My friend Paul offered to take me flying sometime, which was very exciting but also nervous-making. I have only flown in a small plane once before, on the return leg of a canoeing trip in Canada. That was in a seaplane and the ride was pretty fun but it was hard to see down from the seat I was in. I mostly saw the sky and some of the forest when we banked to turn.
Paul and I headed out on a Wednesday afternoon to his usual airfield. In a plot twist, that field was closed to resurface the runway so the plane he had reserved was actually at a different nearby airfield. Luckily, we had gotten there early so we had time to drive over to the new place before our reservation started. It would have been keen if I had made a note of the names of any of these places, but I didn't. There are way more little airports scattered about the Portland area than I realized.
Our plane was a Skyhawk (Cesna 172) named Mike Romeo (the NATO phonetic for it's letters). It was parked in the grass because it didn't have a regular spot at this airfield. Paul showed me how to check that all the flaps were moving right, how much fuel there was, and whether there was water or dirt in the fuel. The plane uses less fuel than I thought, 6-8 gallons per hour. Paul and an instructor pushed it out of the grass onto the taxiway, but I got to help push it back into the grass later. It only weighs about 2,000 lb and was not that hard to push around.
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| Our plane, Skyhawk Mike Romeo. |
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| Mike Romeo back in her spot after our flights. |
The new field was closer to PDX than Paul's regular field and had some special rules about how high you could be in various areas. We did a quick flight with an instructor from the flight school to who showed Paul where the various boundaries were. He was a cool guy with a lot of good info. I got to sit in the back seat which actually had a better view to the side because the wing strut thing wasn't in the way of that window. I didn't realize it at the time though so I didn't take any photos.
On our second flight I got to sit up front. We flew around up and down the Columbia and Paul practiced some of his maneuvers. We did low power flight, low power stall, and high power stall. Low power flight was very peaceful, kind of similar to being in a hot air balloon. The stalls felt kind of exciting like starting down a hill on a roller coaster. The high power stall was scariest feeling.
It was fun to see the mountains. I managed to get Rainier, Helens, and Adams all in one shot. I also liked looking down on the houses and the river. Now when I see a small plane flying above our house I try to figure out if they're doing practice maneuvers. I had a ton of fun, hopefully I will get to go flying again sometime. Paul is also learning to fly a more acrobatic type of plane that can do loops and corkscrews and such. eep!
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| Left to right: Rainier - Helens - Adams. |
