First Flight

Well I'm hoping my first flight was not a sign for things to come. As most of you know today, after completing my instructor ground school and simulator training was supposed to be my first flight. Unfortunately that never happened, and here is why.

So I fill out all the paperwork at dispatch (this is the building at the airport where we sign planes in/out, check weather, etc) and head out to pre-flight the plane with my instructor. The first thing we notice is that the strobes aren't working, now on a side note any time anything is out of ordinary with the aircraft there is a complex system we have to go through to report it and then verify that it is still considered safe to fly without said equipment. Luckily in our case of not having strobes, it was. So after 10 minutes to report the strobes we continue our pre-flight. At this point I notice that the engine oil is low, so we have to walk to the maintenance hanger, get the oil, fill the engine and then take the oil back. Again, this takes another 10 minutes. We complete pre-flight and hop into the plane to begin our before engine start checklist when I notice one of the annunciators (a light/warning system that will notify you if a certain system is malfunctioning) is broken into pieces. And so once again we have to radio maintenance back over to the plane and spend 15 more minutes changing out the annunciator. By now we should have left the ground about 40 minutes ago and all of this time is being deducted from my actual flight time since my instructor has another student after me. Well finally we get to the engine start checklist and I turn the key. What happens? Nothing. Well to be fair the prop turns about a half-rotation and then stops. I try cranking about 3 more times before we finally throw in the towel due to a dead battery.

The point of this story is that for my very first flight as the primary pilot of an airplane. Nothing works. I'll take this as a sign that I shouldn't be flying but a sign I will ignore none the less. I'll be back in the cockpit on Wednesday to try the whole thing over again. This was a very rare set of circumstances for planes that are so meticulously maintained.

Wish me luck!