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« on: June 01, 2009, 10:34:16 AM »
Yesterday, we were on a road trip up a mountain to a place called "Huckleberry Knob" when it happened. 3000 feet up and our radiator must have burst and our engine overheated. Luckily, my mom had packed five bottles of water and poured it in the radiator, and we had to call it quits on going the 2600 more feet. So we drive back down to Chilhowee, and my dad and I start talking about aircraft and the like (which isn't that unusual for us), and on the road, I look and there's a gliderport just off the road in a small field. So without me saying anything, Dad pulls a right onto the gravel road and rolls down his window talking to the guy on the golf-cart. So he asks how much it is, and it was $98 for a twenty minute ride, and $139 for a 30 minute ride. So he asks me if I want a ride, and of course I say "Doy." So he tells the guy "30 minutes". So we wait a few minutes for the sailplane to land. And when it lands, the dude driving the plane hops out, the guy on the golf-cart tows the Piper
tow-plane (how ironic) towards the grass strip, I get in the old Schwiezer 2-33A, they hook it up to the Piper, we wiggle our rudder, the guy in the tow-plane wiggles his, he starts the engine, we get up to speed, and we're up.
We fly up to the ridge, and the cable releases. That was about the strangest sound I'd ever heard.
So he fly's in a figure-eight over the ridge, and on the south end of the ridge, he lets me take the controls.
Luckily, I have skill from a flight simulator. Now I'm flying about 15 figure-eights over the ridge at 45 to 55 knots. On the last loop south he tells me to head west towards the field, and we do more aerobatic stuff like sharp 90 degree turns and stalls. After the last stall, we loop around north for the final approach back to the field. Over the powerlines, and we touch down on the strip (which needed to be smoothed out quite a bit).
So, in a nutshell, this was my first time actually flying.
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