Learning to fly, one mistake at a time
Look, mum, no instructor! Yes it's true. I flew without an instructor and, more importantly to me anyway, I've managed to create another video from another flight in a month. God, is my channel coming back to life? Could I be doing more flying? Yes.
This is a quick bimble up to Silverstone to de-rustyfy myself before yet another flight with Jack later in the day. There might even be a video of that one coming as well. It wasn't too bad. A little bit rusty, but I managed to remember how to do the radio, which was better than the Tower, who managed to forget who I was on the way back.
Little bit of a problem with the audio. I bought myself a shiny new recorder, a Zoom R4, multitrack super-duper all-singing all-dancing wonder machine. It recorded the flight beautifully, and then when I flew again later it recorded straight over the original. Not wiped, not lost, just cheerfully dubbed over the top of the one I wanted. Who comes up with these designs? Clearly not pilots, or YouTubers.
Anyway, I managed to recover some of the audio from the onboard cameras, and you've got my head popping up from time to time for the juicy bits. The real question is, did I manage to park the landing? Did I manage to avoid the pylons on the approach? I'll let you decide. No doubt numerous people will be commenting on how bad my landing is and how I really need to fly with an instructor. But then that's what I've been doing, and people comment about that too. You can never win. But that's YouTube.
Hope you like it. If you do, please consider leaving a comment. And if you don't, please consider leaving a comment. How else will I know what you like? Or what I like? It's YouTube. You know how it works.
It's true. I hadn't flown in months. November last year was the last time I was in the air. There was an abortive attempt to go night flying in December but circumstances canned that idea. So weather, work, more work, and then the annual appearing just as the weather improved all combined to keep me from flying. Well, that is my excuse, but the real answer is I also got a little lazy, finding excuses to not get my flight bag out and plan a flight. It was easier to start up Netflix than start up SkyDemon. The aerodrome was still there. KK was still there. I just kept finding reasons not to be there.
Nine months in and it is time to be honest.
I bought a one fifth share in a 1977 Cessna 172N in early 2022. G-DCKK. I know G-DiCKK!!. Based at Elstree, my local airfield. And this video was my attempt to answer the question I'd been asking myself, and otehrs have been asking ever since the ink dried on the paperwork.
Was it worth it?
The honest answer at nine months is: yes, with caveats. The access is everything. Being able to book KK and fly without the faff of school aircraft availability and hourly rate anxiety changes the relationship you have with flying. It becomes more routine. More yours.
The caveats are real though. The bills. The annual. The insurance. The upgrades. The fuel that doesn't get cheaper. The months when life gets in the way and you're paying your share of fixed costs for an aircraft you're not flying. Those months sting a bit.
But the share model has worked for me, and hopefully will for you, assuming of course you go in with realistic expectations and a tolerance for the occasional expensive surprise.
Flying near a major international airport like Heathrow in a little Cessna C172 is one of those things that sounds more terrifying than it is. And also exactly as terrifying as it sounds. Both things are true at the same time.
This was our second attempt to fly KK to Le Touquet. The first didn't go well either. You'd think that would have been a sign.
Le Touquet in Frnce is one of those trips that every GA pilot in the UK has either done or wants to do. Cross the channel - it is wider than it looks, land in France, have lunch, fly home. Simple. In theory. In practice, flying a 1977 Cessna across the Channel has a way of finding things to go wrong. You have to get the simple stuff right. paper work. and more paperwork.
If you watch the video you will find that things didn't go entirely to plan. At one point ATC asked us the immortal question that nobody particularly wants to be asked. Do you wish to declare an emergency? We didn't. It wasn't that kind of situation. But being asked that question in a real aircraft about to fly over over real water has a way of focusing the mind rather sharply.
The training kicked in, we worked through it, and we got down safely. It sounds more dramatic that it actually was.
Le Touquet is still on the list. We'll try again. Probably.
18 months of training. And a promise.
