Learning to fly, one mistake at a time
Flying is simple isn't it? Take off. Land. Repeat. And obviously try not to get the two confused.
I started learning to fly in my early 50s and have never quite stopped being a student. This is my attempt at explaining why I fly. To myself, to Wifey, and hopefully to you.
I hope you find my antics honest, humorous and possibly even inspiring? That last one is a bit of a stretch, I know. But I love flying, and I love seeing others understand why I fly. If that encourages one person into the air, then I've succeeded.
My goal is simple: keep the number of landings equal to the number of takeoffs. And of course, try not to crash. I'm not an instructor - listen to them not some internet influencer (I was once called an 'up and coming YouTuber - Thanks Flyer Magazine'!!), All you will find here is just me and my experiences. Hopefully you can learn from them before I run out of luck, skill or cash.
My most popular long-form video. And it's about getting a landing badly wrong.
That tells you everything you need to know about my viewers.
People don't watch aviation content to see perfect landings. They watch it to see what happens when things go wrong and how the pilot deals with it. Or in this case, doesn't deal with it particularly well. And they they jump in the comments and scream about my lack of skills. From their armchair, with their 10 hours of Microsoft FlightSim.
I'll be honest. The landing in this video is not my finest hour. And instead of doing the sensible thing and going around, I kept going. That's the mistake. Right there. The go-around is always the right call when things aren't right on final. Always. It took me longer than I'd like to admit to really get that into my bones.
This video is the blueprint for what I want to do with a future series. Watch the footage back. Be honest about what happened. Explain what should have happened. No excuses, no blaming the wind, no pretending the aircraft did something unexpected. Just an honest look at what went wrong and why. I do it time and time again. How many times do you think I watched the video during the edit?
The comments were mostly kind which I really appreciated. A few weren't. That's YouTube. The people who found it useful are the reason it's worth making.
Mystery, Mayhem and short runways in a flight to Beccles Airfield in my C172. As well as landing on my shortest runway, I had to contend with the possibility of Exploding boats, Mystery UFOs and tongue tied flight instructors on the way, all in a day trip to Beccles Airfield
Not a whole one. Let's be clear about that before the wife reads this.
I bought a one fifth share in a 1977 Cessna 172N. G-DCKK. Based at Elstree. And honestly I think one of the better decisions I've made in aviation, which given some of my decisions in aviation is admittedly a low bar.
The share model makes sense for most GA pilots at my level. You can get cheap access to an aircraft without the eye-watering cost of owning one outright. The idea is you split the costs of the annuals, the insurance, and hopefully the unexpected bills.
And you get to share the joy and the pain in roughly equal measure.
What the video doesn't fully capture is the emotional side of it. Walking out to an aircraft and knowing it's partly yours. That it has your name on the paperwork. That the people who fly it share your slightly irrational love of a 47 year old Cessna that could generously be described as characterful.
It is the start of a journey. Why not come along for the ride?
Some things in aviation are worth the cost. KK is one of them.
Pilots love toys. We can't help ourselves. And these days a huge chunk of that toy collection lives on an iPad.
The problem is there's a lot of rubbish out there. Everyone has an opinion. Half the aviation YouTubers you watch have affiliate links and discount codes for things they may or may not actually use. I don't do that. Partly because I'm a small channel and nobody's offering me discount codes. But mostly because I'd rather just tell you what I actually use and why.
Every student pilot hits that moment where they're standing in a shop or scrolling through the App Store with absolutely no idea what they actually need versus what looks impressive. It's overwhelming.
SkyDemon is the one I won't fly without. Flight planning, navigation, airspace awareness. It just works. But the video covers a broader range because the honest answer is it depends what stage you're at and what problem you're trying to solve.
A word of warning though. Apps update. Some of the specifics in the video have moved on since I made it. The broad principles haven't. Don't buy something because it's popular in the US. UK airspace is its own beast and not everything crosses the Atlantic cleanly.
There's a longer piece coming in the toys section that goes deeper into the specific things I use day to day. This video is the starting point. Worth a watch if you're just getting into this and wondering where to begin.
I failed my skills test the first time. There. Said it.
I'm not proud of it but I'm not going to pretend it didn't happen either. That's not what this channel is about. And honestly, failing it taught me more than passing it the first time probably would have.
So. What went wrong?
Honestly a bit of everything. Nerves mostly. I'd flown the manoeuvres a hundred times with my instructor and the moment an examiner got in the right seat my brain decided to go on holiday. Classic. The kind of thing you read about and think won't happen to you. Spoiler. It happens to you.
The video is what came out of that experience.
A few things I wish someone had told me before I sat in that left seat.
If you're approaching your skills test, watch the video. And if you fail it the first time, come back and read this again. You'll be fine. I was.
