More of the same ...

Wednesday the 2nd of March and the weather's looking a bit brighter. The wind's still cold but it's not 100% cloud cover. The wind is still a nice steady 12mph or so blowing along runway-zero-four, no nasty gusts to catch me out so it looks like another good day for training as Tony is still around.

I'm already feeling more confident about all aspects of flying and do the pre-flight checks on G-BYJA myself. When Tony's ready we strap in and motor off to the runways. Already I feel reasonably confident in the ground handling of my machine, and don't need to always check with Tony before doing anything. I know that if I did start to do something wrong, Tony would quickly correct me.

As we get to the active runway I make the necessary radio call, desperately trying to remember that it's runway-zero-four, not oh-four. At the threshold, I try to remember everything Tony has told me about how to balance the power, rotor speed, air speed, ground speed and keep the machine on three wheels while accelerating in a straight line up the runway.

After another hour of take-offs I think that I'm starting to get the hang of it and a bit of a feel for the aerodynamics. We go in for lunch.

After lunch it's quite sunny and although the wind's still cold, inside the gyro it's starting to get fairly warm as we taxi back into the sun and with the wind. It's quite a relief to get back to the threshold and turn round to face away from the sun and get the wind flowing through the vents again.

By the end of the afternoon I really feel that I'm starting to make some progress. My take-offs are now a bit safer but not maybe as consistent as Tony would like. Some are good but not enough of them for Tony to yet say that I've really mastered it yet.

Here's one of the better ones:

At the end of my second day's training I feel that we've accomplished a great deal more than I could have expected in such a short time, but Tony's quiet proficiency in demonstrating how to do things and encouraging me to take control have worked wonders. I can now get my machine off the ground and maintain some control in the air - just the landings to get more of a feel for.