The Demo Flight (also known as the introductory flight, or discovery flight) is the first flight that you take at a flight school. In my opinion, the purpose of the demo flight is twofold: 1) to experience what it is like to fly, and 2) to learn if you like the flight school and instructor. If you are toying with the idea of learning to fly, I highly recommend that you look up a flight school near you and take one of these introductory flights just to get an idea of what it is like.
One of the great things about the demo flight, is that it often comes with a discount. It's really in the flight school's best interest to give you a good deal on the demo flight because the more people they get to take a demo flight, the more long term customers they get. I have heard that at some flight schools, you can even get a demo flight for free, particularly on International Learn to Fly Day, which is an event that the Aircraft Owners and Pilot's Association (AOPA) came up to encourage new perspective pilots to take an interest in flying. Give your local airport FBO and ask them if they have any deals on first flights. If you don't feel like talking to an FBO in person, do a little googling and see what you can find. A demo flight does not come with any sort of obligation to continue your training there, so its a good way to try out different flight schools, or just satisfy your aviation itch for a while if you aren't quite ready to begin your formal training yet. I've heard of at least one pilot who took 8 introductory flights at different FBO's over the course of several years before he finally got serious and completed his training.
One of the great things about the demo flight, is that it often comes with a discount. It's really in the flight school's best interest to give you a good deal on the demo flight because the more people they get to take a demo flight, the more long term customers they get. I have heard that at some flight schools, you can even get a demo flight for free, particularly on International Learn to Fly Day, which is an event that the Aircraft Owners and Pilot's Association (AOPA) came up to encourage new perspective pilots to take an interest in flying. Give your local airport FBO and ask them if they have any deals on first flights. If you don't feel like talking to an FBO in person, do a little googling and see what you can find. A demo flight does not come with any sort of obligation to continue your training there, so its a good way to try out different flight schools, or just satisfy your aviation itch for a while if you aren't quite ready to begin your formal training yet. I've heard of at least one pilot who took 8 introductory flights at different FBO's over the course of several years before he finally got serious and completed his training.
The Best Birthday Present of My Life
As I mentioned in a previous post, after I graduated college, I got the bug. I got it bad. I did a great deal of investigation to find out how much flying would cost, and I realized that realistically, it just wasn't going to happen quite yet. All I ever thought about was flying, and it was a little depressing to know that my training was still a long way off. Unfortunately for my wife, if I never thought about anything other than flying, that also meant I never talked about anything but flying. Despite how annoyed she was about all of the airplane talk, my lovely wife knew that I was really passionate about aviation and so she decided to search around on groupon and see what she could do. That year, for my birthday, she gave me the best present I could hope for: a demo flight.
She showed me various groupons for discovery flights and said I could pick one. I called several flight schools and instructors and found out information about their aircraft, their school, and what their introductory package entailed and put it all in a spreadsheet. I'll go over some of the things you should ask about when picking a flight school in a later post, but I decided to go with a flight school at Reid-Hillview Airport (KRHV). Once I scheduled my lesson, I flew in and out of KRHV on my simulator any chance I got and I knew the runways and taxiways like the back of my hand.
I had honestly not even thought about getting a demo flight until my wife mentioned it because I always assumed that I wouldn't take my first flight until I was ready to get serious about training. One of the most expensive mistakes a student can make is to start training before they have enough money to finish. If you have to stop half-way through, then you'll forget a great deal of what you learned before you have a chance to start up again. When you pick your training back up, it probably wont be quite as bad as starting over from scratch, but it will almost certainly take you some extra flight hours to catch back up to where you were. Even when my wife told me about my present, I wasn't sure it was a good idea. Did I really want to spend that kind of money on some training that I was going to forget? Looking back on it, I feel stupid for even thinking that. Perhaps it wasn't the most effective way to train, but it got me in the air, it was a blast, and I can't wait to do it again.
The Flight
On July 9, 2014 I was about 20 minutes late for my flight lesson because I underestimated the amount of time it would take me to get from Sunnyvale to KRHV in San Jose. I was pretty frantic as I tried to squeeze my way through Bay Area traffic an hoping that my lesson wouldn't be cancelled. I called the FBO and left a message saying I was running late, but I did not get any confirmation from them that the flight was still on. We made it in time and I met my flight instructor, a guy named Mark and headed out to the plane. My wife and one year old son came with me to watch and take pictures.
