He's probably saying "holy s---! It's Mr Pinto!" Yeah, I'm sure he's saying that!

Yesterday was my first solo flight.  After 19 hours of dual training, I logged my first 30 minutes as PIC (Pilot-In-Command) of 4717L, a Cessna 152.  The task of the day was two touch-and-go landings and one full-stop, though my instructor indicated that I could take a third touch-and-go if I was having fun.  I took the third touch-and-go.

No boys, there's two O's in "(incl. solo)"

Flying solo doesn't mean that you're a private pilot.  There's still a bunch of stuff left to be done.  Longer distance flights, short-field, night time and instrument flying, MANY more regulations to learn.  After that, a written exam, an oral exam and a check flight, THEN you're a private pilot.  I'll keep you posted. =)

What DOES flying solo mean though?  There are guidelines out there, but ultimately it's up to the flight instructor.  Your instructor must write an endorsement in your log book permitting you to operate the plane, and he won't do that if he doesn't think that you know what you need to know.  Here are some of the things that I needed to know:

• Basic aerodynamics of planes - lift, drag (parasitic and induced), angle of attack, pitch/yaw/roll, etc.  Without those basics, a lot of the rest of the training won't really make sense.
• Stalls - what they are, what kinds there are, how to recognize them, how to recover from them.
• Radio procedure - weather, frequencies for regular and emergency use, clearances, rules, etc.  
• Slow flight - planes require air over the wings to stay airborne, and the control surfaces (things like ailerons and rudders) work better with more air going across them.  That means it's easier to fly fast than slow, but you land while going slow, so you have to learn how to fly and maneuver at low airspeeds.
• Traffic patterns - there are no lanes marked in the sky, but there are rules about where and how to fly around airports.  Controllers and other planes are going to expect you to be at the right altitude, going the right direction and in the right location.
• Airspace rules - there are a bunch of kinds of airspace and each requires different equipment, training, procedures and its own set of weather and speed requirements.  Many students have their first solo at quiet airports that are used primarily for small planes and training, but my airport is the second-busiest class that there is.  In addition to little old me, there are big jets being operated by airlines.  That means that I need to know more rules, manage more radio frequencies and handle more runways and taxiways.
• Approach and landings - I had to work on landing with and without flaps, with and without a cross wind, with and without engine power and so on.  Landings are pretty tricky because many things can go wrong and the lack of altitude means that you won't have much time to recognize and address them.
• Emergency procedures - what to do if your engine, battery, alternator, radio, or anything else stops working during flight.  I had to practice the emergency procedure for a failed engine a few times for example.
• Taxiing - there are rules for driving a plane on the ground also.  Airport runways and taxiways have a marking system like roads do - there are signs and painted lines and all that.  You don't want to wander onto a runway that someone's about to use for take off or landing!
• Pre-flight - you don't just hop in the plane and take off like you might in your car.  There's a whole long list of things that you have to check both inside and outside of the plane before you can take off.  If there's a family of squirrels nesting in your engine bay or a broken aileron cable, it's a lot nicer to find out about it while parked on the ground and not thousands of feet in the air.  
• Collision avoidance - there are rules about right-of-way and collision avoidance just as there are with cars.
• Aircraft instruments - a car basically has a speedometer, a tach (maybe), a gas gauge, and perhaps a few other goodies like oil temp.  Planes have a lot more than that.  There are multiple semi-redundant systems to figure out how high you are, how fast you're going horizontally and vertically, which direction your facing, what your current bank and pitch angles are and all sorts of stuff like that.  My plane even has two fuel gauges - one for each wing.
• Aircraft controls - planes don't just have a steering wheel and two pedals.  You've got a yoke that goes forward and backward as well as in and out, two pedals for rudder and brakes, a throttle, a carburator heater, flaps, in-plane engine mixture control, fuel shutoff valves, circuit breakers, a bunch of different kinds of lights instead of just one set of headlights, etc.  The radio and navigational equipment is different too.  You might talk into your car radio, but no one will hear you. =)
• Speeds - The FAA has a speed limit for the airspace around my airport, but that limit is about twice as fast as my plane could go.  I'm not too worried about getting a ticket.  That said, I do still have to worry about speed.  Planes have a speed for everything.  There's the speed at which you can lift off, the speed for your best rate of climb and best angle of climb (they're two different speeds!), the speed at which you glide the best, the fastest the airframe is rated to go, the slowest you can fly without falling out of the air, the fastest you can go with flaps down, the speed at which you should approach to land, your cruise speed, your maneuvering speed, the speed at which you can read a really long sentence, and so on.  Thankfully my plane is fixed gear, otherwise I'd need to know gear down speeds too!  You can look these up, but a few of them  really need to be memorized for the plane that you're flying on any given day.  This was a tricky task for me as I flew two different types of plane during my pre-solo training and they each have their own set of values for each of the speed types.

If you want to know any more about any of this, I'll be happy to tell you.  I'll tell you and then tell some more until you can't take any more telling but I'll still have telling left to tell.  I guess what I'm trying to say is that you'll have to tell ME when to stop. =)

Enough of the telling though.  Here's a little video to put the show into this show-and-tell:

My flight was about 30 minutes, but bullshit 30 minutes, this thing'll be over in 8 minutes!  I sped up some of the laps around the airport and cut out some of the taxi/waiting time on the ground.  

So that's my first solo.  There are many others like it, but this one is mine.