Fly me to Mullingar
Last May, for my Birthday, Nikki got me Flying Lessons (thanx Nikki! xoxo)
On Sunday, Midway through September, I finally got round to using them.
It was absolutely brilliant.
We drove up to Weston on Sunday morning, and following a bit of a mix-up with where exactly the office for the flight school was, I checked in at about 11 for an 11.30 lesson. I got a brief lesson in what exactly happens when you pull on the controls in a plane, and then it was time to get in the air. After a brief drive over to the hangar, I climbed on board the little plane (I'm really pissed off I can't figure our what the model was) (UPDATE: It was a Robin Alpha 160A, I think!) and strapped in with my instructor, Alberto. We taxied onto the runway, and took off like a bat out of hell.
We flew along the M4/N4 motorway in a westerly direction, climbing to about 1,500 feet, and cruising at about 100 knots (about 115.077945 mph). After about 10 minutes, just past Maynooth, I was handed the controls. The plane was incredibly easy to control, even easier than most computer simulations I've played, if you can believe it.
The plane was very fast and acrobatic, not in a loop-the-loop type way or anything, but I was able to try some really tight turns and they were easy as pie. My instructor, Alberto, very kindly informed me that holding on to the stick in a death-grip like I was was very tiring, and two fingers and a thumb was quite sufficient. I tried this and whaddayaknow, he was right. From jerky to smooth in one minute.
Alberto said "are you sure you haven't been flying before, nobody is so smooth on their first lesson" (in a fairly strong Spanish accent), and I said "yeah, bet you say that to everyone", but he assured me that he was telling the truth. He seemed an honest sort of chap. So therefore, I deduce that I officially KICK ASS at this flying malarkey.
The full photoset is up on Flickr, so I won't post any more here, just scoot over there and have a look. There's some really good shots.
(Apologies for the tardyness of this post, this is thanks to NTL and their fucking terrible internet access. It hasn't worked consistently for about five days now, and uploading all those pics took an age)
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Comments
I would hazard a guess that the plane is a Rally.
My Dad was telling me a story at the weekend about two guys that turned up at his flying club with vouchers for lessons (bought in Argos I think). He had to turn them both away. One was 18 stone and the other was 19.5 stone! There was no way the plane was going up with their weight in it.
Posted by: Seamus | September 19, 2006 7:03 AM
Whatever plane it is, it's really really cool.
I'm only 10 and a half stone, so the plane took off easily and that may also have been why it was so easy to control.
Posted by: Matt | September 19, 2006 10:40 AM
Skinny Malink malogen legs!! har de har!!
Posted by: Babs | September 19, 2006 11:32 AM
I still havent forgiven you for putting all that stress on me to take a photo of the plane taking off (I didnt get the photo but I did get a lovely piece of grey sky) only for you to get a fecking video from the cockpit of the plane taking off.........
Posted by: NKL | September 19, 2006 12:35 PM
Well, you could always give me that photo of the plane landing, that was a good one. I could add it to the set.
I didn't put that much stress on you either, you put it all on yourself! :-P
Posted by: Matt | September 19, 2006 1:42 PM
Well if you had paused the plane for me I would have got the photo. Very inconsiderate.
Posted by: NKL | September 19, 2006 1:51 PM
Paused the plane?
You know if you look at the video and pause it in just the right place I think you can see you standing at the fence beside the runway.
Posted by: Matt | September 19, 2006 2:19 PM