Discovery Flight
23 January 2007 01:24![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
juldeaWhile I was waiting in the terminal for the bus home, I wrote a list of things to make sure I put in my post for later, in roughly chronological order. I am now ready to start from the top of the list and go through today in fairly, but not completely, detailed fashion. For your convenience, I'll use several LJ cuts during this process.
Today was not originally going to be the day I flew. I was originally scheduled for last Tuesday, but it was cancelled that morning due to the extremely high winds we were having that day - a bad idea for a first-time pilot. Therefore, when I woke up this morning I was glued to the weather forecast. My flight was at 11:30; almost miraculously, on the hourly weather forecast I generally use, the description went from "overcast with snow" to "mostly cloudy" between the hours of 11 and 1. Score one for me.
The commute to Hanscom is kind of long. I have to take the subway to Alewife, get on the 76 bus, take that all the way to Lincoln Labs where it sits for 10 minutes, then get off when it swings by the air field; the bus doesn't go by the field on the outbound route, only inbound. All in all I left my house at 9:50 and got there at 11:20 or so. :-/
Speaking of Lincoln Labs, it's a fairly daunting place. You're travelling along these hilly, wooded roads in historical New England decorated with quaint shopping spots, and all of a sudden you turn off onto a road with a guardhouse and a big sign saying "US AIR FORCE INSTALLATION" and there are these huge buildings with tinted glass windows. I grew up IN the Air Force and this place gave me the willies, and that was BEFORE I knew that was a site for national security research. I was kind of bothered by the fact that this bus full of just about anyone was waved onto the grounds and there was no monitoring of who got on or off, but figured that someone else had also pondered this and had some solution or another.
So I arrived at the Hanscom Civil Air Field, which was more populated than I thought. There are a bunch of businesses there, from the two flight training schools to a couple of aircraft maintenance places and even two commercial airlines! Very small ones (Boston-Maine Airways and LinearAir) but nonetheless commercial. I was impressed. The terminal is this three-story building with Avis and Hertz rental desks at the front. The men running those desks have incredibly boring jobs and I somewhat envied them. No one would yell at THEM for fiddling on the computer all day long. One was just kickin' back reading a book, in fact. There was a single very small area that the commercial jets use for boarding, and then the hallways with the NSA, FAA, and police offices, the pilot shop, the airport cafe, and the offices for the flight schools.
I headed down the hall to the door for Executive Flyers Aviation. They have a nice big office with pictures of airplanes all over. They apparently sell planes as well as train, so there were some fliers up for advertisements as well as all sorts of information handouts, FAA regulations on a bulletin board, and a display case with items for sale (from an embroidered hat to radio headsets to books/manuals.) There were a couple of guys (definitely guys, not men) behind the counter who told me Mark, my instructor, wasn't in the office yet and to wait a few minutes. A young-looking (which probably means early 20s, at this point) guy came in, swaggering like he owned the place, and chatted with the guys at the counter about how someone was currently in the Super Decathlon. I thought that sounded like an interesting airplane acrobatics test, but later found out it was a type of plane - although indeed one for acrobatic maneouvers. Anyway, I totally found my hackles rising at seeing this young dude in there and found myself trying to look like I wasn't there for the first time. Heh.
Eventually Mark showed up. He's a nice-looking man (better than his website photo) who grew up in Europe where it was prohibitively expensive to learn to fly, only pursuing it after he had moved to Boston as a journalist. This means (1) he only got into it recently, in fact doing his OWN Discovery Flight only two years ago! and (2) he was also already grown up, at 28, when he started. So immediately I felt reassured that I wouldn't be treated like, well, like I didn't have a chance getting into this. (Oh, and later, when he was wearing a radio headset and sunglasses, he looked like Jimmy Smits. I can't really explain it, but it amused me. Perhaps due to the West Wing episode that features Matt Santos flying.)
