Short field take-off on 35 looking over at he school's parked aircraft.
The school buildings are just to the right of them.
One of the biggest differences from the UK is the R/T. The Americans are a lot more relaxed than the British, but that does mean that sometimes you are not certain what someone's intentions are and occasionally you will get a couple of pilots chatting about something when you are trying to get in a call for final! Also, there are quite a few people flying with little English and they range from difficult to understand to speaking in Spanish or something and then it gets really scary!
The American concept of UNICOM takes a while to get used to. Especially since there is usually about 3 or 4 stations within range using the same frequency! You have to make sure you mention the station you are broadcasting to both at the start and end of your transmissions. At uncontrolled airfields, if you do not hear from any other traffic, you get to choose the active runway and direction, however beware stations with new frequencies. Leesburg used to be on the same frequency as Ormond but recently changed, but you still occasionally hear people calling final for a Leesburg runway on the Ormond frequency until someone notices and gently lets them know. You get some very startled replies!
The following piccies are taken from the Ormond circuit.
The instructors there were excellent. Many thanks to them all (Staffan, Robert, Karl, Tim and especially Ryan and Dave who I had most of my lessons with). They were all very helpful and always ready to answer even the dumbest of questions.