Flight Training Phase 2B

Practicing At Home

 
This was another scary moment for me.
My first solo forward flight Ever! I had attempted this feat twice berfore but chickened out and just hovered and went home. 

 3rd time is charm right? lol.

I hovered around waiting for a chance to take the runway. I hovered on the side of the taxi way letting plane after plane go ahead of me until they were finally all gone and I had the runway and pattern all to myself.

I'll never forget that first flight down the runway and over the river lol.

The day called for a left hand pattern and I leveled it off at 500 AGL as I entered the downwind just as we did at RotorWay. There was one big difference here compared to flying over the desert at RotorWay, it put me flying right along a ridge top full of apartments, homes and even a gravel pit and last but far from least the downtown section of Knoxville itself. Flying over the city wasn't fun at all. All I could think of was if my engine went out where in the hell I would be able to set down at. The only place along that part of the run that was anywhere near open was the gravel pit. It was in tears of several different levels graduating down to a very deep hole, that was one place I surely didn't want to do an autorotation into lol. At the turn for the base leg I had to fly across the river to reach the final leg. Once on final I was over very densely populated subdivisions with the only clear area for ditching being the river. I came in high trying to keep height over the homes and the river and made a very steep approach to the runway. I came into transition just like I knew what I doing, taxied off the runway and returned to my heli pad. My first flight solo was over and I've got to say I wouldn't want to do it over again lol.

In the later following weeks I got used to it all but I still to this day don't like flying over an area I can't do an autorotation into.

The biggest thing I had to over come was trusting the aircraft. Once I quit worrying about the ship the flying was easy.

I've got to admit that didn't happen until I got about half way through my cross country flight. by the time I got back from that days flying I was bullet proof lol.