Hi everyone!
Sorry about the delay on getting this up and running, but I’ve actually been staying relatively off-the-grid in terms of technology. However, I will still give some updates on all of the lessons I’ve had so far.
I’m currently 4 lessons into my flight training, but first I’ll tell you about my first one.
We have 3 hour lessons every Monday and Friday in the afternoons, and on my first Monday, I walked in after winning my Monday morning golf tournament and was immediately informed that we would be preflighting the airplane. In the past, flying with my dad, this would be a 15-20 minute process, and then we would fly afterward. However, this time would be different. We spent the entire 3 hour lesson going through the process of how to conduct a preflight inspection.
The most important thing that I drew from this lesson, though, is what my instructor told me about the psychological attitude of a preflight inspection. The textbook answer to the question of “Why do we do a preflight inspection?” is absolutely “to make sure the plane is safe to fly.” My instructor proposed something different. He told me that the objective should be to try to ground the airplane. If we do that, and there is actually something wrong, we will be more likely to succeed and ground ourselves if we give our best, focused effort, working toward the goal of grounding ourselves. If we do not find anything wrong, we have utterly failed, and we might reluctantly make the decision to go up and fly. This attitude is important to our safety, and I think useful in almost everything that we do.
Until next time-
William Knauth
Congratulations on your first few lessons! Sounds like you have a great instructor, I feel like a lot of that training will help you soon!
congratulations! Best of wishes for your future goals.
Good to hear from you. Knowing the details will certainly make you a good pilot – knowing how to interpret the details will make you an excellent pilot. Good work!