We sat down in a cubicle and talked a little bit about how private pilot training goes. Executive Flyers can train either Part 61 or 141 and offer a pretty decent package of things for going 141 with them, including some interesting DVD- and CD-ROMs which are apparently really good, "except for the bad jokes." :) The big thing to discuss, of course, was money. The worksheet EFA has out estimates that getting a Private Pilot certification on one of the Cessna 172SP-G1000s (this means "nice plane with the new awesome technology of a computerized cockpit"!) costs about $8,000 total. This is estimating 35 hours of dual flight, 15 hours solo, and 5 hours ground instruction, however, and the minimums for certification are 20 hours dual, 5 hours solo, 10 hours either, and no ground instruction (although there is a written test to pass.) I don't think I'm succumbing to hubris to say that I would not need as many hours of training as the "average" student, and I've already taken ground school (though it was years ago), so I would probably not end up at $8,000 but still - above $5,000 for certain. The estimated cost we worked out for a 75-minute dual flight was approx. $250, and it's not a good idea to fly less than once a week, so that's $1000/mo I'd need to find somewhere. :-/
There ARE student loans available. I've never taken out a student loan. I won't be doing anything until I get a regular income, but... it's tempting. Anyway, going on.
We bundled up, visited the bathroom (I'm okay with unisex bathrooms, but unisex multi-stall bathrooms weird me out, for reasons I will go into later in this post), bundled up again ;), and went outside. Then it was time for the pre-flight check, which involves a lot of wiggling bits and ensure that they either wiggle back or don't (depending on the bit) and making sure there are no birds, dead OR alive, anywhere in or on the plane. Hehe. Also, making sure there are no leaking fluids, that the gas is full and not tainted, the wheels aren't flat, etc etc. Oh, and untying the plane - very important.
We then got inside the plane. Man. For planes that claim to fit four people, I really wouldn't want to be sharing that back seat with anyone over the age of 12, and not a big 12 either. "3 and bags" is probably a better idea (although there is cargo area in the back.) Although, thinking about it, when I got into the plane the front seat was pushed all the way back and I had to seriously yank it forward a good foot and a half to be able to reach the pedals (damn my height!), so that would give whomever was in the back seat some more leg room.
We did the in-plane pre-flight check (Does the engine work? Do the flaps, ailerons, rudder, etc all respond to the stick? Do the lights work? Does the radio work? Are we buckled in?), Mark radioed to the tower for permission to taxi, and then - we taxied! So, something I should've realized but hadn't actually thought about is that when on the ground, the plane is totally steered with your feet. All movement is a combination of the throttle, which is pulled in and out with your hand, and the yaw of the plane, which is controlled with your feet. It's the opposite of a car! Mark told me that as a first timer, I should keep my hands on my knees because I'd probably inadvertently turn the stick and try to roll us or something. Heh. Anyway, he controlled the throttle and let me steer, which was pretty neat until I didn't turn correctly and nearly drove us off of the runway. >_> After that I more fully understood how braking was used for turning and didn't have as much of a problem (I thought he'd lower the throttle when we approached a turn, but he didn't - it was apparently MY job to slow us down via the brakes while the engine kept going, which seems a waste of gas. Hrm.) He took back over as we lined up on the runway, and then...
...he gunned it, we started off down the runway, and he told me to take off! Just a gentle pull back on the controls... well, I did it. This is the part where words start to fail because when you're in the cockpit of an airplane, you've just pulled back on the stick, and that airplane leaves the ground, there. are. no. words. :) There's just this expanse of sky in front of you and, if you look to the side, the ground slowly moving away. Yay.
Mark took over again and steered us to a practice area (It's amusing to think of a big block of sky above some towns set aside as a practice area for pilots, but of course it's necessary!). This involved my very first mid-air turn.
If you've ever ridden a motorcycle before, especially if it's only been a few times, you'll understand this feeling. When one is in a car or a commercial airplane, and you turn, there's only a little bit of turn that your body understands. Even with the big commercial airplane you can look out the window and see that you're at a certain angle, but you still FEEL mostly upright. Well, not so in a little prop airplane, and not so the few times I'm been on the back of![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
princessmuffin's motorcycle, so that's my only frame of reference. We turned at 30° and I was tilted at a 30° angle and thought I was going to tumble right out of that airplane and down to the ground. Talk about heart in my throat! I have to say that turning wins for the feeling I did not expect at all! I had been nervous about a lot of things but this actually scared me some. Hehe.
Speaking of scared - a little bit after that, after we had gone to the practice area and I had 'ridden along' on the controls with Mark for a couple of turns, he let me control it myself. I banked for my first turn and was partway around when a loud voice yelled, "TRAFFIC!" and I jolted. Turns out planes these days have these smart computers that give you a little mini radar, can locate other planes nearby, and will yell at you if they are sensed!. There was another plane about 2000 feet above us and off to the left - pretty far, but close enough to care about in the sky. Mark told me about how sometimes those computers aren't so smart and will pick up your own signal as another airplane right on top of you, and how this happened to him on his very first solo flight. He thought he was going to die. ;)
While the weather was good enough for VFR (and a Discovery Flight), it was still pretty cloudy, especially when we started to climb, so we stayed at about 3,000ft. Mostly everything looked covered in fog. At one point, however, I looked out in the distance and saw a cityscape shadowed by fog - Boston, looking absolutely gorgeous. Finding Boston also enabled me to then correctly answer Mark when he thought he'd stump me with the, "Sooo... can you tell me which direction Bedford is in?" after doing several turns. ;) He was impressed with me. Muah.
