Mind you, Bryan handled all the critical phases of flight (take off and landing), but he'd let me fly straight and level and practice some maneuvers and all. So after our last flight Bry advised me that the next flight would be all mine, even the take-off. I’d have to talk to ATC (Air Traffic Control) as well.
During the next week, I kept coming up with a bunch of reason of why I was too busy to go flying the following week. It finally hit me that after six years of not flying, I had pretty much lost my confidence that I could do it. I was actually scared that it just was not possible for me anymore.
Once this realization hit me, it became clear what I had to do, I’m flying the next flight; no excuses. So with Bryan as my CFI (Certified Flight Instructor), we started out on March 19th at around 4pm. I was amazed that my radio calls were pretty good (with only 13 hours of flight training more than 6 years ago). I skewed a bit from center after takeoff (not enough rudder; I had forgotten just how much was needed).
On our way to Goodspeed Airport (42B) in East Haddam, Connecticut Bry had me practice some steep banks and power-on stalls. Wow, I really forgot how much rudder the stalls took. Bryan must have yelled rudder more than a dozen times. All the stalls and exercises were great work out though; I was purely exhausted at the end of the flight.
I loved the simple beauty of Goodspeed Airport, and I love, love, love the cute red house at this airport. The airport identifier is right on the roof of the airport house, too cool. Once we landed we saw a sign reporting $5.00 landing fee. The cute red house had envelopes and a deposit box on the porch where you could drop off your landing fee. Bryan mentioned, “Wow, talk about the honor system”. We deposited our $5.00 before we took off again. Since we had to use a restroom and Goodspeed Airport’s facility wasn’t open, we flew a short hop over to Chester Airport (KSNC, 4 nm SW from Goodspeed).
