This post is the first in a series about Axel’s flight training and is built from two posts initially dated June 2005. Vincent.

A clear sunny day in May 2001 I showed up at Oslo flyveklubb and Kjeller airfield north of Oslo for my very first introductory flight. A few days earlier I had been in contact with flight instructor Gunnar Arnekleiv at Oslo flyveklubb to book the flight, and now, finally the time had come to get onboard the airplane and leave mother Earth behind.

The airplane for our flight was a Piper Cherokee Warrior II – PA-28-161 with the callsign LN-NAG. We took off from runway 30 at Kjeller, turned south and climbed to 2000 ft heading for the eastern part of the Oslo fjord. When we reached 2000 ft the instructor demonstrated the effects of the controls on the airplane to me and then let me take over the controls! Still heading more or less south, I made as many turns as I could before the instructor once again took over the controls in order to demonstrate a power-off stall and a steep turn. He pulled the throttle back to idle, turned the electrical fuel pump on to ensure the engine wouldn’t stop and kept pulling the yoke back to keep our altitude as the airspeed dropped. Then the stall horn whistled, the plane started to vibrate and suddenly the sky disappeared out the windshield and my stomach tried to jump out through my mouth. He then applied full throttle, turned off the electrical fuel pump, climbed up to 2000 ft again and accelerated back to cruise speed.

Now he rolled the airplane into a 60-degree bank and as the landscape rushed by out the windshield he told me to lift my arm. I can tell you, hadn’t I happened to know a little something about this thing called g-forces in combination with steep turns I would have put myself on a diet right away because that is by far the heaviest I have felt ever! Well, good thing I didn’t jump to conclusions about my sudden weight gain, because, as the instructor rolled the airplane out of the turn and back into straight-and-level flight, the extra weight disappeared as sudden as it had appeared in the turn and I decided to forget all about that diet.

And now for a little bit of aviation physics: What actually happened is that, as the airplane banks, the lift force of the airplane is tilted to the side. The consequense of this is that we have to increase the lift accordingly to keep the vertical component of the lift constant. We accomplish this by applying some extra back pressure on the yoke while in the turn. It’s as simple as that!

After this fun experience, I got to have the controls once again while heading back to the airfield at Kjeller. I established the airplane on a final approach to runway 12, and then the instructor took over, taking the plane safely down onto the runway and taxiing back to the club house. And so, my 35 minutes in heaven had come to an end. A dream was born, and I knew for sure I wanted to be a pilot.

After this I went to college, and therefore my flying was put on hold for a while. However, now I have been through most of the PPL theory and since November 7, 2004 I have had five flying lessons, flying a Diamond DA-40 TDI, an austrian produced diesel powered airplane and a Piper Cherokee Archer II.

On the very last weekend in May (2005) I was attending a Private Pilot theory crash course at the Norwegian flight school Luftfartsskolen. While there I started talking to a fellow pilot student from Oslo Flyveklubb, a flying club located at the local airport and with permission to train pilots for the Private Pilot License. He told me that, after earning his Private Pilot License here in Norway, he was planning on going to the flight school Phoenix East Aviation in Daytona Beach, Florida for his Instrument and commercial training as well as being trained as a Certified Flight Instructor. That would give the opportunity to work as a flight instructor after completed training, and would be an excellent way of building the flight time necessary to qualify for a job in the airlines.

All this seemed very logical and had certainly given me some new ideas on how to proceed with my own flight training! I spent the rest of the weekend letting the new information sink in, and on the following Monday I made the decision to sign up for flight training at Phoenix East Aviation in Florida!

The student I talked to at the crash course was going to complete his PPL here in Norway before moving to Florida to continue his training there. The more I thought about it however, I figured, with the almost everlasting summer and sunny weather of the Sunshine State and the opportunity to fly several times a week all year round, why not do it all over there…

Soon everything was set and I got accepted by Phoenix East Aviation into their Professional Pilot Program as a Private Pilot student! That means it is time to start preparing for the trip. I have made travel arrangements to go to Florida on October 17.

That gave me just the time I needed to take care of things like applying for a student visa at the U.S. Embassy and acquiring an FAA Medical Certificate as well as studying and preparing myself for Private Pilot ground school in Florida…

Since then I have now earned both my Private Pilot License and Instrument Rating and I am currently training towards my Commercial license. More of my experiences from throughout my flight training so far will be posted here periodically so stay tuned!