Christina’s First Flight

October 14th, 2010 by Jason

Yesterday I had one of my best flights yet. Not only did my girlfriend Christina come up flying with me, but I was able to do a number of procedures I’ve been practicing and nailed most all of them.

Before flying, James and I went over the different procedures we were going to run through which was short and sweet. I remembered most everything I needed for the maneuvers, however there were some parts I missed. One thing I have stored in my brain is the beginnings of a maneuver; C-RITE:

C – Clearing turns – Turn 180 degrees checking for objects that could get in the way

R – Reference point – what is my point of reference whether on the ground or in front of me

I – Instruments – check the settings of the instruments

T – Talk (radio what is going on)

E – Emergency field – where am I going to land if things go awry.

C-RITE is another checklist to run through to make sure that I’m setup to correctly run through my maneuver and so that I am able to take care of myself if an emergency occurs. The instrument check is to get my heading, airspeed, altitude, and angle of turn values known so that when I make my maneuver, I keep within the valid values (heading +/- 10 degrees, airspeed +/- 10 KIAS, altitude +/- 100ft, and angle of turn +/- 5 degrees).

Though it was Christina’s first flight, and she is extremely afraid of flying, she did an excellent job riding in the back of the plane. I didn’t hear her freak out once (though she probably was).

We ran though the following with her on-board:

IFR hood training
Steep turns
Slow flight
Power-off stall
Power-on stall
Simulated engine failure (emergency procedure)
Turns around a point
S-turns
and then landings

All of this was done in 1.3 hours of flying. I was quite happy with the amount accomplished and it was all done with success. Some better than others, but overall I was really happy with the results.