Flight lessons.
'Salt Lake Center, this is Glasair five-bravo-hotel, twenty miles northwest of Ontario airport heading to Wenatchee kilo-echo-alpha-tango, requesting flight following,’ I said into my headset after rehearsing it a couple more times while Matt still had the plane under control. I was asking the controllers in a big, stoic building somewhere in Salt Lake City four hundred miles away to keep an eye on us.
‘Five-bravo-hotel, squawk one-nine-nine-three,’ came the reply. ‘Squawk one-nine-nine-three, five-bravo-hotel,’ went mine.
Comms are pretty straightforward. Like Matt assured while he instructed me on our ten-mile hike out of the Sawtooth a couple weeks ago, there’s nothing that can really go wrong by messing up. Maybe an irritated controller, but likely that only if they’re already having a stressful day. Otherwise, as for most things in life, we’re all learners and the controllers likely get that. Maybe even appreciate it.
With that taken care of, Matt handed me the aircraft to fly. ‘Your plane,’ he commanded. ‘My plane,’ I echoed. Thus began my flight instruction. No need for textbooks.
We had taken off from Smiley Creek airstrip in Idaho. A small but well-maintained strip along the southeast fringe of the Sawtooth mountains about thirty miles south of Stanley. We’d stop in Walla Walla for gas before making the final leg home (well, for me… Matt was turning around and heading south to Santa Cruz).
Holding a plane level while climbing and maintaining a heading is surprisingly difficult. I never played joystick games as a kid and it showed. This though became a game. His instruments are high-tech and would chirp, ‘Altitude,’ every time I’d veer two hundred feet above or below our target altitude of eight-thousand-five-hundred feet. When I'd get us off the heading, I'd slowly try to course-correct, pulling his little Sportsman back. With no roads and flying under VFR, the heading was something atune to a suggestion.
We'd get back home despite my erratic first-time-behind-the-stick flying.
Eventually, Matt gave me the pedals, too. Yikes. Controlling an object in three dimensions moving at over a hundred knots was, yeah, surprisingly difficult. Throw on that we were flying in the afternoon of a warm day, staying well away (the general rule of thumb is twenty miles) from a serious thunderstorm to our south, at only eight-thousand-ish feet and it was a bumpy ride. No doubt with Matt and his thirty-plus-years of flying behind the controls it'd have been smoother. With the autopilot, as smooth as butter even.
Me, not so much.
Because of some mountains to the east, we had to descend abruptly into Walla Walla. Altitude is a tricky thing. Before descending, it looked as if we were going to fly right into the ridge ahead of us. Matt had to reassure me and show me on the display we were over a thousand feet above them. Okay then. The instruments don't lie. Trust the instruments.
He of course landed and took off. I handled the rest of the flying in the air, looking down and around occasionally but mostly staring at the avionics to make sure everything was level.
I have to say… it was a blast. An absolute blast. Getting a pilot's license has been on K's and my Life List for a couple of years now. Next step: ask for a set of USB flight controls for Christmas to go with the X-Plane 12 flight simulator I'm demoing. Spoiler: my first takeoff with a Cessna 172 didn't end well.
I have much to learn.
