First (so-called) Flight

[Harpoon]

Hello, ladies and gents. Here's the story of my first flight (technically as a passenger), performed September 27, 2014. Be patient if I am in a mess of words, I'm typing this up quick because it's 12:00 at night and I have school tomorrow, I apologize for any errors, but I will refine later. :)

 

I had never been in an aircraft. Even if I have flown in such simulators like FSX and DCS. It's something that runs down my family, yet has been quiet before now. It seems to have exploded in this generation of my family, and that is the fear of un-natural death. My sister has already got her permit and she won't drive until she's forced to. I had passed up riding helicopter flights twice already. My dad and I agreed on the fact that if I had such a passion for flight, why not act like it and step in a real plane? Thus begins the story of my first flight.

 

It was an oddly warm 27th of September that morning. At my local airport, which is known as Greenville Downtown Airport (they still call it GMU like it was called a long time ago), they were holding a..."stationary" airshow, that is, maybe a few planes were up for show purposes (such as this one STOL aircraft), the rest were parked on the ground. They were doing free flights that they called "Young Eagle" flights for the first 100 that got there. We were number 15 on the arrival list, coming in at around 8:30 AM. I was as anxious as a dog in a thunderstorm, my legs started shaking after we got our tickets. We got in the shuttle van with a few other people also looking to fly. They had drove us across runway 28/10 and stopped at a large apron with even a V-tail Bonanza parked there, apparently there was a woman who needed to find her kid and asked if he was in there (I hope she found him). We drove across runway 1/19 onto a slightly smaller apron with a FedEx 727 parked on the northbound side of it. There is where I found what I was riding in and who was flying. He looked like a ripe-old man with a keen sense for flight.

 

I had mentioned earlier that I had gotten there #15 on the list. As I would've thought after getting my ticket, the line to the flights were short. I had gotten all of the required stuff for the flight, a logbook, a few advertisements for flight programs, and the iPod I kept in my pocket. We were flying in a small Van's RV-12, a side-by-side homebuilt 2 seater. It had all of that stuff in it we have nowadays, a fancy Garmin G-1000 on the pilot's side, and a few knobs on the passenger's side. I put on my headset and fiddled with the vent to see how it worked. A simple thing it was, just slide and open, nothing else required. A cameraman had me pose the thumbs up sign before we closed the canopy. After that, we had now been fully secured in the cockpit, so we ran our startup checklist. I tried to be a little smarter, act like a co-pilot, calling out the checklist. :lol: He had already known it by memory I suppose, it was up and running before I could finish reading. Now we were ready to taxi.

 

We had taxied to take off on runway 1 using taxiway D1. As I suspected, the controller was under much stress, someone by the callsign of Delta (which seems odd to me as GSP is the airline destination and not GMU) was screwing up his landing by going towards Donaldson Center and not GMU. :megalol: We were number...2 for departure, I believe. One aircraft had taken off in front of us, also on D1 in a Cherokee (how envious I was, a kid flying in one of those), and then another aircraft took off on the far end of runway 1, which I could only identify as either a Van's or a Diamond. We were then given clearance. Never in my life had I thought that g-forces could take that much toll on the body; even with my 5 belt harness on, I was rocking around in the cabin. We then had lift off. "Greenville's a lot hazier in the air than I thought it was. Beautiful." These are the only lines I could say to the pilot during the first part of the flight.

 

Clouds were around 3000 ft that day, with either wind gusts kicking in (it was a somewhat windy day) or slight turbulence, the aircraft rocked around a bit. We had gotten up to cloud level, and there was our cruise altitude. We had passed over the main part of Greenville. We then went on the same course up until we flew past the Sandy Flats Quarry. We then hit the most exciting thing mid-flight; a 30-degree bank, mind you I asked the pilot not to do any stunts; I never really liked rollercoasters. :P We then made a crosswind into runway 1. At landing, we noticed, and I quote, "1...2 3 4...5 6...7 aircraft" on departure. My pilot joked and said it was like JFK. We shared quite a laugh. We got clearance to land a bit before the short final. We came in pretty high on landing, but we got the glideslope about a mile away from the runway. Once we had landed, I had let out an "alright!" We had taxied on the same taxiway we had departed on. We also went to the same parking space, for obvious reasons. My iPod had filled the whole flight, full charge, and then 20% of it's battery left. :lol:

 

Here is the end of that story. After that flight, I had gotten a certificate.

YOUNG EAGLES CERTIFICATE

I will keep it on the wall behind my computer as long as it can stay. I plan to meet that pilot later on in my life. He says he stays at a private airstrip where houseowners at the airstrip can use it, and it's name is Chandelle. Thank you guys for reading, if you did. :)

 

Cheers,

 

Yours Truly

[Yurgon]

Congrats! That must have been an awesome and memorable flight. :thumbup:

 

So far I've only flown in airliners (the acceleration is amazing, pretty boring otherwise) and twice in helicopters (great view and sense of flight) and I've enjoyed every single minute of it all.

 

I guess flying in such a light aircraft also makes for an impressive experience; I hope to do that in the future. Sounds like an amazing first flying experience. :thumbup: