2nd 1st solo...

Woohoo... survived my 1st Solo... again! :)

Headed out to NZAR feeling a little nervous (this isnt an april fools day joke is it?) and excited at the same time. Pre-flighted the plane to find 39 litres in the starboard tank... and 0 in the port tank!!??! Then I noticed the plane was sitting on a bit of an angle and all the fuel had drained from one side to the other. So I had to sit around waiting for the tanker to show, while reading some information on Mag Checks that the B-Cat had prepared for me (which ironically turned out to be quite fitting)...

So we headed up for some circuits to demonstrate my proficiency... and noticed the airplane was really struggling. At first we put it down to full fuel tanks and 2 quite large passengers :)

However when it started running a little rough on the 2nd approach, I finally noticed that the mags were not set to Both, so only one set of spark plugs was firing. We had double checked the setting after doing the Run-up checks, so the only thing I can put it down to is that my knee must have bumped the key. See what I mean about the Mag Check info?

Well the plane performance picked up dramatically after that, and the next couple of circuits went well. So the B-Cat put in the 'Full-stop, not complete, student continuing solo' call and jumped out telling me 'Stay in the circuit as long as you like, Have fun!'

Honestly, I could have stayed there all day, but sadly the cloud base was starting to get very low so I had to call it quits after only 3 circuits... but boy I was so stoked. There is still nothing like your 1st solo... even the 2nd time around :)

This flight: 0.3 Hours Dual, 0.7 Hours Solo
Total Hours: 42.4 (38.6 Dual, 3.8 Solo)