I'd told someone I'd fly them to Duxford. At the time I wasn't entirely sure I'd ever be in a position to keep that promise. Learning to fly in your 50s has a way of making you question whether the whole thing is actually going to come together. And then one day it does.
Duxford is one of those destinations that means something. It's not just an airfield. It's the Spitfires, the history, the aircraft that tell the story of aviation in a way that nothing else quite manages. Flying into EGSU in a C172 and parking up next to some of those aircraft is one of those moments that reminds you why you started all this in the first place.
The flight itself wasn't perfect. They never are. But it was mine and I kept the promise.
If you're a newly qualified pilot looking for a first proper cross country destination, Duxford EGSU is worth considering. Good runway, well organised, and the cafe is decent. The aircraft on display are slightly better than decent.
Night flying changes everything. Obviously. It is dark for a start.
It might be the same airfield. It is hopefully the same runway. And I am prettey certain it is the same aircraft. And yet at night it feels like a completely different activity. All the visual references and cues you rely on during the day are gone. The lights of the ground merge with the lights of the sky in ways that take some getting used to. And Elstree at night has its own particular character. And weird runway lighting.
I did my night rating at Elstree and it's one of the parts of my training I remember most clearly. Not because it was the hardest, although some of it was, but because it felt like a genuine step into a different kind of flying. The world looks completely different from 1,000 feet at night.
If you're thinking about a night rating, do it. It makes you a better pilot and the views are spectacular.
Taking Caz flying for the first time was either very brave or very stupid. I'm still not entirely sure which.
She was sort of supportive of the whole learning to fly thing from the start. In the way that partners are supportive when they think it might be a phase. It wasn't a phase Well maybe it was, but once you have spent ££££ it becomes bigger. And eventually the moment arrived where the only logical next step was to actually put her in the right seat and see what happened.
Elstree to Sywell. A reasonable first trip. Sywell has a lovely cafe, a grass runway, and enough GA activity to make it feel like a proper day out rather than just a circuit. The plan was solid.
What the video captures is Caz being entirely herself throughout. Calm in the way that people are calm when they've decided worrying won't help. The occasional raised eyebrow. The look that says she's filing everything away for future reference.
She hasn't stopped me flying. That's probably the most important thing. She's been back in the right seat since. She's even been to Duxford.
Getting the people you love into the air with you is one of the better parts of this whole thing. Even if they spend the entire flight pretending to be fine and trying to feed me peanuts.
We flew our 1977 Cessna to the Alps. And the French military got involved.
That sentence pretty much sums up the trip out to Aero Friedrichshafen 2023 and I'm still not entirely sure how it happened. What started as a straightforward cross-country to one of the world's biggest GA airshows turned into one of those flights where you're constantly wondering what's going to happen next.
Aero Friedrichshafen is worth the effort. If you're a GA pilot and you've never been, put it on the list. 860 exhibitors. Aircraft you'll never see at a UK airshow. The kind of flying culture that makes you realise how hard UK GA has it by comparison. Oh, and a Zeppelin. An actual Zeppelin flying overhead. That alone is worth the fuel.
The show floor video is the calmer of the two. Less French military, more wandering around trying not to spend money on things I don't need. Mostly unsuccessful on that front.
Two videos, one trip, and a reminder that GA flying doesn't have to stop at the English Channel. KK is perfectly capable of getting you somewhere interesting if you're willing to plan properly and accept that nothing will go entirely to plan.
Worth it. Every bit of it.
This one still makes me a lkittle uncomfortable to watch.
A near miss on final is exactly what it sounds like. Another aircraft where it shouldn't be. A moment where the margin gets smaller than you'd like. And the slightly sick feeling afterwards when you realise what just happened. Looking back it doesnt seem to be as bad as it felt at the time. but hindsight is a wonderful thing.
I've posted a lot of content about mistakes and things going wrong. That's kind of the point of my channel. But this one is different. Most mistakes are about technique or judgement calls in the cockpit. This one is a reminder that the sky isn't just yours.
