I also flew the morning before, with probably my worst patterns and landings yet. A plane had gone off into the grass on 27L and I had been moved to runway 27C at KSFB. I had never landed on 27C before. It is an old taxiway converted to a runway in the middle of the field that is not very well marked and feels way too close to 27R for a student pilot. It completely messed up my patterns and my landings were total crap all morning. I left frustrated and demoralized - I thought I had a chance at soloing that day but then had put up my worst flying in weeks.
When I woke up the next morning to fly, I felt nervous. This was the first time I had ever really felt nervous before a lesson. It was as if the bad showing the morning before had me spooked about my own abilities. I headed to the airport feeling strange and jittery.
But once I was out on the tarmac for my preflight, I looked up at the perfectly clear sky, watched an Allegiant MD-80 takeoff, pulled out my checklist and suddenly I felt calm as ever. I still didn't think I had a shot in hell at soloing based on what my instructor had seen me do the day before, but I was going to prove to him (and myself) that I did have a clue what I was doing in the left seat.
When my instructor came out he told me to forget about yesterday - today was perfect conditions and there are no planes in the grass, so I'll have a familiar runway. We got cleared to 9L and took off. Traffic was minimal (for SFB at least) so we got to stay in the pattern for 9L. We flew 5 patterns in about 40 minutes or so. The landings felt good to me and my CFI wasn't talking hardly at all, which is normally a pretty good sign.
On the 5th landing he called out "my controls" as soon as the nose wheel touched the ground - when he does that during landing it normally means that I did something wrong and now he needs to fix it. But as he slowed us down he called tower and said "Sanford Tower, 2–6-Sierra wants to head back to Starport, and we are going to be having a first student solo in a few minutes."
The emotions that I felt when I heard him call that were crazy. My first reaction was "are you sure!?" followed by me hyper analyzing the last 5 landings and trying to remember if he had helped on any of them - all of that nervousness backed by a creeping sensation of pure excitement and joy to be about to do something that I have wanted to do my entire life.
We pulled to to the side of the ramp and he shut the plane down and told me I'm ready. He instructed me to go fly 3 circuits like I had just done and then come back in - and to be sure to tell all of the controllers that it was my first solo, he'd be watching and listening with a radio.
Once he was gone I texted my wife to tell her that I was about to fly a plane solo and that I loved her, luckily she was still asleep (9am on a holiday) so she didn't see it until later and wasn't a worried mess for the next hour. I got back in the plane and proceeded with my start up checks. I did a full run up to make sure everything was still working correctly and then called ground to taxi.
As I taxied to the runway I took a few deep breaths and then suddenly felt hyper focused. There were no nerves, no thoughts of impending doom, just checklists and the radios. After a few minutes of holding for landing traffic I got my clearance to takeoff with instruction to fly upwind until advised. I lined up and went full power and was in the air in no time with a nice smooth takeoff.
As I climbed I noticed that a bit of a crosswind had developed, so I looked over my shoulder to check if I was drifting off the center of the runway, and as I looked down 300 feet it hit me.. I'm in the air, in a plane, alone, with no one to help me if I mess up. My stomach dropped. But I quickly took a deep breath, reminded myself that I knew how to fly a plane and the nerves were gone and replaced with focus again.
As I flew the pattern the controller's voice was so calm and collected, and my answers were so effortless that it instilled even more confidence as I flew the downwind. I was creating a mental picture of the traffic around me and I spotted my traffic to follow before she even called it out. As the King Air passed my left wing I pulled carb heat, power and put in 10 degrees of flaps and began my base turn to follow him in. As I did this I had another small lapse in focus, an "oh shit I hope I can land this thing alone" moment that lasted about 5 seconds before I felt perfectly calm again.
I flew a pretty high approach, on purpose to be on the safe side, and aimed the nose for the numbers. I leveled, flared and then touched down pretty darn smooth, a little more to the left of the center line than I would have preferred, but besides that it was a solid landing.
As I brought the plane back to the center line I let out one of the most enthusiastic "WOOOOOOOO!"s that I ever had in my entire life (and quickly checked to make sure my radio wasn't stuck on). Then went full power and back up for another one.
The second pattern was textbook. I landed right on the center line and the touchdown felt good. I "WOO"ed again.
The controller told me at the beginning of my downwind on the third lap that I was going to be extending for a bit for traffic. So once I was leveled off I took the opportunity to whip out my phone to snag a quick picture of me in flight on my first solo:
After flying almost all the way to my house, I got clearance to land and turned my base. This one was going to be tricky because I don't fly this far out very often so I need to do all of my power and flaps settings at some point during final, but I knew I could do it.
My approach was perfect, right down the center, just above glidepath according to the PAPI (exactly where I wanted to be) and airspeed right on 65 knots. As I leveled I felt calm and in control. I started my flare and a second before touchdown I heard the stall warning go off. It was the best landing I had ever performed. I called for my taxi back to the FBO and once I was off the runway, all the emotions started to flood in. Another "WOO."
I. COULD. NOT. STOP SMILING.
I felt like an idiot I was smiling so much. When I parked the plane, shut down and got out I didn't know what to do with my body because I was so happy. Even my CFI was smiling from ear to ear and said he didn't have a single thing to critique based on what he saw and heard. We headed inside to cut the back off of my shirt.
The best day of my life was the day I got married. Second is a tie between the day I met my wife and the day we got engaged. July 4th, 2017 with N1326S takes an easy 3rd.