The time of course passed too quickly, although I noticed he did give me longer than the 30-minute flight that the Discovery Flight page lists - we were up for about 42 minutes (I saw him record .7hr in my logbook.) I got to direct us back towards the airport, where I misunderstood his indications of which landing strip we were heading for and looked as if I was totally out of control of the airplane (although we figured out what happened later, and I don't think he thinks I'm a loser.) I didn't get to be a part of the landing as that is, y'know, the hard part. But that was that! Afterwards, we got out of the plane and took the picture I linked earlier. After taking the picture, I turned around and saw that the hourly bus had just left. Oops. Well, that meant I had an hour to kill.
Mark was really easy to talk to, and I had a lot of questions about financing, so of course this led into me mentioning that I didn't in fact have a job currently and that I would need one before I could justify the expenses to myself. He brought up the fact that as soon as a few weeks ago, they were looking for dispatchers, and that working for EFA brought along a 10% discount - score. He tried to hook me up with the General Manager to see if they were still hiring, but he wasn't around. Sad. Mark and I were so involved with talking and I very nearly walked off with him to the airport cafe without paying for my flight! That was taken care of, however. ;) Also, the guys in the office had been joined by another guy who was cracking jokes of the type to make the others say, "Knock it off, we have a customer!" and me to just laugh and imagine how it'd be if I hung out there more and got to know them. ;)
I made another trip to the bathrooms in the airport. Okay, so. It's a big door with the international male AND female signs on it. Then you go in - two stalls, a urinal out in the open, and a sink etc. I am fine and happy with sharing a bathroom wtih people of the opposite sexes theoretically, but - I found myself worrying about all the various embarassing things that can occur while a person is using the bathroom, and those embarassing things being witnessed by BOYS. Heh. This was all compounded when I was washing my hands afterwards and a guy came in and walked up to the urinal. The sink is at the end of the room, and when you're standing at it you're hidden from view from the door and the urinal, so he didn't know I was there. I managed to pop into view before he, er, situated himself, though, and there was a moment of awkwardness before he asked, "Do you mind?" I laughed and said, "I'll be right out," grabbed paper towels to dry my hands, and hightailed it out of there. His voice echoed behind me, "I didn't mean to chase you out, just to invite you to mind..." I still wonder if that was supposed to be snarky; if there was bathroom etiquette I didn't know or something, or if he was seriously just wanting to know if I'd be okay with him peeing while I was there. Haha. The good news, however - later, while still waiting for the bus, I found out that there are SEPARATE bathrooms at the other end of the terminal! If I just can't handle the co-ed idea, I have an out.
Mark had to head out but I still had a while until the bus arrived. I hadn't eaten since the morning and my stomach was growling, so I went into the little airport cafe (read: snack bar with extended menu) for some lunch. Behind the counter was a little old Asian lady who started making me some veggie lo mein (the menu was a mixture of sandwiches, pizza, and chinese food!) and then asked, "Did you fly plane?" I responded that yes, I flew a plane for the first time, and she then replied, "Oooh, do you want be pilot?" I smiled and said, "Yes, I do." :) Then I got my very delicious lo mein and sat down to detail the list of items that have crafted this Lj post while watching the Hertz guy read his book. Eventually the bus came, and I took the (relatively) short ride back to Alewife.
So that was the Discovery Flight. The most odd part about all of it is how NON-surreal it seems. "I went out and flew an airplane today." This is how it should be, yes?
Today was not originally going to be the day I flew. I was originally scheduled for last Tuesday, but it was cancelled that morning due to the extremely high winds we were having that day - a bad idea for a first-time pilot. Therefore, when I woke up this morning I was glued to the weather forecast. My flight was at 11:30; almost miraculously, on the hourly weather forecast I generally use, the description went from "overcast with snow" to "mostly cloudy" between the hours of 11 and 1. Score one for me.
