Copyright 1999Four touch’s, five go’s
Learning to Fly...From the Ground Up, I’m Tony Seton.
It takes a village to teach a child if the child is lucky...he or she will benefit from a variety of different minds and voices. Similarly, I’ve benefitted from having more than one instructor as I learn to fly. It taught me to hear different voices, to learn how to respond to different sounds of urgency.
I was practicing touch-’n-go’s with Jason, a substitute instructor, who at 24 was half my age. But he knew flying, and he knew instructing. The wind was brisk that morning, as it tends to be in the spring at the north end of the Sacramento Valley...with gusts to 35 knots. We were in a Cessna Skyhawk, which with our weight and full fuel tanks still weighed only a ton. So the wind could move us around at will.
We flew our patterns and landed and took off, and then around again. We did four touch’s, five go’s. Coming in high and at an angle, Jason aborted one landing. Very calmly, he told me what he was doing as he opened the throttle and gently took control of the wheel. We immediately gained speed, and after seconds of level flight, we rose again into the sky. There was never a hint of danger or fear.
There is a great advantage in having different teachers just as there is in flying different aircraft. It is a process of marrying concepts with controls, learning to listen to the engine to know how many RPM’s the engine is turning, knowing from the sound whether I am coming in for a landing too fast or slowly. If I had learned how to fly when I was Jason’s age, or younger, I probably would have slept on the ground by the hangar, waiting for the sun to rise and my next lesson. At my age, I appreciate the learning itself.
From the Ground Up, I’m Tony Seton.