First 1.3 Hours Dual

My 19-year old son has decided he wants to learn to fly.

He's flown with me before, but never seemed to have the bug. Yet in Army basic he decided that he wasted time and opportunity so now that he's in school full time, is willing and able to dedicate energy to flight training.

Yesterday we flew 1.3 in the Chief. It was a cool, very hazy day with light to calm winds.

I took off and was a bit surprised at how lazily the airplane climbed out of ground effect. Of course I've been flying the Chief solo for a while and this was the first time taking off from this airport. Once we were clear of obstacles I let him take over.

"Straight and level towards that power plant on the horizon."

I didn't have an intercom yet so we were limited to shouting to one another over the airplane noise and through ear plugs.

After a few minutes of S turns along a heading, I showed him how to make small, barely perceptible corrections.

He got it and was soon flying straight and level.

I asked him to perform a turn to the left. Sure enough we started losing altitude and the tail slewed around.

I demonstrated a coordinated turn while maintaining altitude.

He tried it and got it. Next, a turn to the right. A few more tries and those were good too.

I asked him to take me to Rostraver. We looked for Route 51, turned left, and followed it, all the while looking for towers, birds, and airplanes.

We overflew the field but it was getting late. I asked him to look at the map and tell me how to get back.

With some prodding we decided a heading of 220 would take us to WAY. If we saw Route 79 or route 21, we'd turn and follow (KWAY is at the intersection of 79 & 21).

We flew across the fairly monotonous rolling landscape of eastern Greene County, level, trimmed, and on heading. Our airspeed settled at 83 MPH, and the engine sounded content to be putting along. We maintained 2200' MSL (1000' AGL) -- far too high for this airplane, but tolerable for a new student pilot.

He spotted a hawk at our altitude, We swung around and the hawk appeared uninterested in us. We turned a bit to stay away from some higher towers.

Finally we had Route 21 in sight. We followed it west for about 5 miles and saw the airport in the haze.

I took over on downwind and talked through the landing sequence. A nice 3 pointer on the pavement and then taxi over to the hangar.

There's something beneficial in the reduced chatter imposed by the noisy old taildragger. I'm ordering an intercom today, but will still limit my talk. He learned by doing after I demonstrated -- no coaching, no reminding. The few times his turns were uncoordinated I simply pointed at the ball.

Maybe they knew somethings in 1940 we've since forgotten.