The commute to Hanscom is kind of long. I have to take the subway to Alewife, get on the 76 bus, take that all the way to Lincoln Labs where it sits for 10 minutes, then get off when it swings by the air field; the bus doesn't go by the field on the outbound route, only inbound. All in all I left my house at 9:50 and got there at 11:20 or so. :-/
Speaking of Lincoln Labs, it's a fairly daunting place. You're travelling along these hilly, wooded roads in historical New England decorated with quaint shopping spots, and all of a sudden you turn off onto a road with a guardhouse and a big sign saying "US AIR FORCE INSTALLATION" and there are these huge buildings with tinted glass windows. I grew up IN the Air Force and this place gave me the willies, and that was BEFORE I knew that was a site for national security research. I was kind of bothered by the fact that this bus full of just about anyone was waved onto the grounds and there was no monitoring of who got on or off, but figured that someone else had also pondered this and had some solution or another.
So I arrived at the Hanscom Civil Air Field, which was more populated than I thought. There are a bunch of businesses there, from the two flight training schools to a couple of aircraft maintenance places and even two commercial airlines! Very small ones (Boston-Maine Airways and LinearAir) but nonetheless commercial. I was impressed. The terminal is this three-story building with Avis and Hertz rental desks at the front. The men running those desks have incredibly boring jobs and I somewhat envied them. No one would yell at THEM for fiddling on the computer all day long. One was just kickin' back reading a book, in fact. There was a single very small area that the commercial jets use for boarding, and then the hallways with the NSA, FAA, and police offices, the pilot shop, the airport cafe, and the offices for the flight schools.
I headed down the hall to the door for Executive Flyers Aviation. They have a nice big office with pictures of airplanes all over. They apparently sell planes as well as train, so there were some fliers up for advertisements as well as all sorts of information handouts, FAA regulations on a bulletin board, and a display case with items for sale (from an embroidered hat to radio headsets to books/manuals.) There were a couple of guys (definitely guys, not men) behind the counter who told me Mark, my instructor, wasn't in the office yet and to wait a few minutes. A young-looking (which probably means early 20s, at this point) guy came in, swaggering like he owned the place, and chatted with the guys at the counter about how someone was currently in the Super Decathlon. I thought that sounded like an interesting airplane acrobatics test, but later found out it was a type of plane - although indeed one for acrobatic maneouvers. Anyway, I totally found my hackles rising at seeing this young dude in there and found myself trying to look like I wasn't there for the first time. Heh.
Eventually Mark showed up. He's a nice-looking man (better than his website photo) who grew up in Europe where it was prohibitively expensive to learn to fly, only pursuing it after he had moved to Boston as a journalist. This means (1) he only got into it recently, in fact doing his OWN Discovery Flight only two years ago! and (2) he was also already grown up, at 28, when he started. So immediately I felt reassured that I wouldn't be treated like, well, like I didn't have a chance getting into this. (Oh, and later, when he was wearing a radio headset and sunglasses, he looked like Jimmy Smits. I can't really explain it, but it amused me. Perhaps due to the West Wing episode that features Matt Santos flying.)
We sat down in a cubicle and talked a little bit about how private pilot training goes. Executive Flyers can train either Part 61 or 141 and offer a pretty decent package of things for going 141 with them, including some interesting DVD- and CD-ROMs which are apparently really good, "except for the bad jokes." :) The big thing to discuss, of course, was money. The worksheet EFA has out estimates that getting a Private Pilot certification on one of the Cessna 172SP-G1000s (this means "nice plane with the new awesome technology of a computerized cockpit"!) costs about $8,000 total. This is estimating 35 hours of dual flight, 15 hours solo, and 5 hours ground instruction, however, and the minimums for certification are 20 hours dual, 5 hours solo, 10 hours either, and no ground instruction (although there is a written test to pass.) I don't think I'm succumbing to hubris to say that I would not need as many hours of training as the "average" student, and I've already taken ground school (though it was years ago), so I would probably not end up at $8,000 but still - above $5,000 for certain. The estimated cost we worked out for a 75-minute dual flight was approx. $250, and it's not a good idea to fly less than once a week, so that's $1000/mo I'd need to find somewhere. :-/
There ARE student loans available. I've never taken out a student loan. I won't be doing anything until I get a regular income, but... it's tempting. Anyway, going on.
