Most memorable experience

Sport Pilot

Sport Pilot

Pre-takeoff checklist
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I'm curious to know what was your most memorable experience during your flight training or just in general?

(Good, bad, or indifferent)
 
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Sunshine. She has incredible muscle control....oh, that wasn’t the question?
 
Solo.
Doing a stall with my instructor and the bottom falling out (negative Gs).
Solo XC.
Bringing my plane home.
 
Two, one great, one oh s***

First Carrier Landing.

Engine failure over the Ohio River.

Cheers
 
Dang near having a midair collision with a Harrier while I was practicing turns around a point as a solo student. I will never forget the little lines for MTR’s on a sectional show the center of the route after that day.
 
First solo for sure was the most exciting. Then taking the wife up after checkride. Then first off airport landing.


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Soloing in my plane that I recently had purchased. I know; I did it backwards (buying before I was licensed). I really wanted to train in my own equipment.
 
Solo... airplane flew soooo differently without the extra ballast in the right seat.
First solo cross country (first, “I am really flying somewhere” moment.)
Night cross country flight when we saw the rocket explosion at Caddo Mills
Passing check ride
First flight with @SixPapaCharlie (link to story)
 
Wake turbulence and 90 degree bank just after take-off, in a small homebuilt biplane while taking off behind a Stearman.
 
X3 Skier said:
Two, one great, one oh s***

First Carrier Landing.

Engine failure over the Ohio River.

Cheers
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Solo was great, so was flying my wife to Yellowstone.

But total electrical failure just after reported loss of radar contact doing a VOR-A approach over the Ohio River with my CFII was also memorable, we had descended out of the clouds just before making the outbound procedure turn . . . .

Fortunately it was Gallipolis KGAS and not nearby Mason County (3I2) with those tall smokestacks next door!
 
First solo. - good

Checkride -
DEP - Hey, my feet are getting hot.
Me - Okay, is your vent on?
DEP - I think we may have an electrical fire.
Me - Really, I don't smell anything.
DEP - We have an electrical fire.
Me -OH....this is part of the...oh, okay. (puts the plane in a shallow dive towards nearest flat spot, gets checklist out, does everything until it says, "turn master switch off" and I say, I've only simulated that, do you really want me to turn it off?"
DEP - run the checklist
Me - Okay, master off (turns master off)
DEP - Now simulate telling ATC our position, fuel, nature of emergency..etc.
Me - Wouldn't it have been more realistic to simulate turning the master off?

Cost me another $100 to finish up my PPL. - bad
 
Pulling 11 g's (momentary, not sustained) three times with Hannes Arch in a two-place Edge 540.

RIP, Hannes.
 
Almost an impossible task. There are so many memories that come to mind. Here goes.

From the time I rode in my fathers Cessna 170 in the early sixties, to my solo in 1972 when I was 16 years of age, to receiving my CFI at age 18 in Spokane, so much in between, to taking my wife up in our 182 last weekend, just for fun.

It's all memorable. Flying is God-like after all.
 
Bad: Microburst all the way to the ground, full power in a Skyhawk, stall horn blaring. Twice. Same day.

Good: Almost too many to recount.

First flight in an airplane I owned and had keys to was right up there.

As was passing the ME-CFI ride.

First ILS to minimums (real missed approach) with @jesse, and second one (landed) right after that.

First IFR XC solo where my assigned altitude put me in the cloud tops in and out (just gorgeous).

First grass/dirt runway.

Later much better non-Colorado REALLY NICE grass runway.

Landing on the AstroTurf runway.

First time an engine is truly shut down and feathered on a twin. (All multi instructors know that first one, the student wants a minute to stare at it. Remind them to get out their camera too, if they like. Ha.)

First solo.

First glider flight and first glider solo.

First time a friend trusted me to take his kids aloft. (He’s a pilot, but hasn’t flown in years.) And their faces.

First disabled and challenged kids for a charity event. And THEIR faces.

All sorts more. Flying is awesome.
 
its 1978,
im 25 yr old,
2nd training flight, 2 hours,
c-150, bremerton national, big long runway,
finally,,, i have made my 1st good enough landing!
i was sooo relieved, my frustrations may be gone,
i said,, please can we just go Fly???
he says, sure, just for kinda fun,
he says climb and maintain 2000, heading 80 degrees, 100 mph,,, getting kinda complex for just kinda fun...
after a few minutes of chasing altitude and heading, starring at instruments,
really the 1st time to concentrate on the gauges, and not doing too well,

then he points at the ground to show me port orchard airport,, its much smaller and shorter than im used to...
he says,,, your engine is Breaking!!! you need to land there...
it wasnt the best landing ever,, but it was a damn good Enough landing!!
ill never forget that....
 
Inadvertently entering a spin during my $20 Cessna Pilot Center fam flight in a 150. First time I'd ever been in a GA airplane. Instructor took me through the entry and recovery of two more of them on that flight to show me what happened. I was hooked and signed up then and there.
 
A few times come to mind:

1. Flying a new glass cockpit Cessna 172 with less than 200 hours on the Hobbs from Wichita, KS to Omaha, NE in 2008 and not touching the controls from 1000 ft AGL out of Wichita until 1000ft AGL in Omaha. For someone used to flying 1970s equipment, the GFC700 coupled to the G1000 was an awesome experience. And to top it all off, we had Satellite Radio and Weather. I distinctly remember John Mellencamp's "Jack and Diane" playing on the radio.

