I’ve thought about flying all of my life. In high school, I learned about the theory of flight in my high school’s AFJ-ROTC program. But for various reasons, I never did followed-up and learn to fly. I guess I thought it was out of reach due to the expense and perhaps the risk. My wife has always given me that look whenever I talk about doing something she considers dangerous.

Just before Christmas 2003, my wife and I were attending a party at a friend’s home. I struck up a conversation with someone there who is a pilot, and enjoyed talking with him about the fun of flying. He owns his own plane for business, and offered to take me for a flight, which I accepted immediately. My wife gave me the look, and said that I’d better increase my life insurance.

I work in the evenings, and have to leave for work each day early in the afternoon. My friend said we’d have time to fly to Raleigh, North Carolina and back well before I needed to go to work, but I needed to meet him at the airport at 8:00AM. That’s earlier than I usually get out of bed in the morning, but it was worth it for the fun of flying. I was to meet him at one of Winchester airport’s gates under a large, revolving beacon, but I didn’t see any entrance there, so I parked at the main terminal and asked if anyone knew my friend. They didn’t and told me there were 14 gates at the airport. So I headed back out to find the correct gate. All the gates were locked and unmanned, but my friend pulled up in his truck, and told me to follow him in. We drove to his private hanger, which was a T-shaped garage for his plane. When he opened the hanger doors, I was surprised to see how small the plane was. I expected to be looking up at the plane… not down. He started up a small, motorized towing machine to pull out the plane, and we parked and locked our vehicles in the hanger, while we were away.

His plane was a Seneca Piper II, a twin-engine low winged airplane. My friend walked around the plane, inspecting a number of things. Then, we climbed into the plane by walking onto the right wing. The pilot/co-pilot seating seemed tight to me, but then, I’ve never flown in a small plane before. The plane has more seats in the back… about four, as I recall. We closed the door and fastened our seat belts. We wore headsets to communicate with one another during the flight, which also allowed me to hear radio traffic, and the pilot’s calls over the radio. He told me he had filed a flight plan, and that we would be flying Instrument Flight Rules (IFR). I knew that meant that he was to follow instructions on where to fly, and offered us protection from other traffic when we were in the clouds. He announced our movement onto the taxiway, and made radio contact for takeoff. He wrote a number of things down, and received clearance to take off. He asked if my seatbelt was fastened and tight, and said we were about to takeoff. What a feeling!

Before long, we were high over Winchester VA, and I was looking over all the instrumentation. In the back of my mind, I thought about some of the reasons I knew for airplane crashes, and looked at the altimeter. I noticed that the GPS said we were at 4500 feet, but the altimeter said we were at 5500 feet, and asked the pilot why they were different. He looked at both instruments, looked outside, and called ATC for information. They notified him of the current barometric pressure, and radar contact indicating that our altitude was 4500 feet. He corrected the altimeter reading, saying he set it to the runway elevation before takeoff, but was 1000 feet off. The altimeter looks something like an analog clock, with the “minute” hand indicating hundreds of feet, the “hour” hand indicating thousands, and a small arrow indicating ten-thousands. So when he had set the altimeter, the hundreds-hand was correct, but the thousands hand was one too high. Before the flight, I knew about GPS, but didn’t realize that it provided altitude information. It seemed to be the most accurate navigation device onboard.

We flew into and above the clouds. When reaching our assigned altitude, the pilot engaged the auto-pilot, and he showed me his navigation charts. He showed me that there are highways in the sky, marked on charts with names of letters and numbers. (I’m not sure whether they are arbitrary, or if the letters and numbers mean something.)

The plane had a large registration number painted on the side, beginning with the letter “N”. But when the pilot made calls, he didn’t say the N. Instead, he said the model of the plane, followed by the numbers. When answers came back, they shortened his number, using only the model name and the last three numbers.

I was amazed at the view from the sky. I saw a number of familiar landmarks, including a ski resort with snow-covered trailed. Rivers were frozen, and being winter, there was very little color on the ground. As we approached Raleigh, the pilot descended and took his chart back out to figure something out. I couldn’t help wondering whether it was safe to fly with an open chart obscuring his view. I noticed there were a couple of radio towers well below, and being a jokester, I asked him, “How close are you going to get to those towers?” That got his attention, and he turned to put more distance between us and the towers. He found what he was looking for on the chart, and contacted the tower in preparation to land. When we neared the airport, we didn’t fly right in, but into a pattern around the airport. He told me something about airport patterns, that there were left-hand and right-hand patterns, and rules about noise, and how close you could fly over certain things. Before landing, he “canceled” something, perhaps the flight plan, or perhaps radar assistance in landing, saying he had the airport in sight.

It was a smooth touchdown, and he taxied the plane to a parking spot. We were met by a friendly person, asking if we needed anything, and the pilot asked him to “top off the tanks”. Inside, they asked if we needed anything, like a ride into town, but we didn’t. My friend was driven into town by someone in his business, and I stayed behind at the airport to kill time. I walked around looking at the planes parked there, and found a wide variety. Inside, I browsed through several airplane magazines, wanting to get an idea of the range of airplane prices. I noticed that some were as cheap as cars, while others cost more than houses. It was confusing to me though, because often, the same model planes still varied widely in price.

When my friend returned, he paid for his fuel, and we headed outside. He inspected the plane, and we prepared to takeoff. He told me he had already filed a flight plan, and checked the weather, even though it had only been a couple of hours since we flew in. After takeoff, he was given course and altitude information, and we ended up at a different altitude than what we flew down on. He said that planes are assigned different altitudes, depending on what direction they’re flying, weather and traffic conditions. After reaching altitude, he allowed me to handle the yoke for little while. He had me ascend and attempt to level out, but every time I tried to stay level, the plane would go up or down. He called it “porpoising”, and adjusted the trim, which helped a little, but I still couldn’t get it to stay level. So he had me let go, and he engaged the autopilot. The plane was adjusted by the autopilot into on-course, level flight. Nice thing to have.

I loved the flight, and spent a long time wondering if it would be possible for me to take lessons to fly. I had no idea of the cost of lessons, not to mention the plane, fuel, and other costs. But I liked the excitement, the thrill of being airborne, and the technical challenge of learning to fly. I didn’t get much sleep that night.

Flying Reports Podcast Episode 1