It begins on a Thursday afternoon in March, block off at 14:22, with OE-AKW on the apron at Bad Vöslau. 35 minutes block, 28 of them in the air, one landing.

An introductory flight — the flight where nothing has been decided yet. You sit on the left, you get to hold the yoke, you look down at a landscape you thought you knew from the ground, and afterwards you know whether you are coming back.

The track shows exactly what such a flight is meant to show: a careful loop south towards Wiener Neustadt, a bit of feeling around above the Steinfeld, 3,315 ft at most, and then back to the runway. 72 km of ground under the wheels.

The Aquila A211 will remain the main tool for the next year and a half. 84 of the 95 flights in this book take place in one of the three Aquilas. This is where that starts.

Two weeks later, this time in D-ELFH, we leave the airfield behind properly for the first time. East across the Leitha mountains, out to Lake Neusiedl — 40 km from the departure point, a fair statement for a second flight.

Lake Neusiedl is the natural training ground for everything that takes off at Vöslau: flat, enormous, unmistakable, and about as easy to get lost over as an empty car park. 139 km in 51 minutes, 3,183 ft. A steppe lake as a practice area.

The first flight that really goes up. 7,082 ft maximum altitude — more than twice anything before it, and unmatched for the next four months. The track leads west, towards the Schneeberg.

From 7,000 ft the Vienna Basin suddenly looks like a map, and the Schneeberg, which from Vöslau fills half the western horizon, turns into a hill you look down on. Slow flight and stalls were presumably on the programme that morning — that needs altitude, and altitude pays out in view.

62 minutes, 169 km, one landing. The longest flight of the early phase.

A Saturday morning, D-ELFH, 66 minutes block. The track swings out in a wide loop south-east across the Rosalia range, brushes Lake Neusiedl and comes back over the Leitha mountains.

This is the classic Vöslau training arc: out across the low hills, where the air already starts working in spring, a few exercises over flat ground, and home along the edge of the mountains. 150 km, 3,325 ft.

Easter Monday. The track stays closer to the airfield than last time — 25 km is the furthest point — and still adds up to 148 km. Which means: a lot of manoeuvring, not much travelling.

That is exactly what training flights look like at this stage. You are not flying a route, you are flying shapes: steep turns, slow flight, reversals, and again from the top. The GPS track of these flights is a tangle, and the tangle is the progress.

The first flight in OE-AKI, and the first one in the other direction: north across the Vienna Woods, out to the Danube near Tulln and on into the Weinviertel. 48 km from the airfield, 53 minutes in the air.

The Vienna Woods are the threshold. As long as you stay south of them you are at home in the Vienna Basin. The moment you are across, a different landscape lies there: the Danube as a broad silver band, the Marchfeld, the hills of the Weinviertel, and far to the east the rim of the Carpathian Basin.

OE-AKW, block off 13:11. A circuit over Wiener Neustadt and out to Lake Neusiedl, 143 km, one landing.

The Steinfeld south of Wiener Neustadt is a gift for training: a vast, level gravel plain with farm tracks drawn as if with a ruler. Perfect for practising forced landing approaches, perfect for judging positions, and if it ever came to it, there really is somewhere down there to put the aeroplane.

A public holiday, block off 09:26 — and the right-hand seat holds not P. but S. That is no coincidence: a progress check is taken by an instructor other than the one who teaches you.

Progress Check A is the first formal position report of the training. After seven flights it asks what has stuck: control, turns, slow flight, procedures, and whether the basic understanding holds.

The flight stays low — 2,476 ft maximum, the lowest so far — and goes out over Lake Neusiedl. Morning air in May above a large flat lake is as smooth as it ever gets in this country. 122 km in 44 minutes, one landing.

After this the programme changes completely. What comes now is six weeks of circuits.