Learning to Fly

If you remember one of our earlier posts, Taking Flight, we talked about taking a flying lesson. Well, Saturday was the day. We weren't sure the weather would cooperate with us since it had rained most of the week but Saturday brought sunny skies and even a little warmth. We headed down to Hammond, Indiana to the small local airport not really sure what to expect.

Two veteran pilots (and their trusty big old sleepy dog) manned the small airport office with a combined flight experience of 80 years. How the office was setup - maps, charts, two old weathered men, a dog - it all seemed cliche or something out of a movie set.  It actually made me comfortable. We were then told our pilot and instructor was going to be Ryan, a much younger guy, who was just finishing up working with another pilot. Ryan looked to be about our age and even had the stereotypical leather bomber jacket. So we felt like we were in good hands.

Sara and I both imagined we would have some classroom instructions before heading up in the Cessna, and we weren't sure if we would be going up at the same time or taking turns.  I imagined the "instruction" would be rigorous given we would be flying and that's got to be taken VERY carefully, right?  Well, you would be wrong.  Ryan suggested Sara and I go together and we take a loop around Chicago and maybe up to Wrigley (Ryan had to check the Cubs game time as you are not allowed to fly over the field while a game is going on or an hour before or after). We got our headsets and headed out to the tarmac to inspect the plane. Ryan showed us how he makes a visual check around the entire plane and then we all got in and he started it up.  And it was loud. 

There was a slight wind but it was parallel to the runway so we were able to take off into the wind which helps a great deal - it means you can use less runway and you don't have to build up as much speed. Once Ryan cranked up the engines and we started it seemed to take only a few hundred feet before we had liftoff.  We leveled off at about 2500 feet and headed North out over Lake Michigan, about 1000 feet East of downtown (a little beyond Navy Pier). Once we were even with Wrigley we cut West and Ryan made several loops around so we could get some photos. Sara and I would have liked to go a little further North (maybe to our condo) but that would have been in O'Hare's airspace.

We then headed back South and to the West of downtown. Surprisingly we didn't need any special clearance to fly around downtown, other than keeping the mandatory 2000 feet altitude. Sara took a quick video of the flight at about this time:  



After making a couple loops around Soldier Field, Ryan asked if I wanted to take over the controls. I said yes and then started to sweat. I was so nervous, but it turned out to be relatively easy. I guess how hard is it when it's a nice sunny day, little wind, and you have a pilot who is trained to instruct people on how to fly planes. I learned to use the pedals (wing flaps) and the yoke (rudder) in concert together to make a smooth turn. I learned to read the altimeter and the vertical speed indicator to tell how high we are and at what rate we are climbing or descending.  I learned to keep an eye on the artificial horizon gauge to make sure and keep the nose of the plane level. All in all, I think I did a pretty well...

But the most important thing I learned? It's crucial to make sure Sara can't hear what the pilot's talking about. With the noise of the plane we had to wear headsets.  The headset I wore was plugged into the radio system so Ryan and I could hear each other.  Sara's, on the other hand, was not plugged into the radio system and was just to help dull the noise.  This was important as Sara is not the most comfortable flying anyway, and if she heard some of what Ryan said or was planning to do, it would not have been good.  For example, I learned that Ryan had only been teaching for about a month and was somewhat fresh out of flight school.  It's a good thing Sara didn't know this until after our flight and I told her on the car ride back home.  The other item that would have probably not gone over well had Sara heard it?  On our landing Ryan told me he "wanted to try something." I didn't know what this meant until a few minutes later he told me he was doing something that he made his students do all the time, which is to simulate losing an engine and using just the flaps and wind to land. Sara took some video of our landing and you might notice it seems like the engine goes a bit quiet. You'll also notice once we land the engines fire back up. Ryan noticed that we had more time left and ended up taking off again. Without knowing what was going on or why we were speeding up and taking off again, this freaked Sara out...understandably so. We hadn't told Ryan the whole truth about how Sara felt about flying and she was doing so well (and always smiling when we looked back) that Ryan didn't realize how freaky that might be. So, he apologized and quickly looped around and made a very smooth landing.  You can check out the landing here (the beeping noise right before we touch down is the "ground warning" signal): 



It was a great adventure, lots of fun, and some nervousness but we are glad we did it. Here are our pictures of the trip (some are Sara's and some mine):