We bundled up, visited the bathroom (I'm okay with unisex bathrooms, but unisex multi-stall bathrooms weird me out, for reasons I will go into later in this post), bundled up again ;), and went outside. Then it was time for the pre-flight check, which involves a lot of wiggling bits and ensure that they either wiggle back or don't (depending on the bit) and making sure there are no birds, dead OR alive, anywhere in or on the plane. Hehe. Also, making sure there are no leaking fluids, that the gas is full and not tainted, the wheels aren't flat, etc etc. Oh, and untying the plane - very important.
We then got inside the plane. Man. For planes that claim to fit four people, I really wouldn't want to be sharing that back seat with anyone over the age of 12, and not a big 12 either. "3 and bags" is probably a better idea (although there is cargo area in the back.) Although, thinking about it, when I got into the plane the front seat was pushed all the way back and I had to seriously yank it forward a good foot and a half to be able to reach the pedals (damn my height!), so that would give whomever was in the back seat some more leg room.
We did the in-plane pre-flight check (Does the engine work? Do the flaps, ailerons, rudder, etc all respond to the stick? Do the lights work? Does the radio work? Are we buckled in?), Mark radioed to the tower for permission to taxi, and then - we taxied! So, something I should've realized but hadn't actually thought about is that when on the ground, the plane is totally steered with your feet. All movement is a combination of the throttle, which is pulled in and out with your hand, and the yaw of the plane, which is controlled with your feet. It's the opposite of a car! Mark told me that as a first timer, I should keep my hands on my knees because I'd probably inadvertently turn the stick and try to roll us or something. Heh. Anyway, he controlled the throttle and let me steer, which was pretty neat until I didn't turn correctly and nearly drove us off of the runway. >_> After that I more fully understood how braking was used for turning and didn't have as much of a problem (I thought he'd lower the throttle when we approached a turn, but he didn't - it was apparently MY job to slow us down via the brakes while the engine kept going, which seems a waste of gas. Hrm.) He took back over as we lined up on the runway, and then...
...he gunned it, we started off down the runway, and he told me to take off! Just a gentle pull back on the controls... well, I did it. This is the part where words start to fail because when you're in the cockpit of an airplane, you've just pulled back on the stick, and that airplane leaves the ground, there. are. no. words. :) There's just this expanse of sky in front of you and, if you look to the side, the ground slowly moving away. Yay.
Mark took over again and steered us to a practice area (It's amusing to think of a big block of sky above some towns set aside as a practice area for pilots, but of course it's necessary!). This involved my very first mid-air turn.
If you've ever ridden a motorcycle before, especially if it's only been a few times, you'll understand this feeling. When one is in a car or a commercial airplane, and you turn, there's only a little bit of turn that your body understands. Even with the big commercial airplane you can look out the window and see that you're at a certain angle, but you still FEEL mostly upright. Well, not so in a little prop airplane, and not so the few times I'm been on the back of
princessmuffin's motorcycle, so that's my only frame of reference. We turned at 30° and I was tilted at a 30° angle and thought I was going to tumble right out of that airplane and down to the ground. Talk about heart in my throat! I have to say that turning wins for the feeling I did not expect at all! I had been nervous about a lot of things but this actually scared me some. Hehe.Speaking of scared - a little bit after that, after we had gone to the practice area and I had 'ridden along' on the controls with Mark for a couple of turns, he let me control it myself. I banked for my first turn and was partway around when a loud voice yelled, "TRAFFIC!" and I jolted. Turns out planes these days have these smart computers that give you a little mini radar, can locate other planes nearby, and will yell at you if they are sensed!. There was another plane about 2000 feet above us and off to the left - pretty far, but close enough to care about in the sky. Mark told me about how sometimes those computers aren't so smart and will pick up your own signal as another airplane right on top of you, and how this happened to him on his very first solo flight. He thought he was going to die. ;)
While the weather was good enough for VFR (and a Discovery Flight), it was still pretty cloudy, especially when we started to climb, so we stayed at about 3,000ft. Mostly everything looked covered in fog. At one point, however, I looked out in the distance and saw a cityscape shadowed by fog - Boston, looking absolutely gorgeous. Finding Boston also enabled me to then correctly answer Mark when he thought he'd stump me with the, "Sooo... can you tell me which direction Bedford is in?" after doing several turns. ;) He was impressed with me. Muah.
The time of course passed too quickly, although I noticed he did give me longer than the 30-minute flight that the Discovery Flight page lists - we were up for about 42 minutes (I saw him record .7hr in my logbook.) I got to direct us back towards the airport, where I misunderstood his indications of which landing strip we were heading for and looked as if I was totally out of control of the airplane (although we figured out what happened later, and I don't think he thinks I'm a loser.) I didn't get to be a part of the landing as that is, y'know, the hard part. But that was that! Afterwards, we got out of the plane and took the picture I linked earlier. After taking the picture, I turned around and saw that the hourly bus had just left. Oops. Well, that meant I had an hour to kill.
