Lesson four: In which a seagull is strangled

Christmas has been and gone. My other half got me my very own plane, too!

I get a real one when I've got my licence, yes?

I also got given a voucher for a flying lesson, fortunately enough with the school that I've already been learning with - a big thumbs up to my ever-generous mother-in-law there! So the voucher and I went to the airport on a cold, but otherwise lovely day. Virtually no wind, good visibility, scarcely a cloud in the sky - who could ask for more?

Same drill as last time, sit down, have a chat. My instructor took me through some stuff that I'd already read about in the book, confirming that I'd understood some of it, and completely got the wrong end of the stick with other bits. And off we went - Exercise 6, Straight and Level flight, which I'd been assured wasn't as easy as it sounded.

Stick wings and a propeller on this. That's
what I'm learning to fly in.

Off we headed: into the aircraft, checks done, taxi to the holding point where we waited for an Emirates A330 to clear the runway - you get a real feel for how big those things are when you're sitting in the airborne equivalent of a Fiat 126 as one goes hurtling past at full throttle.

Up we went, climbing to 4000 feet - with it being a lovely day, the instructor was worried we'd be finding other traffic, so wanted to try and climb above it. As it happened, we didn't see another aircraft all the time we were out.

Things didn't go smoothly at first. I kept forgetting which was round controls worked, pulling the throttle back to idle when I needed more power, using the trimmer upside-down and all sorts. "Those are the two things people tend to get confused" said the instructor, a man who on our previous lesson admitted to managing to pull the mixture out to lean and cutting the engine off on one occasion - apparently the sort of mistake where you quickly learn not to do it a second time.

Although I was doing the majority of the flying, there were points where the instructor took over in order to demonstrate things. Whilst demonstrating how we could fly at more than one speed for a particular power setting, I became aware of a noise in the cockpit - I was informed that this was the stall warning, 'stall' being the term used to describe what happens when a wing stops flying, and starts plummeting.

"I thought it would be louder than that?"
"It gets louder as you get closer to the stall speed. It's like strangling a seagull."
"I wouldn't know."
"Neither would I. But that's what I imagine strangling a seagull would be like."

On my previous lesson, the instructor had taken over for the landing. This time, it seemed that I was going to do most of it. With clearance issued, I did quite a poor job of lining up with the runway but got there eventually. Unlike lessons 1 & 2, I knew what the controls did, and I was being trusted to use them. The instructor, a man whose continuing health was dependent on not letting students do silly things, had his hands near the control column in case I decided to dash us both into the runway.

We were down safely. The look of relief on the face of my flying-phobic fiancée who was waiting at the flying school was palpable.

Next month: The roller coaster ride that is climbing and descending.