Mrs. SixPapaCharlie
Pre-takeoff checklist
I have always loved biplanes, though mainly for how they look. I've asked 6PC to get me a ride in his CFI's Steerman, but since that clearly got repo'ed 
, he did the next best thing.
For my birthday, he got me an aerobatic ride in a Great Lakes! It was incredible! First time doing aerobatics, first time in an open cockpit, and I loved it way more than I thought I would.
I was pretty nervous as the pilot was strapping me in, mostly because I could tell that if I needed to use my parachute, we would need to be about 20,000 feet up to give me time enough to unhook everything to get out of the plane to deploy it. I was sitting in there, taking deep breaths, thinking, "What am I doing? This is way more Bryan's thing than mine."
As soon as we were airborne though (which took about .2 seconds and used probably about 12 feet of runway), all my fear went away, and I was just enthralled with feeling the wind and being able to see so much. Then I was thinking, "THIS must be the feeling Bryan gets with every flight." I do enjoy flying, but it hasn't ever really made me giddy until this flight. And then the fun really began!
We did loops, rolls, hammerhead stalls, and a few other maneuvers that I forget the name of. The pilot took me through his routine from an airshow last year. It was all SO fun. The hammerhead stall with the three spins after the drop was the only thing that I felt any fear on. He let me fly a little, but the stick was awkward for me, so I quickly let him take back over.
My only complaint was the ride was too damn short! I wanted to keep going. Here's the video with the highlights (I'm pretty short, so I'm hard to see, but you get the idea).
, he did the next best thing.For my birthday, he got me an aerobatic ride in a Great Lakes! It was incredible! First time doing aerobatics, first time in an open cockpit, and I loved it way more than I thought I would.
I was pretty nervous as the pilot was strapping me in, mostly because I could tell that if I needed to use my parachute, we would need to be about 20,000 feet up to give me time enough to unhook everything to get out of the plane to deploy it. I was sitting in there, taking deep breaths, thinking, "What am I doing? This is way more Bryan's thing than mine."
As soon as we were airborne though (which took about .2 seconds and used probably about 12 feet of runway), all my fear went away, and I was just enthralled with feeling the wind and being able to see so much. Then I was thinking, "THIS must be the feeling Bryan gets with every flight." I do enjoy flying, but it hasn't ever really made me giddy until this flight. And then the fun really began!
We did loops, rolls, hammerhead stalls, and a few other maneuvers that I forget the name of. The pilot took me through his routine from an airshow last year. It was all SO fun. The hammerhead stall with the three spins after the drop was the only thing that I felt any fear on. He let me fly a little, but the stick was awkward for me, so I quickly let him take back over.
My only complaint was the ride was too damn short! I wanted to keep going. Here's the video with the highlights (I'm pretty short, so I'm hard to see, but you get the idea).
