3 miles deadside

I should explain that today was not my first flight. Indeed I've been officially learning to fly for over a year now. Working through the week and socialising through the weekend - things get in the way though. It's hard to keep the momentum.

An interesting time to try and pick up where I left off a few months ago. Not only is the weather now taking a turn for the worse but last weekend an instructor and student were killed at Biggin Hill when the engine failed shortly after take off. And that's where I am. Biggin Hill. During the time I've been taking lessons I've heard of enough fatal crashes and near misses to keep my awareness as to the dangers up. It's only when I could visualise where the plane came down - what the runway there looks like, that it could have been my aircraft - that it really registered. This lead to a couple of decisions.

The first decision was that I should get back into it - after too long a break. The news item itself didn't remind me of my absence: I'd been thinking only that week that I needed to return so before the possibility of the tragedy affecting my decision I went and booked a lesson. Over the summer there were too many distractions, too many things in the diary and too few weekend days to be able to take to the skies. Unless you can keep the momentum, as with anything you're learning, you just waste time on the next occasion getting back to the previous standard so you can progress. Not only does that become frustrating but, with the cost of flying, it's an expensive approach too.

The second decision was that I should probably tell family of my little hobby. My policy 'til then was that it was going to be another of those surprises I would spring at the last minute: probably at the gates of the aerodrome with a plane hired for an hour and passenger headsets waiting. More importantly I didn't want people worrying every weekend, knowing that I probably have a flight planned. Now, as much as I know nothing is going to happen, if it did I would hate for the people I most care about not to have known about this diversion of mine and how much I enjoy it.

On my complicated public transport-a-thon journey home I made another decision: that I would log my flights, thoughts and landings in a new blog - too many experiences that I can't write in my other blogs. At least when family are told they'll have some background and stories to read and, at a pinch, enjoy.

Think I've OD'd on the context and scene setting. So, briefly, cross winds all over the place, plane buffetted up and down along with a very very rusty pilot... but I put it down to the turbulence. Although, perhaps with decision 2, that's still to come....