Demo Flight

Just over two and a half years ago, my wife bought me a demo flight for my birthday. We lived in the Sacramento area at the time and went out to Sac Executive airport for a little demo. It probably lasted 30 minutes and we never got higher than about 1800 feet. I made a couple turns and then we went back. The plane was a ratty 30 year old 172N, and I was not really impressed. Although I've always loved planes and flying, I just wasn't ready. A friend at work got his private pilot certificate at about the same time, so I lived vicariously through him and talked flying as much as possible. 

Fast forward to today. My wife and I went on a demo flight with Dave, an instructor at West Valley Flying Club in Palo Alto. We did a little ground instruction and Dave walked me thorugh pre-flighting the aircraft. This time, the plane was a 2002 Cessna 172SP in very good shape with modern avionics. This was the kind of plane I could see myself flying. 

Our demo flight took us on a left Dumbarton departure out over the Santa Cruz mountains toward the ocean. We went up to about 5000 feet and Dave had me do a few basic turns, climbs, and descents. My wife, Cyndi, got a few great pictures, including the wing/ocean/sun photo in the header of this blog. 

Dave also demonstrated the stability of the aircraft by doing an oscillation exercise. A little freaky, but nothing extreme. Finally, having no pressing schedule, we decided we'd fly down to Monterey, land, and then fly back to Palo Alto. We called ATC for clearance to KMRY, kept an eye out for traffic, and landed smoothly. We taxied back to the takeoff end of the active runway and called the tower. We sat there on the ground for what seemed like forever before finally getting clearance to go. As it turned out, the plane's schedule was more pressing than ours – someone else had the plane reserved for an evening flight after us and we were going to be late, so we got back to Palo Alto as quickly as possible. I got a fresh logbook and was able to record 1.7 hours of dual instruction to kick off my first real flight training.

This was a great demo experience, and it really got me off the fence about taking flight lessons. I decided that after the holidays are over, I'm going get training started ASAP. I've been thinking and dreaming about it for too long, now it's finally time for action.

Lesson #1 hours: 1.7

Total hours: 1.7