An impressive Week

One more week passed by and it was one of the most impressive ones in the time of my language stay. I'm now preparing for my next Prog-Test, which would be the 2nd last Test before my Checkride. Therefore I have to finish the written exams, which annoys me a little bit:/ However, this week we also started to perform some cross-country flights. This means that we fly from one airport to another in a minimum distance of 50 nautical miles. Some Solo-flights and a beautiful night-flight were planned for the past week too(pictures are below...)

One of my Solo flights to the Trainings Area and back. It was a beautiful day and I
finally had some time to take pictures. 

That's the strut of the left wing of my Cessna, which covers this picture of El Captain
Mountain in the background 

One day we went to the beach at Mission Bay. We took our bikes with us and performed
a little bike tour along the beach of Sann Diego (about4.5km). A beautiful and gorgeous experience:)
We also had the chance to watch, how the sun descended into the horizon at sunset.

That's one of several pictures of my night flight. It was one of my most impressive experiences in my
whole life. Everything was lighted and the air was smooth. No wind, no traffic and a tremendous visibility.
We took-off from Gillespie Field and flew to Ramona, which is a bout 15 nautical miles north. There we did some Touch-and-Goes and went back after 1 hour of flight.

A nice view over San Diego:)

Here we can see the final-approach to Gillespie on Runway 17. That's actually something really special,
because runway 17 is normally closed due to the other 2 main runways, which cross the respective runway. 

My Solo Progress C

Panorama view over all parts of San Diego on Cowles Mountain.

The last week was quite stressful and demanding for me. I prepared for my 2nd progress check, which would automatically give me the solo-endorsement to go on a flight on my own. I had to study a lot more stuff than in the past few days and still remember all the other things from before as it is a continuous education to become a Private Pilot.

Me and my plane 284LP. I nearly flew every plane of this flight school, but there are some aircraft, which  are just extraordinary and smooth to handle. This plane on the picture is one of these.

So at Friday I had my actual Solo-Check, which went good except for the landings:$ The theoretical part as well as the maneuvers and the handling of the aircraft were considered to be good. However the landing was not what the examiner expected to see at a prog-2 test. Therefore I had to repeat the landing procedures at the next day. This time I passed and was officially authorized to fly the plane all alone.
At Sunday morning I met my instructor on the airfield to get the first solo-flight done. We first did a few landings together and he was certainly convinced that I was ready. So he got out of the plane and left me alone as a Pilot-in-Command. I did 3 full-stop landings and taxied back to my flight school, where my Instructor already greeted me.

View to Gillespie Field from the mountain, which is actually the backyard of
where I live.

Redbird Simulator is a really authentic flight trainings device
to educate students how to react in an emergency in s real flight.

2nd week and still alive

So there we are. The second week has already begun, I'm still learning and the weather is still good. However, my flight career is totally successful, yet. I passed my first Progress-Check, in which I had to prove that I'm for the most part of this test able to fly the airplane. Therefore I needed some trainings and theoretical inputs. Although I ended up with just 6 flight trainings before my prog-test, I succeeded and even got congratulations on the part of the examiner.

View from the accommodation where I'm staying. Every morning before I ride my
bike down the hill to the flight school, I glance on this quite privileged view over
El Cajon.

San Diego is not just one big city, they enjoy the availability of several
parks as well as national parks, too.

El Cajon, it's encircled by hills and at some part also some mountains and warms up till
34-38°C at noon. Fells like hell on earth while sitting in the airplane and waiting for
clearance for takeoff.

That's the interior view of a Cessna 172 Skyhawk. The plane I'm flying...

C172 Skyhawk from outside.

Beautiful view over whole San Diego taken at Sunset-time.