Lesson 1: Flying Over Lake Lanier

My first lesson was yesterday, Friday September 26, 2008. My appointment wasn't until 3:00. I decided to take the day off to shop digital cameras. Friday morning, I grabbed some breakfast and then drove to Best Buy. After a few minutes, a young salesman greeted me.

"The main thing I need is jitter stability. I'm taking pilot lessons, you see .. I'll be 4,000 feet up in the air .." I explained. He wasn't impressed. That's OK. I too was 18 once and just as unimpressed with the world. We arrived at a Panasonic Lumix DMC-FS3. I considered a carrying case, but it turns out that my Turner-issued blackberry holster fits the camera perfectly. I spent the morning charging the camera and familiarizing myself with its operation, while half-watching my latest Sopranos DVDs. I ordered the whole first season from Netflicks.

2:45. Time to go. At this point, I had snapped enough pictures and clips (it does video too) of our dog Pita and Tony Soprano that I was now intimately familiar with the camera and ready to deploy it under flight conditions. I even practiced quick-drawing it from the blackberry case in the event something particularly awesome happened that I wanted to capture.

The Pre-flight Check : Instrument Extravaganza

3:00. I arrived at Advanced Aviation. Today I would be flying with a new instructor, Chris. This lesson would be more hands-on than the teaser flight last week. We headed outside to the ramp where our DA-20 was parked. Chris handed me the pre-flight checklist and we walked through it. The items on the pre-flight checklist are grouped by areas of the plane - right wing, left wing, landing gear, front, tail, cockpit, etc. You check the fuel, oil, rudders, flaps, ailerons, propeller, landing gear, lights, engine gauges, GPS, radios, .. everything. Even for our little DA-20, it's a solid 10 minute process for an experienced pilot. The pre-flight provides a natural introduction to all the areas of an airplane. We spent about 20 minutes going through the list and he explained each area and part.

There are aspects of airplane design that are surprisingly (and ingeniously) simple. For example, the way our DA-20 knows if it's stalling (going so slowly that it can't fly) is simply by a little hole on the underside of the wing with a sensor inside that measures airflow. Air must move across the wings at a certain speed to attain lift. This speed depends on several factors, but for the DA-20 is around 37-42 kts (1 kt "naught" is 1.15 mph) . At this threshold speed, air pressure under the wing creates enough lift to overcome the airplane's weight and flight occurs. In other words, you have to be going at least a certain speed to fly. Any slower and air escapes around the wing too freely and you don't get lift. If air pressure inside the hole lowers past a certain threshold, stall warnings go off in the cockpit. One of the pre-flight checks is to make sure that hole is clear of debris.

The cockpit instruments and controls are the most interesting aspect to me. Here is our DA-20 instrument panel.

At first glance it feels overwhelming, but there is a method to the madness.

Left side (pilot side): The 8 (2 rows of 4) circular gauges tell you speed, orientation, and direction. Under those 8 dials, a row of white switches control interior and exterior lights. Right of the light switches are the key ignition, master switches for the avionics, fuel pump, main power, and flaps.

Right side (co-pilot): The main screen is a GPS. Below that are radios. To the right are 8 (4 rows of 2) circular gauges devoted to fuel supply, oil pressure, and temperature. To the far right are a bunch of little black knobs. These are fuses, just like in your car or house. If any circuits overload, the protection circuit breaker kicks in and juts the knob out. To reset it, you just push it back in. If it pops right back out, you've got a blown circuit. More shots of the instruments below.

I got to spend some time taxiing. You drive the plane on the ground by a little throttle and then braking on either the left or right side to control direction. The breaks are black pads attached to the tops of the rudder foot controls.

So, for example if you want to turn left, you step on the left break. The plane starts turning left, you release and it goes straight again. It was not easy to keep the plane taxiing straight, lots of .. left, right, left, more left, right. I began to get the hang of it. Like anything else, there's no substitute for practice.

I won't go into the yoke, aka stick, since that was covered in the previous post. Finally, there are the levers located between the pilot seats, as shown to the lower right.

The upper set of 3 levers control from left to right: heat level, whether heat goes to defroster or floor, and parking brake. The red button to the right of the upper levers cuts the fuel off to the engine. "Whatever you do, don't press the red button" - K, Men In Black.

