The Journey to My First Solo

Sunday, September 9, 2018. To most of you, this is just another day, but to me, this was a day I will never forget.

I come from a family of aviators, but it wasn’t until I was 13 that I became interested in it myself. My Great Grandpa got into aviation from the G.I. Bill, and my Grandpa and Uncle both grew up around it. My Dad got into aviation from the Aviation Merit Badge through the Boy Scouts.

For years I was happy just going to the airport whenever I could with my Dad and Grandpa and hanging out, but one day I decided I wanted to start flying. My Grandpa has two airplanes, a 1947 Piper J-3 Cub which has been in the family for 50 years, and a 1958 J-35 Bonanza. I started flying in the Cub because thousands of pilots have their primary flight training in that airplane. Both my Dad and Grandpa are CFI’s (Certified Flight Instructors), so they would take me up and have me make coordinated turns, keeping the ball in the middle while managing and maintaining airspeed. After the summer months, it started to cool down and there were not many days good for flying, so my training went ‘dormant’ for the winter.

Finally, Spring 2017 arrived, and I was excited to start my flight training again. After the first few weeks of refreshing and practicing what I had previously learned, we started to get into taxiing, take-off, and landing. At first, taxiing was difficult because the Cub is a tailwheel airplane, meaning I had to make lots of ‘S-turns’. Eventually though, I caught on. My take-offs took some practice, but I improved on those as well. The most difficult part for me was the landing. I was told all my landings should be full stall landings, meaning the tail wheel should touch the ground slightly before the main gear. However, every time I made a landing, it would be a wheel landing, which was not what we wanted. All I could do was practice through the summer.

Summer came and went, and I still wasn’t doing full stall landings. Some of them would occasionally be ‘close,’ but not what we wanted. I turned 15 at the end of August. I now had just one year left before I was old enough to solo. The winter months ensued, and my hands-on training once again came to a pause. However, this winter I did something I didn’t do before; I stayed focused. I asked questions, I Googled, and I read. If I ever had a question about why we did something in the airplane, how we did it, or when we did it, I would ask it right away, or I would add it to my list of ones to ask.

When Spring 2018 arrived, I was ready to hit the ground running. My goal was to solo for my 16th birthday and I was doing all that I could to make that happen! Unfortunately, I was still not getting the landings so we started practicing on my Great Grandpa’s grass strip. I didn’t have any better luck there and I was frustrated! I had never had this much trouble learning something in my flight experience. Months passed and I still couldn’t do tailwheel landings. Finally, on a hot July day, my Grandpa said something that just “clicked” with me. He said, “Hayden, I don’t understand. Just make the runway disappear!” The next one I did was a full stall landing. We were both excited! Now, all I had to do was make all of them full stall landings.

I was turning 16 in a month and had to prove to both my Grandpa and my Dad that I could fly an airplane without any problems. I had been practicing twice as much as usual because I wanted to make sure I got it all down. On August 27, 2018, I turned 16. My Dad took me to get my flight physical to get my student pilot certificate and I passed the tests my Grandpa gave me. However, it was too windy to fly, and it was also rainy. Frustratingly, the weather conditions continued to be either windy or rainy for the next two weeks until finally, we got one gorgeous day - September 9, 2018.

Much like other weekends, we went to the airport to hang out, and fly if possible. To my surprise, we skipped the FBO and went straight to the hangar. My Grandpa had me open it up and pull out the Cub. I did my preflight inspection and determined we were good to fly. We taxied to the pumps to get gas before going to the grass strip alongside runway five. We took-off, went around the pattern, and landed three different times before my Grandpa finally asked, “Are you ready for me to get out yet?” I said, “I think so…” and he told me, “‘I think so’ isn’t good enough.” We went around again. Upon landing the fourth time, he asked me again, and with confidence, I said “YES!” He got out of the airplane and with a big smile on my face, I start my take-off roll. When my Grandpa got out, I had gotten rid of more than half the body weight, so I felt every bump in the grass and took off in nearly half the distance. After successfully making a full stall landing, my Grandpa and Dad were so proud of me! And I was, and still am, proud of myself!

Achieving your first solo flight is unforgettable. Not just to you, but to your family. Despite all the hard work, studying, and time that goes into flying, there is nothing more satisfying, to me at least, than breaking free from the chains of the earth and seeing everything from a different perspective.