I'm going up for a demo/discovery flight

Miscellaneous and Personal Stuff I Must Share
1

It probably would make more sense to have posted this after I’d done it, but I’m excited about it, so this will have to serve as a placeholder where I can babble for a little bit before I go up. It’s a little easier for me to drive you folks crazy with my enthusiasm (since you can choose to ignore me) than to drive my friends, family and coworkers crazy talking about it incessantly.

Despite not really having the money or time to start flying lessons right now, I’ve been obsessed with the idea for a few months (and have been mildly interested for several years). I’ve struggled off and on for years with a fear of flying, primarily due to turbulence, when in commercial aircraft. About six years ago, I went up in a Pitts Special 2B with an aerobatic pilot, getting to even work the stick a bit, and I found the experience not only put me at peace with flying, but that the whole thing was exhilirating. I’ve wanted to go up in a GA plane again ever since.

Now, I realize that being primarily a passenger is a very different beast from being a PIC. I don’t have any way of knowing whether being responsible and in control will be as fun as it sounds in my head. But really, there’s only one way to find out. So I’m taking my first step this Thursday, the 20th. A coworker friend of mine is most of the way through getting his license with a flight school out of KEMT (El Monte, CA), and highly recommended his instructor to me. I’ll be going up (weather permitting) in a 2006 Diamond DA-40 with the Garmin 1000 leaving at around 7 in the morning, for an hour-long flight.

The plan is to fly from El Monte and circle downtown LA (which is cool, since that’s where I work), then over Dodger Stadium (swoon!), over the Hollywood sign, out toward the coast and over LAX, then down toward the refineries in Torrance and Long Beach, then back up the 605 to El Monte. I’m told that I’ll be doing most of the flying, including turns, climbs and decents. And my coworker said that if I can demonstrate enough proficiency steering on the ground, I may even get to do the takeoff (I won’t get my hopes up, but that would be awesome).

So, if this ends up being an incredibly enjoyable experience for me, I’ll still have to take a hiatus until probably March (largely due to my work schedule over the next few months). But I’ve got a copy of The Student Pilot’s Flight Manual to study in the meantime, as well as Microsoft Flight Simulator X to play with to keep learning the instrumentation and what-not, so I’ll stay involved. And from there…well, we’ll see!

Please feel free to use this opportunity to share anything you wish about flying and/or why you think what I’m doing is a horrible/wonderful idea.

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It sounds like it’ll be awesome.

Speaking for me alone, I’d never trust myself to get a pilot’s license. No matter how I try, I’m not a detail-oriented guy. I make ‘little’ mistakes all the time. That’s also why I’ve never considered a career in hostage taking. You forget just for one second you can’t go near a window…

3

My fiancee and I were talking about this last night. I only know two people who have their licenses, and have not talked to either much at all about flying. But both of them tend to be technical and detail-oriented. We were wondering if that’s the norm among pilots, or are there people with very different types of personalities that end up as pilots? It seems to me that the FAA is trying to make it a little easier to become a pilot in some ways with the newer Sport Pilot license, but I still don’t know if that means any Joe Blow who studies hard enough can become a competent flyer.

:smiley:

4

Oh, that’s totally cool! :::bounces up and down in excitement:::

I’ve flown a Diamond - they are really nice in the air, very enjoyable. Most people do find the ground handling more difficult than a Cessna or Piper, but since you don’t know any better and have no habits to unlearn you might do alright.

You will HAVE TO post about how the flight goes.

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Cool beans! Have fun!

I had a friend. He got interested in becoming a private pilot. He was pretty smart but to be honest he was so slow and uncoordinated it was scary. The morning he was to go to his first lesson he found a long letter on his door from his mom pleading him to not kill himself with this pursuit :eek:

While I think mom may have overreacted a bit she honestly did have a point :slight_smile:

A few years ago I took a passenger flight in a glider of a friend ( the plane kind, not the kit thingy you hang from kind). That was damn cool and I highly recommend it. And one of the best pictures I ever took was on that flight!

Again have fun!

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OH, as far as being detail oriented… if you’re just average in that respect then flight training will probably make you better at it. It’s one of those things you can improve on with sufficient motivation.

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Chances are you’ll love it. Whenever I take passengers in my plane I always let them take the controls and only one person has ever declined. They all have a ball.

A friend of mine had to travel a lot of business but hated when they hit turbulence while flying commercial. I took him for a ride on a slightly bumpy day and let him take the controls. He said that understanding how it felt to fly the plane on a day like that pretty much cured him of his anxiety and he never minded flying commercial again.

As for detail oriented, my wife and I are both pilots and both engineers and I’d say we’re both pretty detail oriented. I think we both had the experience that the initial training which is a lot of learning the “feel” of flying and how to land was probably more difficult for us than for most people. However once we started instrument training where you need to orient yourself in space using just the instruments we flew through it much faster than average. My instructor, an old Navy pilot, said that was his experience with most engineers.

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That was definitely my issue, and for a while, I was cured, too. Having the opportunity to be in control made SUCH a huge difference. Here’s a link to the thread where I talked about my fears and then took that flight.

Amusingly enough, in re-reading that thread myself, I see that Broomstick offered a lot of great advice, which is not a shock to anyone here. But of particular interest, nearly six years ahead of time, is a rather prophetic post from her. :smiley:

Oh, and billfish – did the friend with the mom end up canceling, or what???

