My outward bound solo flight was a pretty simple one; I flew to another airport about 15 miles away, did a few circuits, and flew back home. I'd done that exact route with an instructor several times, so it wasn't anything new. I guess the main thing is that they're checking your ability to go somewhere you've already been and get back on your own.

Navigation starts soon. Flying to another airport doesn't count as navigation if you take off, get a bit of altitude, and can see your destination before you even leave your departure airport. Navigation is where you have to get somewhere and you can't see it from your starting point.

The low clouds and rain typical to the wet coast this time of the year have forced a few changes of plan. I was ready to do that outbound solo for a couple of weeks before it finally happened, but the weather requirements for student solo flight are a bit stricter than they are for flying with an instructor. So, I got started on instrument flying.

Instrument flight is what is used to fly through clouds or any other weather that makes visibility suck and visual flight (defined as: you can see where you are and where you're going) impossible. A private pilot (the license I'm working on) does not have a certification that allows instrument flight. The 5 hours of instrument work in this program are there basically to allow me to get safely out of a cloud if I accidentally fly into one. I will be required to fly in a straight line, do a level 180 degree turn, and fly in a straight line again.

So for my first instrument flight I went up with an instructor, and shortly after takeoff he took control of the airplane and told me to put the "hood" on. Think of one of those poker visors, only way bigger. The hood covers the windshield of the plane from my point of view so I can't see out, while still letting me read the instruments in the dashboard. Once I'm set up and in control of the airplane again, the instructor gives me instructions and I do what he says - heading and altitude changes mostly. Partway through the flight we got set up in a landing glide - he'd been talking to a control tower but I had to concentrate so hard on the instruments just to fly where I was told to, I had no idea where we were. I got to take the hood off long enough to do a touch and go landing at an airport new to me - I've flown over it but hadn't actually gone in before. Climbing out, there was a cloud sitting at 700 feet above the ground - and we were supposed to climb to 900. No, we didn't go into the cloud, we asked tower for permission to stay at 700 and ducked underneath it. Little wisps hung down from the otherwise flat bottom and grabbed at us, and I stuck my left wing into the cloud for a few seconds, but I kept the cockpit out of the cloud. I felt like I had to duck my head while flying, it was that close.

Once we cleared the cloud, I went back under the hood, and we resumed flying around, the instructor keeping lookout and me just doing what he told me to. At one point in the flight back, he warned me that we'd be making a lot of heading changes, and sure enough we twisted and turned and didn't fly in a straight line for more than about 5 seconds at a time. After that, he told me to lift the hood and look behind us - we'd wound our way through a twisty passage between two clouds.

With just over 35 hours of flight time in my log book, I'm getting close to the absolute minimum requirement of 45 hours. Somehow I don't think I'll do everything remaining in 10 hours, but apparently I'm still ahead of the nationwide average, which is 55-60 hours.

And then, I'll be able to fly over and visit my parents for lunch - currently a 4-5 hour drive one way.