It’s been a crazy few weeks with my flying lessons, I feel like I’ve come a long way but still have a huge amount to learn. In the first few lessons I was instructed to control the take off, slightly daunted I agreed and listened carefully to my instructions. The first couple of times my instructor controlled the steering down the runway with the rudder pedals and I just controlled the throttle and stick.
Thankfully we reached our take off speed of 60 knots so I pulled back and we moved effortlessly into the air. Gaining a little confidence I found the manoeuvre comfortable and straight forward to perform. Then on the next lesson things got a little harder and I had to control steering the wheels with the rudder pedals as well as everything else. This is a little harder than it might sound, you may think if you can drive a car this should be easy but trust me it takes time to get used to steering the plane on the ground.
When you steer with your feet you simply press the left pedal to go left and the right to go right but you have to consider the steering isn’t very accurate and the faster you go the less you need to press the pedals to get the same effect. This is because as you move forward faster small amounts of steering will have a much quicker and large effect on the direction of the plane. So as you start off taxiing and at the start of the runway larger pedal movements are required to correct steering errors and keep the plane straight but as you accelerate towards take off speed progressively smaller movements are required.
Needless to say the first time I steered on take off was a little hair raising, I started to drift to the left and for some reason failed to steer back to the right. This meant we started heading off the runway and my instructor (thankfully!) took control and saved the take off. This was all very dramatic with the aircraft being pulled sharply back to the right and a very quick leap into the air before we ran out of runway. I was slightly mortified by my efforts but my instructor took it all in his stride just reminding me I’m learning and laughing about with me to put it at ease.
Since then I have controlled all of the take offs and now it has become a more straight forward manoeuvre, I am able to keep the plane moving straight along the centre line of the runway without incident. It still needs plenty of concentration and a little polishing but it’s a great feeling to think I am capable of getting a plane into the air.