Our plane was a Citabria 7ECA tail number N1806G (one of the main reasons I picked this flight school). A Citabria is an aerobatic high winged tail dragger similar to a Champ. This wasn't really the kind of plane I planned on flying long term, but I couldn't pass up the opportunity to try one out. The instrument panel was pretty minimalistic without any navigation system, vertical speed indicator, or even an attitude indicator. All I remember was a tachometer, RPM, airspeed indicator, altimeter, and a really big slip/skid indicator (also known as a turning coordinator, these are really important for student pilots who don't know how to turn). My wife later said that she wasn't really nervous about me flying until she poked her head in and saw the instrument panel. I think perhaps she was expecting something a little more sophisticated, so she was shocked both by the fact that there wasn't much there and by the fact that since my instructor would be sitting behind me, he wouldn't really be able to see any instruments at all. I, of course, was just exited.
Part of my first flight package included an hour of ground instruction, but after Mark showed me how to use the radio and headsets, I really didn't have much more to learn, so we just went flying. I asked him what we were going to be doing on the flight and he just said "Whatever you want." Surely he didn't mean that; this was an intro flight, he must mean we're just doing climbs and turns and I can chose where we go. I told him about my background and my simulator experience so he basically just let me fly the plane without really that much instruction. Don't get me wrong, he was talking to me the whole time while I was flying because there were lots of things I needed to improve on, but he rarely gave me any instruction before I started something. I think he wanted to see what I could do on my own, and then step in to help. I really liked this because I got to show off the things I already knew, but he was still able to teach me a lot of things I didn't.
But I'm getting ahead of myself, lets start from the beginning. He showed me where the checklist cards were and told me to go through the engine start checklist. Once I actually started the engine, I think that's when it hit me: "Oh my goodness, this guy is actually going to let me fly this plane. What in the world is he thinking." Mark handled the call to ground control and we taxied up to the run-up area by runway 31R. Taxing wasn't at all like I expected. I knew it would be hard, but I was terrible at it. I expected that the rudder pedals would move pretty freely, but they were actually pretty stiff. It was more about applying pressure the the pedals than actually placing them in a certain position. "These pedals take a little more pressure than the keys on my keyboard" I commented, referring to my flight simulator at home.
When we got to the run up area, I had another moment of thinking "He's seriously going to let me do this isn't he?" Once we were cleared to take off, I failed miserably to taxi out to 31R (he sort of took over and got things straightened out) and then he just said "OK, take off." He told me what airspeed to rotate at (rotation is when you pull back to start climbing off the runway) and that was the extent of my takeoff instruction. Fortunately, I had a pretty good idea of how to take off and I had done some tail-dragger practice in the simulator so I thought me first take off was actually pretty good; there really wasn't much too it. I'm not sure how Mark treats other students who don't know anything about planes, but I though that the way let me do the work was a lot of fun and I loved showing off what little skill I already had. I guess he must have felt like he had a good feel for where I was at and he was confident I could do it. Either that, or he does this with all of the newbies and just hopes they don't kill him, I don't know. Another thing that my instructor did which I didn't really expect was that he never fully took control of the airplane from me. The FAA's Airplane Flying Handbook says that one of the first things an instructor should explain to the student is that they should never both be flying the airplane at the same time. If the instructor wants the controls, he or she should say "My airplane" and the student should immediately stop moving the controls. My instructor didn't take this approach; instead he just controlled along with me and if I ever needed some help, he would just push the controls in the right direction. I'm not really sure if this is the safest practice (it may be just as safe, I'm just really not sure, I'd love to hear some reader feedback on this) but it was perfect for me. This meant that I could at least try to fly the airplane the whole time, and feeling him apply pressure to correct my mistakes helped me get a feel for what I needed to change.
So I took off pretty much entirely on my own (I think he may have helped with some rudder input because keeping a tail dragger straight on the ground can be a little tricky) and we started climbing out to the east. He told me to climb to 4,000 feet and level off. When we reached 4,000 he showed me how to pick a new throttle setting and lean the mixture (at a higher altitude you want your air to fuel ratio to be a little higher). Since fuel isn't a concern on a flight simulator, I didn't really know much about this. Then he asked me the question that I couldn't seem to prepare for: "OK, what now?"