The lower set of 3 levers control from left to right: alternate fuel injector air source, power (throttle), and fuel mixture. The star of the show here is throttle. Throttle creates forward thrust. On take off, throttle is at max. When banking, climbing, and diving the throttle is used to manage airspeed. Chris controlled the throttle for the most part on this lesson.

Lake Lanier, PDK, and Stone Mountain

Today's flight would take us north over Lake Lanier, then hooking around southwest where we would land at DeKalb Peachtree Airport (PDK). From there we would take off again and head southeast over Stone Mountain and then back to Gwinnett County Airport (LZU). Here is more or less the route we took.

Almost immediately after takeoff, Chris turned the controls over to me. He would give me directions and I would try to convince our bird to make it happen.

"Climb to 4,000 ft and head southeast," he would say.

I mostly used the stick for turns, though I did use the rudder some too. I did some rolling and banking. It felt a lot more comfortable than the first time up, naturally.

Thinking back when I was learning to drive a car, I remember Dad telling me not to focus on what was immediately ahead, but rather to look further out. It's the same with flying. The first time up I was obsessed with keeping the attitude level and starring at the instruments. This time I tried to spend more time looking around, being situationally aware, and adjusting the natural roll and pitch by feel rather than instrument. In a word, learning to relax.

Watching Chris, his attention was squarely focussed on situational awareness. Where were other planes?

Which way were they going? He showed me a little arrow on the GPS and how that little blip was a plane several thousand feet down and about 6 miles away. I could see him out the window, down and to our left.

This is Lake Lanier. Georgia is in the middle of drought at the moment, so the water levels are lower than usual. That's why so much of the bank is visible.

Below are more pictures of the lake.

After Lake Lanier, we went down to DeKalb Peachtree Airpoirt. Here's a shot of us lining up for landing.

PDK is a much busier airport than LZU (Gwinnett). All manners of Cessnas, jets, and everything else were coming in and out of there. From what I could make out, ATC gave us landing instructions that Chris didn't like. It was not clear to me, but I didn't want to distract him. They gave us alternate landing instructions. We lined up and landed under a tail wind.

I think the idea was that I would practice more taxiing at PDK, but it was so busy that we just got back in line and took off toward Stone Mountain.

We took off and leveled out. After a few minutes, ATC bid us farewell saying "have a nice day." As we approached Stone Mountain, I noticed my neck and back were getting stiff. There is no head-rest and the seat is in a fixed incline. 1.5 to 2 hours is plenty in DA-20.

Stone Mountain is a recreational park in Georgia best known for its hiking trails and a laser/light show. Chris asked me if I had ever seen the show.

"I've never been," I said. "I've heard it's overrated .. "

"It's the kind of thing you go see once, just to say you've seen it," he responded.

Chris is a good guy and a good pilot. I can't think of a better way to see Stone Mountain than from up here.

We made our way back to Gwinnett, landed, and taxiied back to the ramp.

"So did you have fun?" Chris asked me.

"Hell yes I did," I said. That was the truth.

We went back inside. I got my student kit consisting of several textbooks, a thick FAA regulations book, a log book, a "flight computer" which is a set of plastic rulers and measures used to chart long courses, and a spiffy bag in which to stow it all. Chris had another student waiting. We shook hands and he was out the door ready to do it all over again. I'm jealous.

My back and neck were sore. Pilot training is not for the physically, emotionally, nor financially faint of heart. I have a lot to learn and much practice ahead of me. My next appointment is Saturday 10/4/2008 from 3:00 to 5:00 PM with Chris. Saturday however we are changing aircraft. I'm going to try a Cessna so I can compare it to the Diamond. I can't wait.

The Teaser Flight

I've always wanted to learn to fly an airplane.

I finally decided to pull the trigger. I chose Advanced Aviation in Lawrenceville, GA. http://http//advancedaviation.com/ They are within a few miles of my house, so that is convenient. I scheduled a $59 teaser flight for 12:00 Saturday (9/20/08) with Darick.

The fact of the matter is I've always been tense on commercial flights. Takeoffs, landings, turbulence, and strange mechanical noises always give me at least a little pause, if not make my heart skip a beat. So I was both excited and terrified at my maiden flight.

