Today, 16 years ago, was mine.
I was divorced a year earlier and was out on a dodgy date (with what turned out to be a real bunny boiler) who told me to stop talking about it and just get on with it! So I booked myself a lesson.
It was in a PA38 Tomahawk, with an instructor whose both hands were never more than 1mm away from the yoke. The plane was totally shagged, with up to 1 litre of water to be drained out of the tanks after a night’s rain, a puddle of water on the floor, the plastic coating having peeled off the yoke years ago and the bare steel rusted from years of students’ sweat.
I earned my private certificate sporadically over a period of 24 years and by the time I took the check ride, I could no longer remember my first lesson! 
I do remember the plane though, here it is a few decades after I flew it… still looking exactly the same.
A moment ago I checked and it looks like it’s been deregistered more recently! I hope nobody wrecked it.
L13 Blanik glider, July 1989, aerotow. After releasing the cable at 3000 ft I looked down to the runway “oh boy, that´s too small, I´ll never be able to land it there”. The runway is still 2000 meters long if you ask…
Here’s a pic of my 1st solo plane
Amazingly it still shows up as registered.
My first flight for the PPL training was in a C-152 II, D-ERPC.
The flight was about one hour long and the instructor did not touch the controls once, he talked me through the whole flight, including the landing. Nine hours later I did my first solo. The whole PPL took me only eight weeks, including all theory, test and checkflight, but I gew up around airplanes.
Peter wrote:
Here’s a pic of my 1st solo plane
We have something in common Peter 
…. Here’s mine:
You certainly got to appreciate the folly of trying to pick a wing up at the stall using ailerons…. Wasn’t called the Traumahawk for nothing!
No photos of 1972 Cessna 150L Commuter C-FHCK, only four years old when I was allowed to fly my first solo at Pitt Meadows BC, and she appears to have been out of CofA in the Fraser River region (so lived all her life near Pitt Meadows?) around 1997, and finally de registered in 2002.
This C140 gave me my first experience at the controls, unfortunately went west quite recently, no injuries.
The trusty Fleet Canuck 80 which was my first tail wheel solo (you didn’t need a tail wheel sign off in those days and I soloed after one flight – reflecting on the very benign tail wheel manners of the Canuck) is still alive (CF-HHE), but can’t find a photo of it on the Internet.
My first flying lesson was 2nd July 2011 so just over 5 years ago – missed that anniversary, didn’t I ;-) As for why learn to fly, I had a bit of cash left over from a tax refund and was wondering whether to use it as a deposit on a Harley Davidson or go for my pilot’s licence in an attempt to overcome my fear of flying. I discussed my choices with a friend who told me – suffering from a midlife crisis? Then get the Harley. Want to do something to be proud of? Go for the licence.
So I did….. and for the first 10 – 15 lessons my thoughts were the same as I looked over at my 75 year old instructor:
please don’t drop dead on me, I don’t know whether I can land this thing yet……
And here the obligatory picture of the aircraft I learnt on, a C172R D-EOUC.
My first flying lesson was in this type (but different callsign: D-8384, I will never forget the number) sometime in August 1978 (38 years ago that must be):
I had built and flown model aircraft before and knew “everything” (doesn’t ever 15 or 16 year old boy know everything?) about aeroplanes. However, that winch launch really caught me by surprise. Before I knew what was going on, we were already on downwind and preparing to land. The whole flight lasted 3 minutes (as every winch launched flight in a Rhönlerche which glides less well than a C152) and was over before I fully realised it had begun. My first reaction was: “I’m never going to master this!” Two weeks and 46 (or so) landings later, I soloed. After 15 solo flights from the winch, we moved on to aerotow the next summer and I haven’t done a winch launch since then. I guess it would catch me by surprise now exactly as all those years ago!
When I decided to start flying, I found out that many people in Poland spend up to a year to get PPL. So I googled for PPL fast track and found a school in Wales, Haverfordwest. I called and a nice person told me that it’s possible to get PPL in a month. Few days later I was there. Chief instructor knew nothing about it, as the person I was talking to was older and didn’t pass the info. But they got me flying right away and in two months I had the license.
First lesson was also my first flight in a GA aircraft. I got to feel the controls, felt positive and negative G for the first time. It was nice and friendly, as was the whole training process. It was a 1970 C150.
