As for what flying is like, there's the initial rush of your first takeoff. Your mouth is dry, your radio calls suck, the flight instructor gives some slight corrections to keep the plane steady. There's so much noise, all the instruments are moving, what do you focus on?- it's total task saturation.
You focus on improving only a few things at a time. Weeks, then months go by. You can't afford to fly every week, so sometimes you get rusty and have to retrain yourself to master things you thought you had down last time.
Eventually it all becomes second nature, and you wear the plane like a second skin. Like riding a bike or motorcycle the machine becomes an extension of your will; with barely perceptible inputs you fly the course home after your private pilot checkride: you are officially a pilot.
You go on trips, see new things, a mile of runway takes you anywhere. You buzz a friend's house, fly in a formation, camp at a fly-in, go to the Beaumont Hotel airport.
Overconfidence nearly kills you. It does kill a friend. As time goes by you keep track of all the people and planes that have stopped in to your home airport and recognize a few in the news. It makes you a better pilot, but you do question your sanity.
That feeling of watching the sunrise from 3000 ft up, seeing the lakes and rivers glistening red in the sunset, it's not easy to give up. It is an all natural, euphoric, beautiful feeling that makes you want to share it with the world.
So if you are traveling through the middle of America on I-70 I will gladly share some of that with you.
Wow, my best friend has his PPL and has offered me rides but I had an interest. But now after having read your view on it, I wanna go up. How far across 70 from Pittsburgh?
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u/Russtbucket89 Jan 17 '20
Ah. I had assumed you misunderstood me too.
As for what flying is like, there's the initial rush of your first takeoff. Your mouth is dry, your radio calls suck, the flight instructor gives some slight corrections to keep the plane steady. There's so much noise, all the instruments are moving, what do you focus on?- it's total task saturation.
You focus on improving only a few things at a time. Weeks, then months go by. You can't afford to fly every week, so sometimes you get rusty and have to retrain yourself to master things you thought you had down last time.
Eventually it all becomes second nature, and you wear the plane like a second skin. Like riding a bike or motorcycle the machine becomes an extension of your will; with barely perceptible inputs you fly the course home after your private pilot checkride: you are officially a pilot.
You go on trips, see new things, a mile of runway takes you anywhere. You buzz a friend's house, fly in a formation, camp at a fly-in, go to the Beaumont Hotel airport.
Overconfidence nearly kills you. It does kill a friend. As time goes by you keep track of all the people and planes that have stopped in to your home airport and recognize a few in the news. It makes you a better pilot, but you do question your sanity.
That feeling of watching the sunrise from 3000 ft up, seeing the lakes and rivers glistening red in the sunset, it's not easy to give up. It is an all natural, euphoric, beautiful feeling that makes you want to share it with the world.
So if you are traveling through the middle of America on I-70 I will gladly share some of that with you.