learntofly

Learn To Fly - it's never too late!

Learn to Fly Fly R/C Oshkosh AirVenture Homebuilts Warbirds

I've always wanted to fly an airplane (solo), I'm now 52 years of age, perhaps it's time to learn. During the Christmas Holidays, I went over to the local flight training school and took a couple of lessons to see if I would like it. I love it.

This quote is from Patty Wagstaff at http://www.pattywagstaff.com/cgi-bin/pwasnews.pl

Learning To Fly Is Learning To Live
Most people who don’t fly believe it’s something that only a select few can do. Superhumans with laser vision, Einstein brains and blinding white teeth. She says, “When I tell people, ‘If I can do it, you can do it.’ Its true. I’m not any different than a lot of people. I’m a 5’4” woman without a college education. It’s not age related, either. People will ask me if it’s too late to learn to fly. No it’s not. You’ll be a lot better at it. You’ll have better judgment. Age, gender, we’re all victims of our own preconceived idea of what we can do and not do.” She’s not shy about saying, “A lot of women lack confidence. I did when I started flying.“

The moment she took the controls in her hands. It was, in a very real sense, taking control of her life, too. She knows it can do the same for others. “I try to explain that to people and to women in particular. That’s what flying can do for you. You don’t have to be an aerobatic pilot. Or an airshow pilot. Just the fact that you’ve accomplished that can change your life.”

- pick a nice sunny day and go out for a discovery flight - tell the flight school you want to go out for an hour. A typical discovery flight is usually 30 minutes, and a half hour maybe too short of a time frame to try a few things. If you are reading this far, then you know you want to try this so do not worry about anything, the flight will be wonderful. Ask the instructor to let you do most of the flying, this will give you a good feel of what flying the airplane is about, the instructor will keep his hands and feet on the controls as a safety measure. I wanted to do a descent and low pass over a local airstrip, we did that plus I want to try at least a couple of circuits and bumps ( touch and goes) and we did that. Total length of the flight was 0.9 hours, it felt like 10 minutes, the instructor, Peter B. was excellent.

- if you loved the flight, tell the school you are interested. Ask for or buy a copy of their air exercises, this will give you a lesson plan for each flight so you get an idea what the flight training consists of.

- thinks about when you want to this, initially I was ready to start the lessons RIGHT NOW, now I'm thinking about starting in a couple of months, this will give me time to study the Cessna 152 cockpit, operating handbook, etc. I went to the library and borrow several books on flight training. Air lesson are not cheap, the more I can learn before hand, the better use I will make of the air time.

- MS Flight Simulator, I started using mine again, the computer view is limited and the view is not like real flying but the flite sim is great tool for learning to taxi, takeoffs, climbs, and turns.

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