Time flies when you're having fun

A dreadful pun, but it's bloody accurate. It's been quite a busy week since I started flying on Tuesday. Yesterday saw me have flight number 6 at 6am - and I should have had flight number 7 at 10:30 but the aircraft was still 'Tech' so the lesson was cancelled. The pace at which the learning goes at is very fast - you literally get to watch your instructor perform a manoeuvre, have a couple of attempts yourself, then move on to the next. A typical 1.5hr slot will end up being about an hour's flight time, due to time spent on the ground doing pre-flight, startup checks, power checks, taxi, hold... then it takes a good 10 to 15 minutes to fly from Goodyear Airport to the practise area to the south - allow 15 minutes for the trip back and you're looking at 30 minutes of 'new' lesson time.
I'm feeling happier in myself now as I'm starting to get a hang of all the checks, checks and more checks that have to be done, and also getting a feel for the controls. Yesterday we did practise stalls, and I received some good praise from my Instructor when I carried out a full power-off stall at 5000ft then recovered it with approx 100ft height loss and minor heading deviation.
I've managed to take a few more photos and videos too - but as we are still playing about locally they are mostly the same as what is already on my website. If anyone wants to see some of the video footage then let me know - it's a bit too large to keep on my webspace permanently.
I'm now off until Tuesday at the earliest as Gilbert doesn't work Mondays - and it sure feels nice to switch off and relax. Despite being up at 4am yesterday I didn't seem to suffer too much for it, and was bright and breezy when I got home at about 9:30am. My flying buddy Mal, and his chauffeur Steve Robinson (also from AP256) called round at our apartment at 10:40, and I felt rather sheepish when I told them we were heading out to Barnes and Noble for children's story time at 11am. They were both good about it, and followed us up there so we could sit and have a chat over some Starbucks's Frappuccinos (which in case you're wondering taste just the same as in the UK, only they cost less here)
After story time, and after the guys had headed back to the airport - Clare, Georgia and I hung around a bit longer at B&N, then headed home. Shortly afterwards we were paid a visit by Tony Grear (from AP255) and his wife Clare and daughter Daisy.
I hadn't met Tony until yesterday, despite him being on the course just ahead of ours and him being in a similar family situation to us. It's a shame that we hadn't got to know each other during ground school as we seem to have a lot in common (he rides a 2001 model R1 - which instantly puts him in my good books)
Anyhoo - we all had a good afternoon - Georgia and Daisy played nicely enough (Daisy is a couple of months older than Georgia) - apart from Georgia being a tad possessive about her toys and eventually going into meltdown when we got back from the pool.

Today (Sunday) we headed up to a McDonalds just north of Goodyear where we met Tony, Clare and Daisy, and also Dana, Rob and Robbie. We had a lovely breakfast while the little ones threw each other around the kiddy play area. Everyone seems to get on well, so hopefully we can arrange more meet-ups like this - it's definitely good for the kids, and got to be good for the mums too.


A couple of extra things: Here's a picture taken from our balcony the other night - the sun was just setting and there was a high level of sand in the air, the photo doesn't really do justice to just how amazing the sky looked.







And one last thing - a Happy Birthday to my good friend Ian who just turned 30. He's been given a nice present of a drive of a couple of Ferraris - looking forward to hearing all about it. All the best mate.

Time to get myself off to bed methinks - busy day planned for tomorrow: crazy golfing and splash park!

Ciao for now

Simon