Been solo Microlight flying again

After my first Microlight solo flight

Just over a week ago I wrote about finally throwing off the shackles of the flying instructor and taking my first solo flight in a Microlight, and the above picture was taken immediately afterwards - just look at the mad grin I've got!!

Well today I've been back up there again.

I fortunately didn't have any meetings to go to today and the wind was forecast to be 2mph all day, so after taking the kids to school I was off to the Microlight centre for the day.

Although it got a bit bumpy in the middle of the day as with the unseasonable October sun heating the air up and causing thermals, it's been a beautiful flying day.

As I've still got limited solo experience the instructors still want to take me up for a check-flight before they let me go up again on my own so I did a couple of successful take-off's, circuit's and landings before they let me go up again solo this morning. I'd been warned that the second solo flight is the most dangerous I'll ever do; and like the first I had quite a bit of difficulty in getting the plane to land where I wanted it to land as it was so much lighter with just me in it.

But I did get down OK after a couple of attempts and go-arounds and the dread momment was over.

Later in the afternoon after the thermals had died down it was up for another check flight, all still looking good and I was cleared to do 4 circuits of take-off, fly around, land, then take off again - 4 times in total.

It's been drummed into me that if I'm not happy with the landing then it's OK to put the power on, abort the landing and go around for another time. As I'm still a bit lacking in confidence of my own flying abilities I've been putting this into practice with 3 attempted landings for both my first and second solo flights. This afternoon though I was much more happier and confident and brought the first three circuits straight back onto the runway each time with no abortive landings. The fourth and final time though it wasn't right (twice) so two more enforced circuits before I was down and safe.

So I've now done a massive 1 hour 10 minutes of solo flying and 6 successful take-off's and landings all on my own. I feel I'm really starting to get more confident now so hopefully this'll be "full steam ahead" towards my cross-country navigation and general flying test.

Happy happy day !!