Mark was really easy to talk to, and I had a lot of questions about financing, so of course this led into me mentioning that I didn't in fact have a job currently and that I would need one before I could justify the expenses to myself. He brought up the fact that as soon as a few weeks ago, they were looking for dispatchers, and that working for EFA brought along a 10% discount - score. He tried to hook me up with the General Manager to see if they were still hiring, but he wasn't around. Sad. Mark and I were so involved with talking and I very nearly walked off with him to the airport cafe without paying for my flight! That was taken care of, however. ;) Also, the guys in the office had been joined by another guy who was cracking jokes of the type to make the others say, "Knock it off, we have a customer!" and me to just laugh and imagine how it'd be if I hung out there more and got to know them. ;)
I made another trip to the bathrooms in the airport. Okay, so. It's a big door with the international male AND female signs on it. Then you go in - two stalls, a urinal out in the open, and a sink etc. I am fine and happy with sharing a bathroom wtih people of the opposite sexes theoretically, but - I found myself worrying about all the various embarassing things that can occur while a person is using the bathroom, and those embarassing things being witnessed by BOYS. Heh. This was all compounded when I was washing my hands afterwards and a guy came in and walked up to the urinal. The sink is at the end of the room, and when you're standing at it you're hidden from view from the door and the urinal, so he didn't know I was there. I managed to pop into view before he, er, situated himself, though, and there was a moment of awkwardness before he asked, "Do you mind?" I laughed and said, "I'll be right out," grabbed paper towels to dry my hands, and hightailed it out of there. His voice echoed behind me, "I didn't mean to chase you out, just to invite you to mind..." I still wonder if that was supposed to be snarky; if there was bathroom etiquette I didn't know or something, or if he was seriously just wanting to know if I'd be okay with him peeing while I was there. Haha. The good news, however - later, while still waiting for the bus, I found out that there are SEPARATE bathrooms at the other end of the terminal! If I just can't handle the co-ed idea, I have an out.
Mark had to head out but I still had a while until the bus arrived. I hadn't eaten since the morning and my stomach was growling, so I went into the little airport cafe (read: snack bar with extended menu) for some lunch. Behind the counter was a little old Asian lady who started making me some veggie lo mein (the menu was a mixture of sandwiches, pizza, and chinese food!) and then asked, "Did you fly plane?" I responded that yes, I flew a plane for the first time, and she then replied, "Oooh, do you want be pilot?" I smiled and said, "Yes, I do." :) Then I got my very delicious lo mein and sat down to detail the list of items that have crafted this Lj post while watching the Hertz guy read his book. Eventually the bus came, and I took the (relatively) short ride back to Alewife.
So that was the Discovery Flight. The most odd part about all of it is how NON-surreal it seems. "I went out and flew an airplane today." This is how it should be, yes?
![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
no subject
on 23 Jan 2007 14:43 (UTC)no subject
on 23 Jan 2007 16:46 (UTC)It's been a while since I've flown, and the thought of computerized cockpits in C-172s is a bit mind boggling. :)
When I trained, under part 61, for a private certificate (sport and recreational didn't exist), the requirement was for 20 hours dual and 20 hours solo, with no fixed ground requirement. I think I got my certificate with about 55 hours total time, which was considered a bit better than the average of about 60.
Ailish (PP-ASEL)
Yay
on 23 Jan 2007 17:27 (UTC)It's addictive AND expensive... a bad combination.
I'm glad you had fun!
Semi-OT
on 23 Jan 2007 17:44 (UTC)no subject
on 23 Jan 2007 17:57 (UTC)no subject
on 23 Jan 2007 18:04 (UTC)Not only is it how it should be, but it's proof positive that you are doing something "natural" to you. I -so- hope you can continue!
Re: Yay
on 23 Jan 2007 20:19 (UTC)But better than drugs, eh? Right?
no subject
on 23 Jan 2007 20:21 (UTC)no subject
on 23 Jan 2007 21:16 (UTC)no subject
on 23 Jan 2007 21:25 (UTC)Re: Yay
on 24 Jan 2007 01:29 (UTC)Re: Yay
on 24 Jan 2007 03:41 (UTC)