Elstree is a busy airfield. Circuit discipline matters. Radio calls matter. Awareness matters. And even when you're doing everything right, you're sharing the airspace with other people who may not be.
What I'd say to any student pilot watching this is simple. Keep your head out of the cockpit as much as possible, especially in the circuit. The instruments will wait. The aircraft that just turned final without a radio call won't.
I'm not an instructor and this isn't instruction. It's just a moment I caught on camera that serves as a reminder of why we don't switch off until the aircraft is parked and the engine is stopped.
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.
I quit. There. Not something I find easy to say.
I started my IR(R) with the best of intentions. The Instrument Rating (Restricted) IRR, felt like the logical next step. Be able to fly in worse weather. Be a safer pilot. All the reasons we all give. And then life, work, costs and if I'm honest a growing sense of being overwhelmed got in the way and I stopped.
It was a Short. It was about 15 seconds long. And the title was, let's be honest, a slight exaggeration.
I didn't crash a real DA42 Twinstar. I crashed one in a simulator. But the title didn't say that. And YouTube didn't care. It got over 10,000 views - yes 10000 views, which for a Short on a channel my size at the time was a genuinely surprising number.
The interesting thing about that video is what it taught me about titles. I'd posted plenty of simulator content before with accurate, descriptive titles. Nobody watched them. The moment I framed it as a crash, people clicked.
There's something about the word crash that does something to people. I've noticed it consistently across my channel. Use the word crash in a title or thumbnail and the numbers go up. Every time. It doesn't matter if it's a simulator, a bad landing, or a near miss. The word itself is a magnet. People are drawn to it in a way that's hard to explain and slightly uncomfortable to admit you're exploiting.
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.
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.
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.
I've been making YouTube videos about learning to fly for a few years now. Long ones. Carefully edited ones. Videos where I've flown across Europe, landed at unfamiliar airfields, nearly declared emergencies, and generally made a complete mess of things in an entertaining way. My best long-form videos get a few thousand views if I'm lucky.
Then I posted a 17 second Short.
No flight. No aircraft. Just me pointing out a sticker on the oil flap telling us not to screw the oil cap on too tight - We seem to do that. It was a joke. It was silly. I posted it, forgot about it, and went to bed.
I woke up to notifications I'd never seen before. By the time I checked properly it had passed 5,000 views. It kept going. At the time of writing it's sitting at 187,000 views and still ticking.
I genuinely don't know exactly why it worked. My best guess is a combination of things. The title creates instant curiosity, you read it and immediately want to know what on earth it refers to. It's short enough that people watch it twice. And the reveal is satisfying without being clickbait.
What I do know is that it drove more subscribers in a week than several months of regular uploading. Most of them had never heard of WhiskeyAlphaPilot before. Some of them have stuck around.
The lesson I'm still trying to work out is how to repeat it. The honest answer is I'm not sure you can deliberately manufacture that kind of moment. But it's made me think differently about short-form content and the value of a good hook.
Sometimes the algorithm just decides. You don't always get to choose which video is your best one.
Twenty thousand views. For a Short. About a crosswind landing at Elstree.
I genuinely didn't see that coming.
And for the pedantic it wasn't a 25 knot cross wind. It was below the demostrated cross wind limit for my 172. So no need to write to the CAA. again.
If you need to know how to calculate a crosswind, then ask your instructor.
Crosswind landings are probably the thing I get asked about most. Student pilots are terrified of them. Newly qualified pilots are terrified of them. I actually like them. I think. Crabbing in and then bashing the pedals at the right time to straighten up. It's a bit like stearing a boat across a river. Fun if you get it right. expensive on tires if you don't. I'm still not comfortable with the dropping wing method, It still seems to be counter intuative digging the wing into the ground... but 20000 views cannot be wrong!!
It has been 3 years to the day assuming you are reading this on December 22nd 2024, of my passing my PPL. Since then it has been a journey with ups and downs. Was it worth it? You will have to possibly watch the video to find out
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
