{"id":5,"date":"2012-02-02T20:00:54","date_gmt":"2012-02-03T01:00:54","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.jlg.name\/blog\/?p=5"},"modified":"2012-11-06T16:37:37","modified_gmt":"2012-11-06T21:37:37","slug":"discovering-flight","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/jlg.name\/blog\/2012\/02\/discovering-flight\/","title":{"rendered":"Discovering flight"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>My first flight lesson was today.\u00a0 I had a fabulous time.<\/p>\n<div id=\"attachment_6\" style=\"width: 235px\" class=\"wp-caption alignright\"><a href=\"http:\/\/jlg.name\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2012\/02\/2012-02-02-discovery-flight.jpg\"><img aria-describedby=\"caption-attachment-6\" loading=\"lazy\" class=\"size-medium wp-image-6 \" title=\"2012-02-02-discovery-flight\" src=\"http:\/\/www.jlg.name\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2012\/02\/2012-02-02-discovery-flight-225x300.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"225\" height=\"300\" srcset=\"http:\/\/jlg.name\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2012\/02\/2012-02-02-discovery-flight-225x300.jpg 225w, http:\/\/jlg.name\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2012\/02\/2012-02-02-discovery-flight-768x1024.jpg 768w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 225px) 100vw, 225px\" \/><\/a><p id=\"caption-attachment-6\" class=\"wp-caption-text\">JLG at Hanscom Field, February 2, 2012<\/p><\/div>\n<p>Getting here required the encouragement of private pilot Anastasia (Pittsburgh, 2003), aerobatic pilot Doug (Hawthorne, 2006), sport pilot Tim (Annapolis, 2011), and co-pilot Evelyn (Boston, 2012).\u00a0 I have long wanted to fly but have long been afraid to start \u2014 not because of the flying itself but because of the lifestyle commitment that flying represents.\u00a0 Various pilots and aircraft owners have warned me that flight is a \u201cuse it or lose it skill\u201d and that once you start flying you need to keep flying regularly to stay proficient.<\/p>\n<p>But <em>carpe diem<\/em>, no?\u00a0 I\u2019ve been wanting to do this for a decade, and it\u2019s not like it\u2019s going to become more convenient nor less expensive as more time passes.\u00a0 Evelyn is enthusiastic and exceptionally supportive of the idea of me getting out of the apartment and getting into a cockpit.\u00a0 So, private pilot certificate, here I come.<\/p>\n<p>There are three general aviation airports within reasonable distance of our place: Norwood Memorial (30 minutes southwest), Hanscom Field (35 NW), and Beverly Municipal (40 NE).\u00a0 There are at four different flight schools at these three airports, all of which seem fine at first glance.\u00a0 How to choose?\u00a0 Unfortunately I haven\u2019t met any local pilots yet to get direct recommendations.\u00a0 But one of the schools advertises aerobatic training and aerobatic aircraft as part of their fleet \u2014 and thanks to Doug I\u2019m very interested in aerobatics \u2014 so earlier this week I scheduled a \u201cdiscovery flight\u201d with that company to meet the staff, try out the drive to Hanscom, discuss the curriculum and training plan, and get up in the air.<\/p>\n<p>The weather this morning was cold, windy, and overcast, which meant hardly anyone else was using the sky; there were only two other general aviation planes flying near us in the practice area west of the airport.\u00a0 I spent most of the flight grinning from ear to ear.\u00a0 Some of my takeaways:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>The aircraft (at least the Cessna 172SP that we flew today) has <a href=\"http:\/\/www.physlink.com\/education\/askexperts\/ae568.cfm\">metallic wicks<\/a> on the rear of some of the control surfaces to dissipate any static charge that builds up during the flight.\u00a0 Without the wicks, the buildup of electrical potential could cause communications problems.\u00a0 Neat.<\/li>\n<li>Full throttle isn\u2019t necessarily better.\u00a0 The concept of \u201ccruise speed\u201d on aircraft has always perplexed me; if the plane <em>can<\/em> fly faster, why <em>wouldn\u2019t<\/em> you fly faster in general?\u00a0 Answer: it\u2019s much louder and much less smooth of a ride, not to mention much less fuel efficient.<\/li>\n<li>I should expect my instructors always to pretend that the GPS is always broken.\u00a0 I\u2019m fairly interested in old-school navigation, be it dead reckoning or the use of VOR\/DME equipment, so I was worried that everything would focus on GPS.\u00a0 The instructor assured me that, other than a 30 minute lesson in GPS (\u201cit\u2019s nice to have when the light is fading and you\u2019re lost\u201d), I would get all the old-school navigation I wanted.<\/li>\n<li>Speaking of dead reckoning:\u00a0 After an hour of having me fly in basically Brownian motion (\u201cok, now make a steep 180 degree turn keeping your airspeed and altitude fixed but without looking at the instrument panel\u201d) the instructor asked \u201cwhere\u2019s the airport?\u201d\u00a0 I\u2019m proud to report that my guess was only off by 90 degrees (I said \u201ceast\u201d, the correct answer was \u201cnorth\u201d).<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>Most flight schools appear to offer a discovery flight of 30 or 60 minutes (today\u2019s was 60 minutes of flight time as part of an overall 150-minute lesson, including the pre-flight briefing and weather analysis, pre-flight inspection, and post-flight briefing, for $200).\u00a0 In a discovery flight the student gets to perform the takeoff (yay!) and most of the flying, with hands-on practice in basic aircraft handling: roll\/pitch\/yaw, trim for level flight, coordinated turns, slow flight, and visual references.\u00a0 I started lessons today thanks to the discovery flight that Anastasia gifted me a decade ago, plus the ongoing encouragement I\u2019ve received from my friends and family:\u00a0 Thank you.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>My first flight lesson was today.\u00a0 I had a fabulous time. Getting here required the encouragement of private pilot Anastasia (Pittsburgh, 2003), aerobatic pilot Doug (Hawthorne, 2006), sport pilot Tim (Annapolis, 2011), and co-pilot Evelyn (Boston, 2012).\u00a0 I have long wanted to fly but have long been afraid to start \u2014 not because of the [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[3],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/jlg.name\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/jlg.name\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/jlg.name\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/jlg.name\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/jlg.name\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=5"}],"version-history":[{"count":7,"href":"http:\/\/jlg.name\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":655,"href":"http:\/\/jlg.name\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5\/revisions\/655"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/jlg.name\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=5"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/jlg.name\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=5"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/jlg.name\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=5"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}