The weather gods love me

Gorgeous weather for today's flight. Met CFI at 2PM did an hour of ground brief and he's satisfied with my ground learning progress. That's good, because I'm not, then again, I've always been my own worse critic. So I'm feeling pretty confident about the flight, climbs, descents, turns and climbing/ascending turns. He mentions that no student gets it right the first time, so don't be too hard on myself if I don't. Right, that'll happen. Then he drills me on radio and I seem to get the hang of it okay. Then he says, "You're handling radios for departure. This isn't normally until lesson 5, but I need to keep you under some sort of pressure." I ask him if we're slant uniform or slant alpha since I don't know if we have a DME or not. We're slant alpha, but we're actually whatever slant having a GPS is, but since I'm not using the GPS I'm not reporting that capability.

We walk to the plane to preflight it and all checks are fine. Though someone one dinged my baby! There's a very small dent in the leading edge of the starboard wing. That's OK, I was still glad to be seeing my girl. With a loving caress I feel her leading edges, prop and spinner. Let's get this bird in the air.

So here's a brief transcript of the radio calls:

"Oakland Ground, N972TA"

"N972tA Oakland ground"

"Oakland Ground, N9725a Cessna 1-7-2 slant alpha with quebec at Kaiser request taxi to runway 33"

"N972tA cleared to taxi runway 33, squawk (transponder)."

"N972TA cleared to taxi runway 33, squawk (transponder)."

CFI sets the transponder and away we go.

I taxi much better this time, staying pretty straight on center. The runup checklist is complete and it's time for round two of the coms.

"Oakland Tower, Cessna 972TA ready for departure runway three-three"

"2TA cleared for departure, traffic at 10, maintain VFR and don't cross the freeway, good day"

OOOPS, forgot to verify runway. Ah well. We taxi to the runway and roll. At 55 KIAS it's a much smoother take off and thanks to Aviatrix' advice, I've been applying slight back pressure and applying right rudder, we're off the ground.

"2TA say altitude". CFI said all of his students miss this call

"2TA passing 200" BOO YAH! Didn't miss it!

"2TA contact NorCal approach 1(garbled) , good day"

"2TA say again frequency?"

"One-two-zero point niner"

"2TA 120.9"

Passing through 1200 as the fuel injected engine pulls us ever skyward, "NorCal Approach, Cessna 972TA with you, passing 1200"

"Cessna 2TA NorCal approach maintain VFR, climb to 2500"

"Cessna 2TA, climb to 2500"

Once I get better at comms, I'm going to rig up a recorder so you all can hear what's going on.

After that, CFI took the com. Now, this isn't probably an exact typing of what was said, but the main thing is, I didn't make myself look like an idiot! One more little thing down. We fly over San Pablo Bay at 4000 and begin our maneuvers. I'm doing much better at straight and level flight and he shows me how to trim the plane. OH, what a difference that makes. The plane really does fly itself when trimmed, ah, how nice. I really felt like me and the bird were merging together.

Now it's time to do to the climbing turns, so I roll her to a 45 degree bank, back pressure on the yoke and I perform a pretty decent climbing turn, gravity letting me know all is well as I press into the leather seat, the engine's hum letting me know all is well in the world.

OK, here is where I need work, leveling out from climbs and descents. I need to know when to apply power first and pitch first. I also have the throttle backwards in my head, I keep thinking out to add power and in to subtract, when it's ass backwards. Still, CFI says I did an excellent job.

We do more maneuvers, and I'm reminded that there's more of the world than the instruments, that a VFR pilot has to scan both inside and out. Another one of the club planes was playing in the same area as us, and I really needed more situational awareness. Noted and corrected. He did comment that my plane handling was a lot smoother than before, so I'm progressing. This is a good thing!

Something that caused him amusement is the way I turn. Apparently new students turn shallow, about 15 degrees or so.

Oh, not me. I roll that puppy to 45 and turn like there's no tomorrow. Apparently he likes the fact I'm not afraid of the plane.

All too soon, CFI makes the call to NorCal approach to head back to Oakland. Flying back he has me parallel 27R and then has me do a descent then a descending turn and then a final turn and tweaking the power.

Next thing I know I'm looking at the approach for 27R, we have red over white VASIs and I let out a whoop. I flew the approach! The sneaky bugger had me do it without letting me know I was going do it. He probably figured that would be the best way to have me do it without nerves kicking in. He took over at about 500 feet and flew the landing then handed the plane to me for the taxi off runway.

We taxi past the hold short line, do our post landing checks then taxi to the fuel truck and do our final shutdown checks. We gas up, pay the bill (well, I pay the bill) and walk back to the school.

On the way there he said, "Your knowledge in your head is that of a 30 hour or more student. Your flying, though, as a 30 or 40 hour student would be pretty bad." Well, duh, "But for a second lesson student, you are doing an excellent job. You're flying better than I did at 2 lessons".

I guess it's in my blood, I love to fly.

P.S. No stiff right rudder today.