2. Flying a 172RG from Wichita, KS to somewhere in Texas after work one evening. The ride back was quite the experience for a VFR pilot with <200 hours in the logbook. There was an overcast layer at 9,000 ft (and i know this for sure since I inadvertently flew into the clouds for about 30 seconds before starting a descent to 7000 ft. A little later in the flight, for about 20 minutes, the only l could see anywhere was a single light in the distance off my left wing-tip coming from what I assume to be a farm house. Having learned to fly in the North East, I never experienced darkness like I did on that flight home. Cool, but a definite learning experience. I was exhausted by the time the glow of Wichita came into view.

3. A few flights during primary training where my flight instructor could tell I was getting fed up with a lack of progress and he suggested just going out and having fun. For me that was taking the flight school's 152 to a little grass strip in NJ that no longer exists, Twin Pines airport. It was always a good reminder that this is supposed to be fun.
 
-ME training in 310s, then getting my MEI.
-Flying down the Tombigbee River in 310s, hoping some other fool wasn't doing the same in the opposite direction.
-First vacuum pump failure in IMC. Had to fly partial panel to VOR, outbound, procedure turn, then the ILS, only to break out at 7-800' agl!
-First ILS to minimums, first Cat II ILS to minimums.
-First jet checkout flight in a Citation, going to 10K' for maneuvers. 10K, when I was used to doing them around 2-3000'.
-And of course 1st solo, in Korea.
 
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I’m green, so my experiences are limited. However, from yesterday- First landing in a crosswind. So, first forward slip to a side slip to a transition and touch down. A degree of pucker factor, there. 65 mph feels a lot faster when your hands are full. But I lived!
 
Ryanb said:
Soloing and then taking a few ladies up for a ride.
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Hopefully, you got your certificate in between those events...

Actually, on the night (dual) XC in my private training, we switched to a 172 from the normal 152 so we could take the cute girl from the flight school office along.
 
First solo
First time in IMC
Passing ATP check ride/first type rating
First flight as an airline pilot
Jumpseating on my dad’s flight to Puerto Rico
Dad jumpseating on my flight to Baltimore
Taking a special girl through the Hudson River at night
 
Sport Pilot said:
Solos, stalls, and an almost mid-air collision...
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Yup...my most memorable experience was an extremely close mid-air collision on final. Sadly that relegates the solo and passing the checkride a 2nd most memorable experience. But good to learn from the incident... be vigilant at all phases of flight, even at a controlled airport. And make sure you’re not keying the mic when swearing like a banshee. :eek:;)
 
So many moments already.

The most emotional moment for me though, is the first time at KEVV.
It was when I began my departure roll on the same runway that I gazed upon 50 years ago, holding my moms hand as tears streamed down our face, and watched my father roll down that runway headed to Vietnam. I remember it like yesterday.
 
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Wow. That's a touching mental image my friend.

Skyrys62 said:
So many moments already.

The most touching moment for me though, is the first time at KEVV.
It was when I began my departure roll on the same runway that I gazed upon 50 years ago, holding my moms hand as tears streamed down our face, and watched my father roll down that runway headed to Vietnam. I remember it like yesterday.
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I remember looking up at my mom and saying where is he?
She said "right there, waving" and I saw him as they taxied out toward the runway... in what he told me just prior to leaving, was a Whisperjet.
And that was about as cool a name that I'd ever heard.
 
I wasn't flyin the plane. Hadn't flown one in about 25 years. The flight was from Sisters OR, 6K5 to Pearson Field WA, KVUO. Our daughter had flown over to pick us up so we could babysit the Grandkid in Portland. It was a gorgeous CAVU spring day and it had been a snowy winter. The Cascades were in their glory, you could see Mt Ranier all the way down to the high points by Crater Lake. It was like Crack, I was rehooked on flying. That afternoon I was on the phone scheduling a plane and an instructor. I bought a plane 6 months later.
 
So many memories....

One particular memory is the time I took an 80 year old man on a discovery flight.

His kids surprised him with the flight. His history was as a kid he wanted to be a pilot, like so many of his time. Growing up in rural West Virginia during the depression meant that money was short. But he dreamed of flying.

After graduating from high school, like so many others he did odd jobs to make money to help support the family. Then Pearl Harbor happened. A month later he joined the army and spent the next few years training. He was there on the D-Day invasion and lasted until Germany surrendered. He volunteered to spend another year in Germany during the occupation.

When he returned home, he married his long time sweetheart and went to work in the coal mines, and raising a family. No time or money for flying. He made sure all of his kids, 4 of them, graduated from college.

On his 80th birthday, the kids (older than me) and grandkids said they wanted to take him out to eat. Instead they came to the airport. They had pre-arranged the day with me weeks before. I gave him a quick 15 minute briefing on how to stay straight and level, then we went up. As soon as I leveled off I gave him the controls. We spent the next hour looking over where he grew up and lived. We went over to the Ohio River, then we flew over Hamlin, WV because everyone knows "the General" is from there.

After we landed he was so full of emotions that he could not speak. I had a student log book with his name in it. I filled it out and logged his time and presented it to him.

Sadly, a few months later one of the grand kids stopped by the airport. He told me grandpa passed away during the week. He told me that grandpa talked about that flight just about everyday.
 
Flying the left seat in a piper Cheyenne,first encounter with ryme ice.
 
I flew a 1950s era fighter jock around in the Viking.
I also flew an ex-PanAm pilot / ex-The Hump pilot around in the Vike.
 
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