Short version:

I have released a Fear of Landing ebook! It costs less than a cheap cup of coffee and it’s fun and funny and even my teenage son likes it.

So what are you waiting for? Pick up your own copy of You Fly Like a Woman today:

• Amazon.co.uk £0.86
• Amazon.com $0.99
• Amazon.de Amazon.es Amazon.fr €0.99 – English only

Long version:

I have released a Fear of Landing ebook about my experiences learning to fly:

Getting a pilot’s license was the furthest thing from her mind – until an ex-RAF instructor suggested that she wasn’t competent to do so. The thing is, he could be right. Sylvia has just a few weeks to prove that she can fly as well as any man.

You Fly Like a Woman tells the story of one woman’s search for confidence as she stumbles into a man’s world.

I’ve wanted to put this together for a while, to take the individual pieces I’d written about learning to fly and put it into a coherent whole. In doing this, I became aware of what a time of growth it was for me. Learning to fly has changed the way I view the world in fundamental ways, like no other adult activity ever has.

I’m excited to share this and I’m also incredibly flattered and excited at the initial reaction. The book went straight into the Amazon Aviation top ten and I had purchases before I had even announced it.

It’s only 48 pages which means it only takes an hour or two to read (to compare, I am currently reading Horns by Joe Hill, which is 370 pages) so the decision to use electronic publishing was an easy one. All of the content has been revisited and added to so even long-time readers of my aviation stories will find plenty of new details to read.

And at this price, what have you got to lose? If you enjoy my essays or even just want to help support my Fear of Landing website, pick up a copy this week:

• Amazon.co.uk £0.86
• Amazon.com $0.99
• Amazon.de Amazon.es Amazon.fr €0.99 – English only

And a special offer for all Fear of Landing readers: if you will pay travel expenses, I am happy to come and sign your e-reader or computer monitor for you! :)

The wind is 22 gusting 30. I am sitting indoors, watching flight videos and reading accident reports. GA pilots go through accident reports like they are candy. We experience vicariously the scenarios that we desperately hope will never actually happen to us and what better time than when we are stuck on the ground anyway?

It’s the same every winter – my eyes start darting from the calendar to my log book to the calendar again as I edge towards becoming out of date. The weather and Christmas sloth combine to make flying seem like a chore. I can never get excited about circuits for the sake of circuits. I’d love to go somewhere; however travelling becomes riskier with the variable weather, the likelihood of getting stranded becomes higher. Every December, my desire to get into the plane hits an annual low.

It’s easy to focus on the negatives. I do the same when it comes to skiing. When I’m home, I think about the cold and the bruises on my shoulders from carrying the skis and the way the boots cut into my shins and the sore muscles and the wet gloves. But I know that when I’m up there, coming down the crystal white mountain, feeling the ground slide beneath me, making my way down the slope, it’ll all come back to me: this is why I do this. It’s a physical rush.

Flying doesn’t have quite the same effect or at least, not if everything goes to plan. I’m pleased if it is all goes as expected but I’m not breathless. I may gasp a bit if things go wrong, but the ball in the pit of my stomach while I try to sort it out is not a feeling I can claim to enjoy.

And so now, sitting safe and warm at the computer, I find it hard to get excited because I’m thinking about planning, not flying. I don’t want to get out the maps and get to the airport early and check the plane and beg ATC to fit me in between all the jet airliners. I can’t think of anywhere I want to go. It feels like hard work.

I go to the airfield anyway and sit in the coffee shop, listening to other grounded pilots. I’m hoping for a reminder of why I love flying, why I spend so much time and money and effort into this hobby. I want to be up there, conquering the sky, a young man says, gazing out the window with undisguised yearning. I have to hide my confusion. There is no such colonialist desire in my heart, I have no visions of conquest. But then I think about his words again and realise that I’m wrong. It’s not the sky that I want to subdue, it is myself.

I want to have flown more than I want to fly. I want to have survived another trip, I want to learn another trick, I want another story to tell. I want to conquer my own inexperience and ineptitude.

That young man might fly because he yearns for the freedom of flight but that isn’t what drives me.

I fly to land.

Every time I successfully land the plane I feel an adrenaline rush that it would take class A drugs to recreate. The first time, I was shaking as I got out of the plane but the victory was undeniable: I flew this plane and I brought it to the ground. I navigated and interacted and then touched the flying beast onto a specific runway at a specific point (sometimes even gently).

I fly to prove I can, over and over again.

What is it that draws you to flight? And was it always that way?

I’m working on an article called Sylvia’s Mother at the moment (er, if you are my editor, read “working on” as “finishing off”. I swear you’ll have it by Friday) and wrote about my thoughts before taking my mom and my son up in the Saratoga.

This is from my initial draft. I can’t help but feel that the family flying magazine that the final article is aimed at would not appreciate this.

Every time I thought about it, I ended up with my heart in my throat. My mother and my son in the back of the light aircraft. If I mess up, it isn’t just me. They are trusting me to fly the plane – this plane that still scares the bejeebus out of me. What if I lose concentration and twiddle the vertical speed knob counter-clockwise instead of clockwise and the plane starts to dive dive dive down into the ground and we end up a fiery inferno on some Tuscan farm, last words of what-the-fuck?

I know this is ludicrous. I have, on one occasion, twiddled that very knob the wrong way. The moment the nose tilted down, I disengaged the auto-pilot and tilted it back up. No drama, we lost no more than fifty feet of height. I know the fear isn’t rational. But still. Are they out of their minds?!

So, it’s cut for now, although I might try to rewrite it in a more gentle fashion and re-insert it. First I need to go find out what a bejeebus actually is!

I needed a photograph of me and the plane to go alongside an article I wrote for a US magazine. It was an amusing photoshoot at Elstree in the rain/snow: I was OK as I was in the cockpit smiling broadly, but poor Cliff was outside leaning on the wing (and the aileron, as you can see!) complaining about the cold and damp.

This is one I didn’t use because it didn’t show off the plane very well. I’ll link to the one we did use, once it’s out (a few months yet).