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My Intro Lesson*** Hi!Well, after three months of talking about it and reading about it, I finally got myself together, went and took an intro flight at a local club. No, I didn't lose my cookies. But I came close :-). A cold front storm just came through Northern California. Another one coming in tonight. Just like the weather books said, it was clear and bumpy. I met the instructor in the clubhouse, and after a short orientation, we went out to the Citabria. This is a tailwheel airplane with two tandem seats. Just getting in was an adventure. You don't step into this airplane, you sort of snake yourself in through the door, holding a interior strut and pulling your leg in and past the stick, and ---what to do with the other leg?--- OK, I sort of folded it under myself and pulled it through. We started the engine, he got taxi clearance, and we were off! Steering with my feet was new and different :-). One thing about the stick, there was no temptation to use it for steering. I noticed the steering response was really mushy; I wonder if that's a taildragger thing? I couldn't steer it for beans. We had to wait a while to take off - the airport was pretty busy. I figure that's because of the storm that just came through, and the other one about to come through; If you want to play, today's the day! He gave me the stick when we got to about 1000 feet. He'd stuck a sticky dot to the windshield, told me to keep track of where the horizon was, compared to that dot. Then he had me level out the airplane, and hold it straight and level for a while, keeping that dot on the horizon. Straight and level? Wow, from looking at the nose, I'd swear we were going down! Then we tried some turns - turn the other way a bit first, check that there's nobody on the turn side, then push the stick over --- --- eee-yow, this thing is sensitive! He told me to keep my eye on that dot, keep it on the horizon - I paid perhaps undue attention to the ball on the turn coordinator. He had turn right, then turn left, then turn any way I wanted. Around this time, a certain feeling began to develop in the pit of my stomach :-(. Then we started for home, and he taught me about descending and about descending turns ( gulp! ). There was a bit of a breeze, so he sideslipped a bit coming in. After a bit of float, the wheels settled on the ground, he pulled the stick all the way back, and we were down! My stomach was happy to have everything nicely vertical and horizontal again :-). So then after a bit of "after-talk", I went back to my car. No pressure, just tell me if you decide... I was glad for that, I still felt queasy. The feeling gradually went away over the next few hours. So as always, the question after the demo ride is, "Do I go for it?". Answer is a guarded "yes". After all, I've dreamed of this so long, already spent so much time studying! But what if the queasiness doesn't go away? I can think of three causes for it:
So I think I'll start lessons. But not sign any kind contract that might obligate me to take all of them :-). We'll see if nausea factor gets better... - Jerry |