I’m sure you’ll be fine when it happens. Remember, your instructor won’t let you go until he/she feels you can safely get it down again – they have almost as much desire not to see a bent aeroplane or a bent student than you have! IMHO, its best not to be too pre-occupied with the first solo – it comes when its ready.

A few things I remember about my first solo:

1. I was flying a Cessna 150 and could look down and see the main wheels. I saw the main wheel stop rotating after I lifted off, and remember thinking “Oh well, I guess I better get this one right as I’m rather committed now” It was only when I saw the wheel stop rotating that I really realised what I’d gotten myself into! 🙂

2. The instructor didn’t tell me it’d go up faster with only one person on board. I’d kind of got used to where abouts in the circuit the aeroplane would make to circuit height and I’d have to level off, and [with hindsight] had started fixating on getting to that position rather than checking the altimeter. On reaching that point on my first solo, I looked at the altimeter and found I was already 200′ above normal circuit height. 😮 That was when I discovered it went up faster with one on board. I did a gradual decent back to circuit height – whilst I was tempted to push forward rather firmly and rectify the problem quickly I really didn’t want my instructor to be watching and see me do a noticable decent on downwind! Nothing was said, so I kept that little error to myself! 😮

3. Not to worry – despite the self-conciousness brought on by the error, I still managed a half-reasonable landing. It took me around 10 hours to get from having done no flying to doing half-reasonable landing – and I reckon about another 200-300 hours to get to relatively good landings! 😀

4. The Beach Boys song Kokomo just happened to playing on the car radio when I left the flying school after my first solo. Every time I hear that song, even today nearly 15 years later, it brings back memories of my first solo.