Tuesday, August 01, 2006

Flyboy!

OK... so I officially have a logbook... and it has a grand total of .5 hours in it. But the point is... I have a log book dammit.

I thought I was going up in a 175, but instead we took the Piper Warrior. Its a low wing four seater, and I liked it quite a bit. The whole ordeal took a little over 2 hours... about 1.25 hours of which was actually in the aircraft.

I was walked through the pre-flight check and the start up checklist... then I was familiarized with the 6 main guages.... I won't go into all the boring details tonight... tonight I'll just tell ya... I had a freakin' ball.

The instructor taxi'd around... called the tower... and off we went. Trim to take-off position... throttle up... 60mph... pull back on the wheel.... up we go. I thought the instructor took us off... but he later told me I did it. We climbed to 4k... then trimmed for level flight. I executed a few turns... a few climbing turns.. a few decending turns... Then practiced turning to a heading. The instructor would call it... I'd go there... and ya know? On that old plane... you really gots to stomp those pedals. Dayum.

Anyway... Ya know what's up there y'all? Freedom. Freedom is up there. No cops. No speedlimits. No stoplights. You take off... you go where you want, when you want.

Is it expensive? Yes. Yes it is. The warrior eats about 9 gph... making a flight to the gulf coast cost about 320 bucks round trip. Not significantly different than taking the Titan, but not cheap.

It's not about money though... its about accomplishing a lifelong goal... doing something I've been dreaming of since I was 2-years-old.

And besides... it's a lot easier to bug out when you have an airstrip in your back yard. Dig?

No comments: