White kucklin' the Yoke

I had the privilege this morning of taking a ride with a friend of mine up in a cessna 172s. I certainly wasn't going to turn down that offer. What a great experience. I met him early in the morning, and was able to assist him with some of his pre-flight checks. Its pretty cool to see everything you're supposed to go through before you take off. Everything from checking flight surface function, to manually rolling the plane back and forth looking for bald patches on the wheel.
Since it was just him and I, I was assigned co-pilot duties and helped with the in-flight type checks too. There are checks for taking off, cruising, landing, and all that jazz. It was very eye opening.

From First Flight

The above picture is of us right before take off, ready to go... Throttle up! I have to admit, I was anticipating what I would think of the whole experience from the moment I woke up this morning. Though, interestingly, my expected reaction was not how I really reacted. I figured I'd "geek out" over all the dials, guages, knobs, and other stuff to play with, and would probably sit there with a smile on my face for the whole trip. Instead, I was overwhelmed. There were a few things I could figure out, altimeter, heading, "Plane level thingy." But much of the rest was a mystery. Okay, yes, I know what the radios and all that stuff where, but I was at a loss for being able to explain what any of the read-outs and buttons meant. The performance of my pilot was excellent. He demonstrated mastery of all the knobs and buttons, and communicated well with the ground/flight operations staff.

From First Flight

Eventually, I was offered a chance to take a hold of the flight controls and fly around. You can see from the photo above, I had a solid death grip on the yoke. Talk about a rush! Its deffinately a little more difficult than driving a car... There's this whole 3rd dimension you have to deal with. I have no clue how I did, relative to any sort of measure, but we didn't crash! :) I haven't learned to Tao of flying in my first run thats for sure. I kept telling myself to relax, but it wasn't working. Since this was all VFR flying (visual) there's plenty to do, namely keep an eye out for all other aircraft. No radar on this little guy. I was flying southbound right along the start of the mountains. Plenty of winds there to knock the plane around. My pilot told me to just go with it, and proceeded to demonstrate the maneuverability of the aircraft by pushing the yoke down, giving us a -1.5 G fall. I would have loved to see my face when he did that. Oh well. Speaking of maneuver's we also preformed some power on, and power off stalls (not while I was flying it, of course). That was fun, and very informational. He was able to explain what has happening, and going on, and how to fix it.

All in all, a great experience, and I'd definitely go up again, given the opportunity. If you are wondering if Flight School is in my future, well, if I could afford it, and had enough free time, yeah, I think it would be cool. I still have more interest in flying a helicopter though. That might change though, if I ever have the chance to go up in one. Closest I get is my little electric RC helicopter.

From First Flight

On the way home from the airport, I happened to notice this "test sign." Just thought it was funny, and figured I would share. You can see a few more photos that were snapped (with comments) during my flight time here.