Movin' on up.

I'll spare the suspense - I passed the checkout flight so now I can fly the two Cessna 172s at Yankee flying club.

The checkout flight was pretty straightforward. The CFI gave me a briefing on the plane's communications and navigations systems, went over the differences between the Warrior and the 172, and taxiway navigation at Crystal Airport. Then we took off and headed to the west.

First he started me with steep turns...haven't done those in a long time. I deviated from my altitude a bit on the first run, but the second one was a lot better. Then we did some power-on and power-off stalls, and a simulated engine out to a landing at Buffalo airport. Amazingly, I never did a simulated engine out to a landing during my primary pilot training - we'd approach some hay field and then throttle up and fly away. It was fun, and a little hairy, but my first landing in a 172 was a dead stick landing. Sure it was a little rough, but the plane was flyable afterwards so I counted it a success.

We headed back to Crystal and did 3 landings. The first one was kind of rough...I found it a lot harder to pull the yoke to flare, and I didn't want to pull too hard. The second landing I put some muscle into it and got a good flare and soft landing. The third one was a no-flaps landing, yet another first, and though the speed was higher than what I'm used to, and the landing roll longer, it wasn't too big of a deal.

After wiping off the bug guts and buttoning up the plane, Kevin signed my logbook and said he was very satisfied that I could fly the 172 safely. If the weather is good this week I'll take one of the 172's up and get some pics and video for all the world to see.