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Whoops – forgot to link to the thread where I actually went up for my ride back then. Link.

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He stalled and died…

No, just kidding. He didn’t pursue it further. But it was mostly because he wasnt THAT interested in it and it does get pretty pricey pretty fast. In the interest of disclosure I am not a pilot either due mostly to cost (and I am a cheap bastard) but I do have a serious interest in all things aviation.

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Good to hear, Asimovian! I’ve always liked the look of the Diamond, but they came about after I took up helis. I’ll have to try one one day. (The place I’m renting the Skyhawk has a Cirrus SR22. Might have to try that, too.) Knowing very little about the DA-40, I have a feeling it might spoil you. It’s certainly sexier than a Skyhawk!

That sounds a bit like one of my favourite routes in the helis. I’d take off from VNY (or KVNY, if you prefer) and fly down through the Sepulveda Pass. I’d cross over SMO and get down to 100’ AGL over Marina del Rey for the costal transition through LAX airspace. (Over the water, 100’ or below, below the bluffs.) Then climb and go down to the twin stacks and follow the 105 to the 5. Make a couple of circuits around Downtown L.A., up through the Cahuenga Pass, and then follow the 101 to the 405 back to VNY.

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(emphasis added).

Yes, you should try a glider (sailplane) too. Hit up the thrift shops in your neighborhood, where they often have stacks of old National Geographics, and see if you can find a copy of the (IIRC)February 1967 issue.

Last I heard, there was still a glider port out in the desert near Pearblossom. And check out the web site of the Soaring Society of America

We flew out to Agua Dulce airport once. This was back in 1969 or so, when Agua Dulce was nothing but sticks and sagebrush. I think the whole area is quite built-up now.

Once we flew around, out of Van Nuys, on a smoggy day. This was before there was much done about air quality control, so smoggy days were smoggy. When we landed, we noticed that there was, literally brown oily gritty glop dripping from the leading edges of the wings and propeller. Yes, that’s the smog we were breathing.

Another day, we went flying out of Van Nuys on a foggy day. Probably not a good idea. Somewhere over the Van Norman reservoir or Sylmar or around there, we damn near collided with another little airplane that suddenly appeared out of the fog.

Once, one of the Civil Air Patrol pilots took me on a joy-ride in a WWII era plane (sorry, forgot what it was. Maybe a Stearman). We did some contour flying in the Little Tujunga mountains area, the way they would do if they were doing a search and rescue. Now THAT was fun.

ETA: The thing about steering a plane on the ground, is you’re is such a strong habit of steering with your hands on the steering wheel, from driving a car all the time, that you have to get in the habit of steering with your feet instead.

I think someone mentioned in one of your (Asimovian’s) threads that you don’t need too much math to be a pilot. I hope you’ve have trigonometry. Then you’ll really be able to understand all the better and more quickly how wind triangles work.

Have fun! Can I come with you?

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[QUOTE=Senegoid;14373766Have fun! Can I come with you?[/QUOTE]
Any chance you’re willing to fund my lessons? :slight_smile:

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Awesome! You’ll love it.

I’m taking a neighbor kid flying on Friday. He’s 13 and thinks he might want to be a helicopter pilot. I’m really excited for him. I can’t imagine how cool it would have been to discover aviation in my teens.

Don’t let the cost put you off. I make very little money but I’m managing and it’s truly worth every penny. Let us know how it goes.

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Bleh. My flight is postponed until Saturday due to weather. On the plus side, since I won’t have to go to work right afterward, maybe I can con the instructor into staying up longer. :slight_smile:

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Pilots make little mistakes all the time too, people in general make little mistakes all the time. A good working crew pick up their own and each other’s mistakes before they can have any affect on the safety of the flight. The system of checks that airlines have in place ensure’s that people like me who are not detail oriented don’t miss things. On the other hand I’ve seen pilots become so focussed on the details that they lose the big picture. In my opinion you need to be well rounded, and if you have flaws you need to be aware of them and compensate for them continuously.

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Good luck with the flight. I’m sure you’ll be able to stay up as long as your instructor’s schedule allows. Have fun!

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Thanks to Groupon, I just took an “introductory flight lesson.”
Or in other words, I wore headphones, steered the plane in the air a tiny bit while saying “this is ok, right?,” and stared at some gauges, while the guy giving the “lesson” did all of the take off and landing and generally making sure we didn’t crash into a fiery death. But it was still pretty cool!

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I can understand wanting to do a bit more than you did, but that really is a good start. You learned your way around the airplane, what the experience is like from the front seat, and how the controls work (including some things you have to unlearn from driving a car). Takeoffs and landings are a little bit more demanding. Walk before you can run; that sort of thing.

Emerald City, WA; where did you fly out of? If it was Boeing Field, you’d need some hours before you’re ready to tackle that.

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Don’t get me wrong, I did exactly as much as I wanted to do. It was an intro lesson for someone not serious about flying - I didn’t expect any more than that and I had fun. It was Boeing Field. It would have been plain insane for me to do more than than that. Lesson 2, I’m guessing is where I’d learn how to do barrel rolls.

Asimovian, have a great flight!