Better, and yet worse.

The "steering with your feet" thing seems to be okay now. I dunno exactly what the difference could have been since the last lesson I had was two months ago, but it seems that I am now getting the hang of it. I wouldn't count on me for any precision manuevers, but at least I can keep the plane moving straight down a yellow line, and turn into a taxi area and such. Not well. But well enough.

Other things seem to be getting better - straight and level flight, making turns, etc. Then again, other things seem to be going very poorly - straight and level flight when the instructor is fucking with the throttle, keeping a certain very low speed, etc.

What I am thinking is that I am, eventually, going to get it. But it's all going to be very hard-won, every time. I will have to do it time and time again and screw it up over and over again until I bloody well get it. And Mr. Donnelly is going to be on my ass for every single second of it. Nose slightly down? Well what the HELL are you DOING? Hey! Your left wing is down. Why aren't you FIXING it? HUH?

Perhaps that is how it has to be.

Eventually, I will get my license. But it's going to be really, really, hard. This is not necessarily what I imagined (because in my imagination, I was totally awesome at flying without putting any effort into it) and yet, it is something I still want to do. "Hard to do" is not a good enough reason to quit, even though it often has been for me before.

But I'm not going to quit this. Before I die, I will have a private pilot's license. And moreover, some day I will fly from KWHP to KIPL to hang out with my dad and stepmother.

I still suck at steering with my feet, though I think that just at the last moment I was starting to get it. Maybe. We'll see. Of course, by the time I get the chance to go again, I will probably have entirely forgotten it.

Also, I have to go easy on myself with the rest of it. This is only the second time I've done this. Everything is not going to be perfect the first time, and there is so very much to keep track of. I wish I could get my instructor to give me the same latitude.

He was described to me as "one of our most patient instructors," but so far, in fact, patience does not seem to be one of his virtues. For instance, at one point we're working on keeping it straight and level and any time there's the slightest deviation from that he's on me about "left wing is down" and you know what, I actually did notice that, I can tell that we're sliding off to the left a bit, give me three fuckin' seconds, will you? Yes I SEE IT. It's not that I don't see it. I'm trying to FIX IT. I haven't done this before. I'm just now LEARNING HOW to fix it. Give me a chance to do so. It's like being at a stoplight that just turned green and the dude behind you is on the horn faster than you can move your foot from the brake to the gas.

He is good about saying "well done," but you know, that's not where I need the encouragement. When I am doing it right, I know it and that's just good enough for me. I need him to say "okay, you're still learning, here's how you can improve that" instead of making me feel like I'm a moron for not already knowing how to fly a plane after 30 minutes of flying a plane. I'm already plenty good at doing that to myself, I need no further assistance. I don't think I'm being oversensitive, at least, I'm sure not trying to be, but man. The guy has just been on my ass the entire time.

As I understand it, my instructor is one of the newer instructors at this place. So possibly the flight school manager, who is a very friendly fellow, was wrong about my instructor's patience... or all the other instructors are total jerks. A slightly terrifying thought.

It is also just barely possible that I'm doing well, and he's on me so that I can be a better pilot, and perhaps kick him out of the cockpit and solo sooner (and thus save myself some money). That's a nice thought, but I honestly don't think it's the case.

After years of blathering about how I wanted to learn to fly, today for the first time I actually did something about it. I had my very first lesson on the path to getting my private pilot's license.

I have to admit that I was quite, quite nervous. I mean, after all this talk, after being willing to sit and fuck around with Flight Simulator for hours on end, would it turn out that I would hate it? Worse yet, would I suck at it?

The answer is a bit of both, and yet, I still want to fly again. I did suck at it, and it was scarier than I thought it would be. But... I sucked at driving the first time I did it, and I think I'm a fairly decent driver these days.

Part of the problem is that today was an insanely hot day in the San Fernando Valley, and I was flying (well, being flown) out of Whiteman Airport. The temperature was about 100 degrees, and there just isn't much ventilation in those bitty planes when you're sitting on the runway.

