Woke up this morning and the weather was lousy, and was told that it was unlikely we could fly today as although the weather was due to pick up, it was unlikely to by the morning. But a little persuasion ended up with me having the last slot of the day (by which time it had cleared quite nicely) which meant I didn't have time constraints of someone going up after me!

Unfortunately Steve couldn't fly at the same time but he came up as my passenger so still got to experience it all. I'm going to go up with him when he does his first flight which is the Saturday after I get back from Sydney!

Anyway! So I went up at about 1656 and flew the little Grumman AA5-A (G-BXOO) around until we landed at about 1756. I got to do pitching, rolling, and yawing. And not only the flying stuff, but because we went up quite late (sunset was 1721), I got to do a bit of night flying (although we could still see because it was only officially night) and see the most spectacular sunset.

Now I know how to say "I have control!" and "You have control!" and stuff. I was dying to press the little button on the column and just squeal "Helloooooooooo! I'm flying a plane!" at all the people in the tower but decided that probably wouldn't be a particularly good plan!

Apparently I'm quite smooth (with the controls, that is) and the instructor was muchly impressed with the way I controlled the aircraft! Actually, it was quite fun and I was a bit upset that it was all over so quickly. That said, I got to fly to Newbury and back, although this straight-line flying can seem a bit samey - but it was so exciting that I didn't care!

Anyway. I'm now trying to work out how this is going to be put into practice. I could take two weeks off over the summer (which, let's face it, I was planning to do anyway, although more, er, terminally) and do my PPL in Orlando. Added advantage of being piss cheap and training me up for a JAA licence (with a few conversion exams.) I think that's probably what I'll do - some hours here to get me to solo, over to the US to do the hour building (expensive here) and the final bits. Not sure. We'll see. I should probably let the excitement subside a bit before making any rash decisions!

Went round to Mike's afterwards where we ate pizza and drank stuff - although I couldn't drink properly because I had to drive back. He's loaned me a whole load of the flight training manuals to get my head into and stuff.

Whee! Awesome. Had some photos taken by Steve. I learned that Aldermaston is restricted air space.