Flying at YKF
This morning I went flying at the Region of Waterloo International airport (yes, KW does have its own international airport, with regular service to Calgary, Detroit and Ottawa). Specifically, I got to spend half an hour at the controls of a Cessna 152. This is something I’ve been meaning to do for a while, but either 1) I kept forgetting or occupying myself with other things; or 2) weather was seemingly too bad. I picked a $50 introductory flight at the Waterloo-Wellington Flight Centre. This is probably as close as I can get to flying a real aircraft for a while, what with my university tuition fees and such. But I figured I should at least see if getting licensed to fly single-engined piston airplanes is something worth saving money for; Now I’m convinced that it’s totally worth it.
I actually ended up doing more things in a plane that I thought I would be allowed do, given my lack of real-world experience. First I did some taxiing with turns; then the instructor lined up the plane with the runway centerline, and I took control and put her in the air, maintaining a steady 70-knot climb to three thousand feet. Afterwards we did some straight-and-level flying, turns, descending and climbing; then we headed back to the airport, and I got to take over the controls once again on the base leg, turning her onto final, lining up with the runway, and (with some assistance from my instructor) bringing her to runway threshold pretty much up to the point of touchdown.
I was actually quite surprised at how natural flying felt to me; I guess my vast flight simulator experience really counts for something! It certainly helps if you know how (at least in theory) things are supposed to work; I felt completely calm and non-nervous throughout the entire flight. One of the curious effects of my flighsimming experience is that I ended up staring at and relying on the gauges (rather than looking out the window) seemingly more than I was supposed to; this correlates with the comments I’ve read saying that flight sim is really useful for instrument training, but not so much for visual flying due to awkward angles, fixed camera views and lack of sensory feedback (i.e. feeling the turns/climb/descent with your butt). To add to that, I’ve also found it quite challenging to determine our geographic position visually, although morning fog might have had something to do with it. Another artifact of my being used to flying commercial jets at high speeds in FS - not expecting to see traffic on the runway, and calling tower for landing clearance when we are on a short final a hundred meters from runway threshold!
After landing I got to take a few photos, and picked up a few goodies at their front desk, including a navigational chart and approach plates for Ontario (for free, since they’re outdated - useless for real world flying, but quite acceptable in flight sims).
My overall experience: best 50 bucks ever spent.