Left Seat again after Twenty Years - Next Gen. First Flight
He remembered me saying that I cannot see the wheels unstick from the ground when I am taking off, so my son made sure to grab footage of that exact thing when he felt us rolling down the field.
Things have changed since I piloted the C152s in The States. I used to plan things out on paper charts. All our check lists were the same for pre-flight, pre-start, and runup which I was comfortable with. Still, this was the first time for me flying a tail dragger.
The video
This is a one minute video of the take off and the reaction of my youngest after his first time ever in the air. He had heard my stories but had never experienced the sensation of air travel.
How else will the next generation learn the ropes?
This is a 1956 Cessna C170 owned by a man I met when I went to the the dermatologist. He was kind enough to let me rent it from him, though he always stays with his plane. All good, I would need to recertify for any plane that I have not flown before anyway, and a tail dragger fits that description. I used to fly tricycle gear aircraft when I covered traffic in the metro-Chicago area pre-2000.
This was also the first time I had taken off or landed on a grass strip. We were forbidden from landing on grass by the place I rented from in The States, their planes - their rules. Now that I have done it, I find grass to be more forgiving than pavement, especially in a crosswind. I am sure mud would be an issue if you were locked in to fly and it had rained though.
The flight
The first thing I did was to take it up to 5,000 and pull the throttle back to idle which is one of my favorite things to do. I love slow and quiet flight as I used to go up in gliders quite often in the early days. Planes fly so much better when there are no opposing forces like P-Factor and the cork-screw vortexes from the prop. We were only able to maintain flight without the engine for ten minutes from that altitude.
On our way to Zarate, we flew over something called 'The Eye' which is a floating island in the middle of nowhere that revolves around in its round surroundings (located between General Rodriguez and Zarate). It is regarded as cursed location and many pilots will not fly directly over it for fear of bad luck. A Bermuda Triangle of sorts.
I can cover other aspects of the recent flying I have done in future posts, but this one concentrates on my youngest son and his first experience with being in a small craft.
