Introduction Flight #1

One of the most important aspects of your pilot training is researching schools and talking to prospective instructors. I began putting a list of schools together and started doing some reasearch on their web sites. I was fortunate enough to win a free introductory lesson with Empower Aviation when I filled out a sweepstakes card at their booth during the Cincinnati Travel Sport and Boat show in January 2009. On February 5th, 2009 I headed out to Butler County Regional airport (HAO) where I was met by Certified Flight Instructor Sean D. We sat in the office discussing my list of questions that I was going to ask instructors at each flight school. We went outside and after a cold pre-flight inspection of the Cessna 172 we were in and taxiing toward the runway with me in the left seat. Sean took off because the runway still had a few areas of snow on it, but I was able to follow along on the controls. We climbed to around 3000 feet and began to level off and look around. Sean talked me through making several turns at different bank angles to get the feel of the plane and through a couple climbs and descents where he had me listen to the different sounds that the plane makes. Is seems that you also use your ears to help you figure out what is happening when you are flying. After a quick 25 minutes or Sean pointed me back in the direction of the airport. I knew about where it was, but I could not see it at first. There was snow cover all over the ground it made it hard for me to pick out where the runway was. Sean made the radio calls as he directed me into the traffic pattern for landing. I flew the downwind leg and Sean added one notch of flaps, turned onto the base leg and Sean reduced the throttle and added another notch of flaps, then I turned towards the end of the runway on final were Sean worked the throttle to maintain our glide and added the last notch of flaps. The plane just sank right toward the end of the runway! The landing point stayed right in the same spot of the windshield as we descended closer and closer. When we were very near the end of the runway Sean reduced the throttle to idle and told me to just hold the controls where they were as we sank toward the runway. Finally Sean told me to start pulling back on the yoke to flare the airplane. I think he helped a bit on this because I was not sure how hard or quickly I should flare. We settled onto the runway and I was thrilled! Rolling down the runway as we slowed down was a great feeling. I did it! I just flew an airplane!
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