I’m sure people might get sick of reading these since they are posted quite often, but it’s a pretty big milestone. I’ve had an interest in aviation all my life and grew up going to air shows. I finally decided to go all in and bought myself a plane (Piper Cherokee 180) and started flight training. I was delayed about 6 months while waiting for my medical to come through, but finally everything was in order and I started towards my PPL.

Going into today’s lesson I knew the plan was for me to solo by the end of the lesson if everything went well, so I was a little nervous. Spent an hour doing circuits and greased a few landings, but the wind was picking up and I started to get in my head and needed a bit of instructor input on a couple landings. Finally, my instructor told me to taxi to the terminal and he shook my hand and got out. I said to him “are you sure those last couple weren’t perfect.” He assured me he wouldn’t send me if he wasn’t confident. I briefly considered chickening out, but knowing he trusted me I thought ok, let’s go for it.

It sure felt different being in the aircraft by myself, I taxied, got set up, considered chickening out again, then radio’d did my checks and hit the throttle. Once airborne I thought to myself, can’t back out now. I flew my circuit came in on final and touched down, I did flair slightly early and bounced back up slightly after touchdown but I didn’t panic, and just let the airplane sit back down smoothly. Not a perfect landing or even my best, but it was safe and good enough. I’m still early in my PPL journey, only about 14 hours in, but the first solo milestone is complete.