embarrassed, but I did not set them straight.

I looked into the requirements for getting a pilot license and I discovered that there are different levels of licenses. I decided to go with the one called the Recreational Pilot License, as it required fewer hours of training and did not require me to attend ground school (a full Private Pilot License requires a minimum of 40 hours of ground school). The perfect solution to my situation! I would become a pilot with minimal effort!

My last day of work was to be at the end of June and I was going to spend the summer dividing my time between the cottage and taking flying lessons. May and June were filled with wrapping things up at work and planning for the summer. Near the end of June, we moved the airplane to the Lindsay Airport, which was closer to our cottage. We visited the flight school there and learned that they had just hired a new instructor – a female – and she would be joining the school before the end of June. Their ground school would be starting in July – did I want to sign up? “No, thank you”, I politely declined.

Perfect – everything was lining up.

Thursday June 30, 2005, was my last day of full-time work (the company had graciously offered to have me back, part-time, in a different role, after the end of September) and we went to the cottage for the long weekend. I had my first flight lesson booked for Monday July 4^th, which was my 50^th birthday!

We awoke on that day to thick black clouds and a forecast for thunderstorms in the afternoon, which was when my lesson was supposed to take place. My instructor called to cancel and re-book for two days later. Very disappointing! It didn’t stop us from having a very nice birthday celebration, however, at the fanciest restaurant in Bobcaygeon!

In no time, it was July 6^th. As we drove to the airport, I could not contain my excitement. We met my instructor and she and Jeff chatted about her experience and then they talked – at length – about our airplane (I was going to use our airplane to learn to fly and she would normally use the flight schools’ airplanes). Hello – I’m over here – waiting for my flight lesson!

Eventually, we got started. Her first question was “So, how is ground school going?” She knew darned well that I was not taking ground school – and the ground school had not even started yet. This was not a good sign. I reminded her that I was going for my Recreational License and would not be attending ground school. She nodded disapprovingly. Then she asked me if I had read the POH. The what? The POH, the Pilot Operating Handbook for the airplane. I dug it out of the flight bag and leafed through it. “You want me to read this?” I asked incredulously? Apparently, she did.

I began to wonder what I had gotten myself into. I sat through a lecture about how to lean the mixture and how to calculate range and endurance. I wondered if I really needed to know any of this, but I did not comment – I just nodded as if I had some clue of what she was talking about. Finally, it was time to go flying!

Then everything changed!  As it turned out, this was her favourite part of the lesson, too! After showing me how to do the pre-flight inspection, we got into the airplane. This was my first time sitting in the pilot’s seat (the left seat) where I would be sitting for all of my flight lessons. She walked me through the pre-start and the start-up checklists and we got the engine started. She showed me how to taxi, which is done using the rudder pedals (and much more difficult than I expected), not the control yoke.

And then we were at the runway. She announced our intentions to other airplanes in the area and taxied onto the runway. Putting her hand lightly on mine, she guided me to smoothly apply full throttle and as we reached 55 knots, she helped me pull back gently on the control yoke and we were airborne! It was an amazing feeling to know that I was controlling the airplane!  I still get the same thrill every time I take off!

We climbed out over the beautiful countryside, over farmers’ fields and lakes. By this time, it was early evening and the air was smooth. It was a bit hazy, so there wasn’t a well-defined horizon. That made it a bit difficult to fly straight and level, but my instructor was pleased with my ability to handle the airplane. I had been flying with Jeff for the past two or three months, so I was used to the movement of the airplane and most of her students did not have as much time in a small airplane as I had. She decided to move on to turns and she was impressed with my lack of hesitation to bank the airplane – again, because I had experienced this during my flights with Jeff.

All too soon, it was time to return to the airport. The instructor landed the airplane – it would be another few lessons before I would be allowed to do that. After we stopped the engine and I got out of the airplane, I was literally jumping up and down with excitement. I then knew what I have never doubted since.  No matter how many manuals I had to read, or how many lessons I had to take, I was going to be a pilot!

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