Today as we arrived at Camden airport the air was clear and calm. The fog and overcast predicted by the aviation forecast was nowhere to be seen, which made good conditions for solo flying. I knew my usual instructor was away today and that I would be flying with someone else, who turned out to be the same person I flew with last time my instructor was away. All this added up to the precious solo circuit time, which I need to clock up two hours of before I move on to the next stage of training.
Initial solo time takes place within the circuit pattern and consists of doing a couple of laps dual with an instructor who checks the conditions, traffic, and how you're flying. Then if they decide all is fine, they send you up for a couple of touch-and-go circuits. All this happens within an hour, so usually ends up being 0.5 hours dual and 0.5 hours solo in the log book.
After two touch-and-go's we made a full stop landing and my instructor hopped out. I flew three touch-and-go circuits and then a full stop.
Today I was very happy with my flying because achieved the three goals I had in the back of my head. They were:
-Fly accurate circuits (I knew I was capable of maintaining a more accurate circuit pattern, and had before, but lately had been focusing on radio communications, engine monitoring etc)
-Level off accurately at circuit altitude (when flying solo the aircraft lighter and so climbs easier. I've been tending to get up to 100 ft too high on downwind which isn't good enough for me so needs to be improved)
-Make some really nice landings (today my instructor suggested I focus more on landing on the centre line, which I did ok given the conditions)
This was made much easier owing to the calm weather and traffic conditions, but that also allowed me to focus on them rather than crosswind landing technique, for example. I thoroughly enjoyed my solo flying today, and I was very happy with the circuits and landings I made.
It was one of those sessions where I really got to enjoy the thrill of flight. There is nothing quite like climbing through 600 ft AGL to find the air is smooth while turning on to crosswind, seeing the view all the way past the CBD to the East, and then making a smooth and comfortable approach and landing. It's even better knowing that I'm capable to safely do all this by myself. I often think back to when I was first considering learning to fly and what I thought then, compared to what I think now.
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