When I got there, Mikey went over the plane with me. It was a cool to learn about the plane, inside and out. Then I crammed myself in the back and made sure I was buckled up. We took off. That was a little different than I was expecting. Becuase this plane is a "taildragger" he actually leveled the plane out and got the back wheel off the ground, then took the whole plane up a few feet above the runway to gain more speed and then he pulled up and we lifted off.
He got us up to about 1300 ft and then he asked if I wanted to control the plane. I'm a pussy. I didn't want to. He put his hands up and said "Take the stick!" It's a training plane so there is a stcik and pedals in the rear seat. he controlled the throttle and I flew for a pretty good ways. It was metally draining. Trying to fly straight and stay level.
We then climbed to about 3k feet. Before each manuever, he would tell me what he was going to do, explain what he would be doing with the controls and then what the plane would be doing. We started out with a roll. He then talked me through it and I did a roll. It was a little overwhelming but I believe it was climb, descend, full left then straighten it out. Watching the wing tips to keep things in perspective really helped me.
Next he did some other manuevers: loop, hammerhead, humpty bump (or humpty dump or humpty dance?) and some other stuff I can't recall. I think we hit the most Gs coming out of the roll? It was over 4gs on the gauge.
This whole time we were flying over the lake, It was cool to see the place I've lived for 11 years from the air. We started near my house, went to the far east side of the lake near I-77, then flew west near the nuclear staion. I had the stick at that point and Mikey instructed me to turn left. I was "timid" and not turning hard enough. We got close to the flying over the plant and Mikey kept instructing me to give it more stick. It felt like the wings were perpindicular to the ground, but we avoided flying directly over the plant.
At that point, we headed north. I flew quite a bit of the time. Well, not flew, but had the stick. Mikey took over a couple of times to do tricks or when we were passing over airports. And when a big commercial jet was flying over us.
Lake Norman is actually a fat part of the Catawba River. Duke Power has bulit damns all along the river, creating a series of lakes. We got to the north side of the lake and Mikey took over. At first we were flying over the river. Then we descended. We flew "up" the river. It felt like a scene from a Vietnam movie. We were literally below the trees. 3' to 10' off the water. That was cool. Folks on the shore and in boats were waving at us.
Oh yeah, somewhere before we went up the river, we landed on a little grass strip. That was cool. A beautiful strip of green grass with hangars and houses on both sides. At the "end" of the strip was the river. It just dropped off. There were actually boat slips right at the end of the strip.
That was an experience I will never forget.
