AZ: Finally ... solo

Today, september the 22th, I had my first solo mission in the morning. 3 full stop landings with the instructor, taxi back to the sabena ramp (that's how we call it here), shutdown of the engine, the instructor exits the plane and wishes you good luck and then you're on your own. No one besides you to help you if you screw things up (or if the plane feels like to). Sounds awful, but it feels great. during taxi, ground check (engine check), you double check everything what's on the check lists, you taxi to the active runway (4L/4R in my case) and once you got the take off clearance from the tower you line up, and realise this baby is all yours. Just because it's a habit you say "take off, I have controls", but you know that actually the plane wouldn't take off if it wasn't you :p.

3 landings later I taxi back to the sabena ramp, shut down everything, collect my personal belongings while Pieter and Adrien are pushing the aircraft back into his stand (no push back trucks at our airport unfortunatly :p). My feet may not touch the ground before I got thrown in the swimming pool! They carry me to the car, put me in the trunk, drive me to the swimming pool, throw me in it and then I could be proud of legally and completely being a solo student pilot. And another habbit we have: cut the hair very short. and then I mean: VERY short. Maybe some more pictures about that another time :-)

It was a wonderful day, I was the last one that still had to do his solo flight, so now everyone of our group is solo. For the next missions, it will be or fully solo or split into half an hour with the instructor and one hour solo.

Tomorrow again a flight in the morning, so it's bedtime.

and of course, pictures ... enjoy them!

Van AZ - Solo!