Intro Flight

Yesterday Corey treated me to my first hour instructed piloting a single-engine Cessna. Although an informal lesson, it counts towards the required hours for a private pilot's license, should I decide on pursuing it. A pilot's license would require about 60-80 hours of flight time, if I remember correctly, and take about 6 months to do. It would require a substantial time commitment, something I'm not sure I have at present. There's still sailing, power boating, golfing, drumming, among other things that vie for my "hobby" time, not to mention time for travel, which has been considerable this year. However, the instructor goes up every weekday at 7am and he invited me to come along if I wanted to. I might take him up on this one of these days, particularly since he flies a little plane around that is supposed to be much less complex than the 172 RG (Retractable Gear) we flew yesterday.

The 172 RG had a lot of dials and switches inside (avionics). At first glance certainly many more sensors than in your typical car engine. Although the engine still relies on the same internal combustion principle, the pilot needs to monitor several more components, including carburator temperature and gas/air mixture. There is also the tilt of the propeller itself, although I don't think all aircraft can vary this and I now don't recall whether there was a way to do it manually on this plane. Suffice it to say that the number of things to be aware of was a bit overwhelming. I'm sure I could eventually get comfortable with it all, but the first impression was a bit intimidating.

I sat in the pilot's seat during the flight although of course the instructor had complete control over the aircraft from his seat the entire time. Take-off and landing are the most harrowing but he made it look pretty easy. Corey took a ton of pictures from the back seat and there's more to say about the flight itself but it'll have to wait. The weather today is supposed to be hot and sunny so we're off to the lake!