One Week Update

This post I had writen last week to outline my work; sorry it has taken so long.

Well, it has been about a week since my last post. I think we are due for an update. Basically I am in temporary housing with friends about 40min from the airport. Not really a bad drive considering I was making a 1.5 hour drive from home. This housing is really working out great, though last night was the first night there. I as still looking at a closer place if it opens up.


The flights are going great. I have not actually taken paid flights, but all the training here has been "free". I got a checkout in the Cessna 172 (used for tours) yesterday. It was a lot of fun; it is a slick airplane with a lot of "get up and go".


Today I worked on banner towing. It can be exciting, although not really scary or dangerous as some would think. Maybe on another post I will explain just how the banner gets attached to the plane, but for the basics... here we go:


Basically the plane does not take off with the banner... this could be hard on the banner not to mention dangerous. Therefore in order to get it attached, there is a grappling hook type attachment thrown out the window shortly after takeoff. This is used to snag the banner after airborne. It takes a little while to figure out just where to be to get the banner, but basically a normal landing is flown over the banner. About 20 feet from the banner the plane is pull up... like near strait up... pretty exciting the first time! Works great in theory, but takes some practice.


So... we practiced without the grappling hook a few times before eating lunch. Then - after lunch - we went back out and went to fly a banner. The first time I missed it, but the second time the banner caught. This was really cool, but the plane would not climb (we were about 200 feet off the ground). My trainer got nervous as we were headed over the water. Finally, after realizing we were not getting any higher, my trainer took the controls. (By the way, he normally does not fly from the right (co-pilot) side of plane, normally does not fly the plane we took, and had not flown outside the airline jumbo-jets most of the winter.) Thus being said, he decided to execute an expedited landing by dropping our banner back at the airport but - in layman's terms - in a non-normal way (down wind). We came for a landing and kissed the dirt thank you. It was a bit scary, but really I did not understand enough at the time to really appreciate it.

-Flyboy