Then I had my first major fuck-up, when the instructor let me try to taxi the plane as it rolled down the taxiway. See, in a small plane, when it's on the ground, you don't steer with the yoke (essentially the steering wheel, I'm sure you've all seen it), you steer with your feet, by pushing on two pedals under your feet. Only, these pedals that you steer with? They are also brakes. The steering bit is at the bottom, and the brakes are on the top. I got a bit flustered at one point because we weren't going in the right direction and stomped a bit on the pedal. What was happening that I didn't get at the time, that I only understood upon later reflection, was that in trying to make the plane turn to the right, I stomped on the right-hand brake, which made it veer off to the left. The instructor had to holler "my airplane" (my signal to get off the controls), and... well. It was kind of - no, VERY, embarassing.

Anyway, so, the instructor turned us around again and got back onto the taxiway waiting for ground control to let us take off (and dear god I hope that some day I'll be able to understand what those people are saying.) And so we took off.

People, I have never gotten seasick or airsick before, but I came *mighty* close today. Mind you, we'd been sitting in a fairly tiny cockpit with zero ventilation in 100 degree heat. It had to have been 110, 115 plus in that cockpit. We waited for several small planes to land, and then a helicopter, and then yet another plane. I sweated. But then we were given clearance (I assume we were, it sounded like the dude said "frizzle fracty 30.") It was quite windy, so even just accelerating down the runway, not only were we baking, the takeoff was, let's just say, reallllllly bumpy. We were going all over the place, it seemed.

And we kept bumping around, quite a bit. The instructor was quite unconcerned. It felt like driving over little hills and curves and whipping from side to side and everything was going everywhere and I was thinking "what the fuck am I thinking? How the hell can my uncoordinated ass do THIS?"

The air smoothed out a bit eventually, once we got over the hills leading towards Santa Clarita. And then I got to drive, and, well, it was frankly a bit scary yet again. I sort of felt like I was getting the hang of it by the end though. At one point the instructor even told me to take my hands off the controls, and he did the same, and the plane, by golly, the plane just kept flying by itself. I knew intellectually that it would, I know that most small planes are incredibly stable, but it is, shall we say, a wee smidge different when you're actually in the plane.

By the time we touched down the rolls and swells and bouncing sort of felt, well, a bit normal. That's how the plane goes. It moves with the wind. That said, I hope it's a bit calmer, wind-wise, the next time I fly.

So, action items for me for the next time, two weeks from now:

1. Learn to drive with your feet, and learn that at least on the ground, you have to drive with your heels or possibly your toes. I think maybe that bit wasn't explained clearly enough, and it may have been because I told the instructor I'd played with flight simulators. I should have pointed out that I played with a joystick, and putting on the brakes was a matter of just hitting the correct button.

2. Remember how tentative you felt driving a car the first time, and how you oversteered and like that. You will get this, too. You will, because honestly, how FUCKING AWESOME was it to be up there?

3. You have to get better with your feet, because dear heavens, what will happen if you try to land? You've got to keep the thing going straight while also braking.

Here's a link to an interesting image, showing corporate aviation outbound from Miama Opa-Locka and Ft. Lauderdale airports the morning after the Superbowl: http://syndicated.livejournal.com/cellar_iotd/165830.html

No surprise, really, but interesting to see. However, the picture in one of the other links in that post suggests that commercial traffic out of those airports (which was probably beefier on the day after the Superbowl than it would have been on a normal Monday morning at 10 AM) was still significantly less than the corporate aviation, and suggests that overall, corporate aviation is getting a mostly free ride as far as funding the Air Traffic Control system is concerned.

I dunno. But looking at either of those pictures, I think that the controllers in the towers at Miami and Ft. Lauderdale and the regional controllers who are in charge of the whole area probably deserve a big fat bonus for the work they did last Monday.