My Father's Day Gift / A Discovery Flight?

OK, if you've never done this, you have to try it at least once.

For father's day my wife got me the coolest gift. She got me a Discovery flight at the local flight school.

I had been telling her that I wanted to learn to fly helicopters for sometime. I'm almost middle aged, and I guess I'm going through my crises. Some men look for that younger woman, some a Porsche, me I want to buy aircraft go figure.


Before you can fly, you have to take a tutorial on the basic components of the aircraft. They had a sports plane that you can take up, but that wasn't really my speed. After taking the tutorial, it was off to the aircraft. Mine was a Cessna 172SP.

Here, my instructor and I are going over a few more basics before we kick the props. He is showing me the where the breaks are, no really that wasn't a joke, he is showing me where the breaks are. The funny thing is, when just looking at a photo of the gages, and wheel of an aircraft one would think that it would be like driving a car, boy was I wrong. While on the ground, you move the aircraft with your feet. And I have to tell you, it was a task to keep it on that little line on the runway.

Me, talking to the tower. I'm letting them know that I am new at this, and they need to be patient. No, I was doing my preflight check with the tower. When doing this, you are checking the traffic on the tarmac, and the air, and you are also checking the Echo, or weather. Why they call it Echo, I do not know. I was new, so all other flight were able to go before me, I wonder why.

OK, now I'm ready, or was I. Yes there is a smile on my face, but I'm asking myself, "what in the hell are you doing here?"

I'm now ready to taxi to the runway. Here, and you can't see it, but I am all over the place on the runway. My wife said that she didn't notice the plain swaying back and forth on the runway, but she wasn't in the cockpit either. You also can't see the yellow and black line either, but you want to keep the nose of the plane in the middle of the line. This is done so that you don't run into any of the lights or other planes that may be on the runway. Yeah, I failed that one. I didn't hit anything, but I didn't keep her steady either.

Yes, I actually made it back, and walked away from it alive. My instructor said that I did a great job. Well of course he did, I'm paying him.

OK, things we couldn't get pictures of.. We made it to the runway, and were ready for take off. The tower gave us the go ahead, so we rived up the engine, and off we went. Now remember you steer with your feet while on the ground. I no longer have to keep her straight, she's on her way. The instructor tells me to start pulling back on the wheeling. I pull, and I start to see the ground getting smaller, and smaller. The long gray runway soon looks like a abstract painting as we pick up more and more speed. And with in seconds we are off the ground completely.

My feet are still on the controls, and my wife tells me that it looked as though the plane was a teador toter. Reason being, is because I was concentrating so much on keep it straight on the ground, that I didn't remember my training and forgot that once in the air, you take over with the wheel. Each peddle controls the wings pitch. The instructor tells me that we will level her out at 500K feet. I'm watching the computer screen, and its climbing, and climbing, we hit it. Roll the trim wheel, and now its all on me.

Oh, and lets not forget that it was windy day. We hit some turbulence and I have to be honest with you, it scared the shit out of me. But once we were in the air, I was fine. I tried to pick a spot to concentrate on to keep my wings level. I found a cloud and used it as a reference point. Once that was complete, We changed up our mixture. Unlike in a car where you have a gas peddle. The plane had two knobs on the dash if you will. One black, and one red. The black knob was to give you speed or acceleration. The red is your fuel mixture. While we were on the tarmac we had the red knob pulled as far out as possible. Once we were in the air the red knob was pushed back in 3 quarters. We still needed fuel, but not as much as we did on the ground as the air and props did much of the work.

So we are now level per our instruments, and looking out the left and right of the plane we could see the same amount of space between our wings. Now to start making turns.

Again, this is harder then it looks. When making a turn in a car, it's automatic or immediate. When doing so in a plane there is a lag time of a few seconds. I had a problem with this, because I would pick a new focal point, and make my turn. The nose would not go in that direction, so I would turn again. This was an over compensation, and my spot would be far to the left or right.

After a few turns, we decided to pick reference points on the ground to know where we were. We also looked at out instruments to gage our speed, and location. Funny thing is, I live about an hour away from the airport, and I was over the lake which is about 15 minutes from our farm.

Now it is time to land... I'm now feeling queasy because my instructor as just advised me that I would be the one landing. We call the tower, the tower ask if we have checked our Echo again, we had. We are told to reduce speed, and change our heading as there was traffic. I didn't see anyone. Again, we are like an hour away in my mind. We push in the black knob a bit to slow the props. What seemed like 5 minutes went by and I could see the highway which is about a mile from the airport out my left window. I look back to the nose, and see a small white dot shoot past, it was the other traffic on its approach. I then look out the left window again, and can see the airport. We are coming up fast, and I'm told to pull back on the black knob for speed. I pull her back, and pull back on the red knob. The airport is getting closer, and closer with each second. The instructor tells me that I want to bring the runway parallel to my left window and make the turn left. She at my left now, and I make the turn once; I learned my lesson with the turns. I then drop my flaps, and push the black knob in a bit to bring down the speed of the props. The ground looks as though I'm going to slam right into it. I push the wheel forward slightly, and a little more, a little more. I feel the front of the plane touch down, I'm in there. I take my hands of the wheel, and apply breaks, and back to the peddles; left, right, left, right. Then I park it, and we tie her down. My first flight is over.

Well thank you honey, it was fun. And I plan to take the lessons to get my licence.