First-time Passengers
Yesterday I had the chance to take someone on their first flight in a small aircraft. He (Steven) is the son of a co-worker of mine and both he and his mom joined me for a 30 minute flight in the area local to KJGG. He's a big fan of airplanes and I hoped he'd get a kick out of the flight. Apparently he did, as his mom said he told everyone he saw afterward that he was a "total pilot" now - and if that pose in the picture doesn't say "total pilot" then nothing does. :)
Steven sat up front (on a small pillow) with my spare headset engulfing his head like it was trying to swallow him alive. I let him take the controls for a bit and he seemed to get the hang of it fairly well. I told him to lightly push the yoke forward and the slight descent gave his mom a little touch of a nervous feeling - but both she and he did great! :)
I tried out my iPod in flight for the first time that day. It worked very well. There is a normal 3.5mm stereo input in the airplane and the audio panel auto-mutes it when radio or intercom signals are active. That means the music goes in and out a lot but that's fine since it avoids the potential for Coldplay to step on a radio transmission in flight.
We landed back at JGG with one of the crummier, bouncy landings I've had in a while - too much speed on final. After dropping them off I flew my wife back to PHF for our date (yes, I flew her to the movies - top that!).
On a less than great note, I felt my flying was pretty sloppy yesterday at times. A couple of poor landings, a few radio stutters, and I thought I actually busted into airspace without proper permission at one point. I even filled out the NASA form to fess up to my stupidity, once I got home. But this morning it dawned on me to check if the airspace was even in effect when I blundered in - thankfully I found out it was not by looking in the Airport Facility Directory. Normally it is class-D airspace, but since it was the weekend it happened to be class-G. So I got out of that by the skin of my teeth, and learned a strong lesson about proper planning of flight paths.
Steven sat up front (on a small pillow) with my spare headset engulfing his head like it was trying to swallow him alive. I let him take the controls for a bit and he seemed to get the hang of it fairly well. I told him to lightly push the yoke forward and the slight descent gave his mom a little touch of a nervous feeling - but both she and he did great! :)
I tried out my iPod in flight for the first time that day. It worked very well. There is a normal 3.5mm stereo input in the airplane and the audio panel auto-mutes it when radio or intercom signals are active. That means the music goes in and out a lot but that's fine since it avoids the potential for Coldplay to step on a radio transmission in flight.
We landed back at JGG with one of the crummier, bouncy landings I've had in a while - too much speed on final. After dropping them off I flew my wife back to PHF for our date (yes, I flew her to the movies - top that!).
On a less than great note, I felt my flying was pretty sloppy yesterday at times. A couple of poor landings, a few radio stutters, and I thought I actually busted into airspace without proper permission at one point. I even filled out the NASA form to fess up to my stupidity, once I got home. But this morning it dawned on me to check if the airspace was even in effect when I blundered in - thankfully I found out it was not by looking in the Airport Facility Directory. Normally it is class-D airspace, but since it was the weekend it happened to be class-G. So I got out of that by the skin of my teeth, and learned a strong lesson about proper planning of flight paths.
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