First flight
My First Taste of Flight’s Exhilaration
After the inauguration that I had done at the club in the summer of 2021. My time on the waitlist was over and it was time for my first flight. Before my first flight, I had met my first flight instructor, Catie, once to learn how to preflight. There were multiple checklists but after going through them it was finally time to fly. The first thing that I realized when I got in was how small this plane was. It was tiny, I was 15 at the time and had a hard time fitting into this plane. Pair that up with my instructor who was bigger than me and it was pretty uncomfortable at first. However, eventually, I did get used to this.
When we had gotten in I had realized that the preflight was still not over, there was a checklist for everything. Eventually, we started the plane and it was pretty hard. It’s not like a car where you just crank the key once. In a plane, you have to push the throttle in a little, then crank the key and stop cranking when you feel the plane get power. For my first flight, Catie took care of this. Then we taxied to the compass rose to do more pre-flight checks and our runup. A runup checks that all aircraft systems work before takeoff.
After the checks, Catie taxied us to the runway. She asked me to push the throttle in and we took off. Before this, I was used to how commercial planes take off, but this was so much different. There was not even nearly as much acceleration, and we took off way earlier. This was probably an obvious result but for me, it felt like traveling in a sports car after travelling in a bus all my life. Once we were in the air it felt unreal. Every turn felt up close and personal and every instance of turbulence felt like it could tip us over at any moment.
The scenery was sure, even though we did not fly above the clouds because VFR flight does not consist of that, I could still see the beautiful landscape. Once we got up to a safe altitude Catie let me practice some shallow turns to help me get a feel for flight.
After this, Catie headed us back to the airport. I noticed that she made several radio calls, I could not understand these calls yet but I paid attention. Eventually, we got to the point where the plane was about to land. When Catie landed the plane I was amazed. She controlled the plane perfectly and pitched the plane up to give us a smooth touch on the ground and then she relaxed the controls and let us roll out.
My first flight was an experiment like no other and inspired me to continue my flight training.
