Lesson nine: Good and bad news...

We continued practicing takeoffs and landings during today's lesson. The airport seemed like a ghost town today compared to Saturday's madness...we virtually had the place to ourselves to practice touch and go's.

We did a total of eight landings, and most of them felt great, I even got a "good landing" from my instructor. The hardest part of landing for me is flying the pattern, and keeping the right distance and altitude...the actually landing and flaring seems to clicking okay. After seven landings my instructor asked me if I wanted to make the next one a full stop, I said "sure, might as well quit while we are ahead". Sure enough, I overshot my next landing. Although we touched down pretty smoothly, we landed well after the first one third of the runway, and missed our taxi exit. Oh well I guess.

After the lesson my instructor said "I have some good and bad news. The good news is your close to your solo, the bad news is that if you wear a nice shirt, its going to get ruined". He sent me away with a smile on my face, butterflies in my stomach, and a presolo exam to complete. I have a feeling I wont be sleeping very well this week, knowing that I am most likely going to be soloing on Saturday. I am not sure how ready I feel. I know I can land the airplane, but I am worried about messing up on the radio, or screwing up if the tower makes me do something unusual in the pattern. I guess I gotta just go for it.

Today's lesson lasted 1.3 hours, a cost of $117 for the airplane, and $58.50 for instruction.