Surely he didn't really mean I could do whatever I wanted, so I decided to start with something simple, practicing coordinated turns without loosing or gaining altitude. For some reason on the simulator I always either climb or descend pretty significantly every time I turn. In an airplane without an attitude indicator or vertical speed indicator, this would be even more difficult. He showed me how to pick a spot on the windshield to judge my pitch and it helped a lot. My altitude didn't stay exactly the same, but it was well within 100 feet of where I started, which was a lot better than I had been doing on the computer before. Then he asked me again "What now?"
So I tried something a little braver and asked if we could practice some stalls. He told me to cut the throttle and try to keep the nose level as long as I could to perform a power off stall. There were four things that greatly surprised me:
- How little of a transition there was between flying and stalling. I expected that as the plane slowed down there would be a gradual transition as the plane struggled to keep flying and then it would slowly start going down more and forward less. This is true to an extent, but its really a quick transition:One moment I was flying and the next moment, I was falling.
- Once we began to stall, I expected Mark to give me instructions on how to recover. Instead, his exact words were "OK, now recover." I learned how to recover from a stall when I was around 12, so it wasn't a problem, but I was still surprised that he didn't tell me. I pushed the throttle back in and put the nose down and recovered just fine.
- The recovery was almost instantaneous. I thought I would have to go into a dive and try to gain up speed for a few seconds before leveling off, but less than a second after I began my recovery, Mark told me to pull back up. That was a lot easier than I expected.
- But the thing that surprised me the most was how utterly un-terrifying it was. I thought stalling was this big life or death situation where you fall helplessly from the sky and hope you recover before you hit the ground. Instead it was pretty straightforward and I didn't even get a chance to be nervous.
"OK, what now?" For a second I thought to myself, "Well, he said we could do whatever I want, and we are in an aerobatic airplane..." but then I remembered that the FARs require all people on board to be wearing a parachute if they are doing aerobatics and I don't believe we had parachutes onboard. Besides, I wanted to practice something that would be a little more useful to me later on. So timidly I asked "Could we do some touch and goes?" I thought for sure he wasn't going to let me land the plane, but he said "Sure" and we descended to the traffic pattern. He let me call the tower "Ried-Hillview Tower, Citabria N1806G, we'd like the option" and off we went. Mark helped me know when to turn (it turns out I had been flying my traffic patterns WAY too big on my flight simulator, so I was surprised at how tight the turns were and especially how short final approach was). Everything seemed a lot lower in real life than it does on the simulator, so I was a little worried that we would hit a building, but I was right on track for 31R. There was a little bit of a crosswind from the West, but not too bad. I got to practice using the ailerons to counteract the crosswind and using the rudder to keep my heading aligned with my direction of travel. The approach was actually a little easier than I expected, but knowing when to flare (pull up just before your wheels touch down so that you loose a lot of your speed and stall right as you touch down) was very difficult for me. I think we did three touch and goes, none of which were graceful, but all of which were safe. On one of them I began my flare way too early and must have stalled 5 feet off the runway. Mark had to give me a good amount of rudder help, especially on the ground. On my second landing I felt like I might have done a ground loop (when the plane spins out on the ground) if it hadn't been for Mark. Finally, I pulled off onto taxiway Delta and called ground for permission to taxi back to our parking space.
That was one of the most exciting moments of my whole life. I couldn't stop smiling the whole way home, and then once I got home I couldn't stop smiling for a few hours. Every once in a while I would spontaneously let a little giggle out. My wife was happy that her gift had gone over so well, but I think she was also a little jealous because I looked happier than I did on the day we were married. On the way home I was so distracted I could barely drive. I think at one point I ran a red light and there were a few other close calls. Hours later when I was reading my son a bedtime story called "Spot on the Move" (featuring spot the dog in an airplane on the front cover) I accidentally read "Citabria on the Move" instead. My wife overheard this and gave me a pretty hard time about it.
So that was my first lesson. Its a day I'll never forget and its the first time I sort of felt like an actual student pilot. I can't wait to get back up there again.
Now you should go try the same thing :)
Happy Flying!
| Hours Dual | 0.9 |
|---|---|
| Hours Solo | 0 |
| Money Spent | $129 |
If you have comments specifically regarding this post, please leave them in the comments section below. If you have comments regarding any other topic related to cost effective flying or some general feedback about the blog overall, please send them tothestingypilot@gmail.com and I will try to address them in a future post.
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