The anxiety of it all didn't really begin setting in until Saturday morning. My wife, Cynthia, had some errands to run that afternoon. So I was home alone watching TV with one eye on the clock counting the minutes until I needed to leave for the airport.

11:30 rolled around and I decided to head out. Drove to CVS for a bottled water and some cash. 11:45. No more excuses for delay. I drove out to the Gwinnett County airport. Briscoe Blvd is a strip of road, approximately 3/4 mile in length, where flight school offices, garages, hangars, and the like are located. Advanced Aviation occupies the upstairs of a shared office complex on Briscoe Blvd.

I got signed in and met the instructor I would fly with, Darick. Anxiety levels were holding steady at about medium/low. I followed Darick outside and around back to the ramp (where planes are parked). This is where my anxiety peaked: when I saw the plane.


I had assumed we would be in a larger, twin engine type that we could move around in - like the ones you see in movies. Not so. This little 2 seater is a Diamond DA-20. It's a trainer aircraft made of very light, sturdy composite material. It is tiny. Later I would be told that the DA-20 is statistically the safest trainer aircraft around: newer than the Cessnas and Pipers, better avionics, easy to fly, and stable.


At 6 feet / 200 lbs, this was the only point where I truly considered backing out. I swallowed my fear and decided to continue, trusting in Darick to keep us safe. We climbed into the cockpit, nice and cozy. Once inside, Darick finished the preflight and we buckled up. The belt buckles are 2 straps that cross lap and chest and snap together in the middle. We donned our headsets and the plane started up. Some recorded weather conditions came over the radio. Darick had an exchange with ATC and then jotted down some information they read out to him. I can't wait to learn this stuff.

The ATC radio chatter can be hard to make out. We taxied out of the ramp and toward the runway. Darick used only the rudder pedals to drive the plane around on the ground. We positioned facing down the runway and stopped. A short while later, I heard ATC say "cleared for takeoff". We throttled up and were speeding down the runway.

Every day people deal with "points of no return". Merging onto the interstate, for example. We deal with them every day without thinking about it. They don't feel like momentous commitments because we do them all the time. Takeoff was a new point of no return for me, which is a rare and special thing. You can't pull over to the side of the road. There are no questions. You are committed.

We lifted off at what felt like was 50 or 60 mph. It was different from commercial airline liftoffs; it was lighter and easier. I did not feel like air cargo. I was flying. Our little DA-20 had turned into a bird. Darick let me control the stick while we climbed and leveled out. The stick controls the nose pitch and wing tilt by raising and lowering surfaces on the wings and tail. Hold your hand out the window of a moving car and change the angle. Tilt up and your hand lifts, tilt down and it falls. Same principle.

Every once in a while we would hit these little pockets where the plane would lurch downward for an instant which gave me minor stomach butterflies. Darick said those were "thermals", pockets of hot air rising up from the ground due to the clear, sunny day. If you think about flying as "swimming" through air, it makes sense that different sized water molecules (warm air is less dense than cool air) would feel different to the swimmer as he passes through them. Columns of hot air will actually displace the airplane upward and then passing out of the warm column, the plane "falls" back down relative to the cooler air. We flew around for about 20 minutes.

Darick had a few more ATC exchanges over the radio, and then lined up for landing. We just sort of glided in steadily, held right above ground level for a moment, and then throttled back which lowered us into contact with the runway. He made it look so much easier than it probably is. The DA-20's lightweight composite construction makes for a smoother more efficient flight, but renders them more sensitive to winds than their heavier Cessna and Piper counterparts.

We taxied back to the ramp. I was already sad it was over - hopelessly addicted. I met the president of the Advanced Aviation, Bruce, who was extremely informative and helpful. He was once a CPA - a desk jockey like myself.

Flying that plane was the most fun I've ever had. I want to learn about everything: the avionics, the flight physics, ATC procedures, everything. Once I get my private license, I want to fly my wife to Apalachicola, FL airport and celebrate by eating the best oysters on the planet at Boss Oyster.

My next flight, and first real lesson, is Friday 9/26/08. I cannot wait to get back out there.