After a six-week break: 53 minutes, five landings, circuits. The longest gap between two flights in the entire training lies behind this entry.

It is striking how quickly the circuit is back on the programme after a break. Six weeks is an eternity in flying terms, and the first thing you lose is the feel for the last three metres.

16 minutes with an instructor, two landings. After that it continues alone.

The recorded track covers the whole session that afternoon — it reaches 47 km out to Lake Neusiedl.

44 minutes solo, out across the Leitha mountains to Lake Neusiedl and back. The first solo flight that leaves the circuit.

This is a transition that looks small in the logbook and is in fact large. In the circuit the airfield is always there. Outside it, finding it again is your own responsibility.

Lake Neusiedl is ideal for this step: 40 km from Vöslau, unmistakable, flat, and on the way back you can navigate by the chain of the Alps, standing in the west like a wall.

Nine minutes in the air, two landings, instructor on board. The clearance for what comes after.

37 minutes alone, from Vöslau across Lake Neusiedl and the Leitha mountains to the Spitzerberg. The first solo flight to an airfield away from home.

There is hardly anything that changes your own flying like the first solo landing at an airfield you do not know. Nobody is there to make the position call, nobody to say "the runway is over there". You do it, or you do not.

The Spitzerberg with its grass strip above the Danube is a fine place for it — demanding enough to mean something, friendly enough to work.

111 km, 37 minutes, 97 knots average, alone. Across the Leitha mountains, Lake Neusiedl, home to Vöslau.

A Sunday afternoon in October over the Burgenland: the vineyards are in colour, the lake lies still, and the way back leads straight into the low sun. For a flight planned and flown entirely by yourself for the first time, that is a rather good backdrop.

Two landings with an instructor, ten minutes, 1,690 ft. A Sunday morning with something still to come.

And then: 201 km in 60 minutes, alone, to Wels. The furthest point lies 171 km from the departure airfield.

This is the big solo cross-country. Across the Vienna Woods, then west right through Lower Austria, past St. Pölten and along the Danube into Upper Austria. An hour in the air, alone, with a chart, a radio and a plan.

109 knots average means: it went well. No searching, no detour, nothing taken back. Simply there.

Second leg of the triangle: 160 km from Wels to Krems-Langenlois, 52 minutes, alone. Along the Danube, through the Wachau, into the Kamp valley.

A triangular flight with two intermediate landings is the classic final piece of navigation training. Three airfields, three approaches, three departures, orienting yourself afresh each time, planning afresh each time — and nobody to take over.

Krems — Vöslau, 96 km, 35 minutes. Over St. Pölten, across the Vienna Woods, home.

That closes the triangle: 457 km on a Sunday, three airfields, all of it alone. Block on at 15:23.

The shortest instructor entry in the book: eight minutes, two landings. What comes after it is considerably bigger.

The track of this entry covers the whole session — and that one reaches out across the Marchfeld and Lake Neusiedl.

The longest solo flight so far: 73 minutes, a big circuit across the Vienna Woods, the Marchfeld, Lake Neusiedl and back over the Leitha mountains.

In early November the air in eastern Austria often has a clarity you never get in summer. No haze, no thermals, sharp shadows. On days like that you can see from above the Vienna Woods as far as the Little Carpathians in Slovakia, and south to the Schneeberg.

This flight carries a remark in the logbook that appears nowhere else: PC/D. And a new name in the crew field — W.

94 minutes block, 238 km, three landings, 5,046 ft. A large circuit across the Vienna Woods and St. Pölten, with everything that belongs to the last progress check: navigation, procedures, landings, emergency drills.

It is the second-longest training flight in the whole book. You can tell from the structure — long distance, several landings, a wide altitude band — that this was an examination, not practice.

The fourth and final check before the test. Sixteen days later the day comes.

Six minutes in the air, one landing, alone. Remark: Solo / IP W.

A single circuit straight after the 94-minute check, released by the examiner. Short, formal, and in the context of the day fairly unambiguous: all in order, carry on.