Duxford Girl

Today, during my flight, I found myself thinking of how different the flight would have been 90 years ago, over the fields of Vimy Ridge. When I was doing my walk around it was daunting to think that compared to the “kites” of the The Great War, the Katana is a wildly advanced and high-performance aircraft.

My goal, since returning from vacation, has been to fly twice a week. This week has been the first in a month that I have actually reached that goal. If the weather hasn't been foggy, snowing, raining or rime icing it's been a beautiful Chinook day with winds somewhere around 30 to 40 knots. In my aircraft that means that I can reach the IAS for take-off sitting on the ground, pointed into the wind, not moving. It also means that it's too windy to fly.

Normally, when a pilot suggests restraining me to anything, I'm not necessarily opposed but when my flight instructor threatened to duct tape my hand to the stick the other day, I realized that I had picked up a rather bad habit.

I might have mentioned this before but I don't train in a 172. I train in a Katana and it has it's quirks. For instance, if the Princess doesn't want to start, she doesn't start. So was the fate of my lesson today.

Given the week I've been having, I didn't hold much hope for my first flight in four and half months this week. I wasn't even sure I'd get off the ground on Wednesday considering how far the weather had plunged into the deep freeze. However, things did start to look up on Wednesday and it dawned bright and sunny. Still cold, but not so cold that the a/c were grounded. Besides, cold air means stable air and that's never a bad thing for me.

I went to ground school a few nights ago only to find out that the class had been cancelled (damn the staff shortage for everything in Calgary right now). As I was waiting I was looking at the “First Solo” board and as I glanced at my own picture I realized that I never actually blogged about the event.

Why the *censored* is this *censored*ing thing *censored*ing edited