Her name is Heather, the lady who offered to let me go along with her as a passenger. She was standing at the counter at our local FBO, Northern Air. I was struck by how young and how small she is. She's a cute, little impish girl. As I've often noticed, appearances can be deceiving. Heather is already an accomplished pilot at approx. 70 hours. I am astonished and grateful that this person, who I had not even met before, extended an invitation to me to accompany her on an IFR lesson. So anyway, her CFI showed up about then. She hadn't asked him yet if I could go but he was amenable to it. I'm beginning to wonder if it is a common practice to invite passengers along on lessons.?? That is when it's a big enough plane, of course. Heather's CFI, Ryan, handed me a headset and said, "You'll need this." It was more than I had hoped for. I would have been happy just to observe, but I was going to get to listen too!" I was so fascinated with the idea of going along on an IFR lesson. At this point in my training, with so few hours, IFR is a total mystery. However, I didn't know what IFR, VFR even meant a few months ago! Heather and Ryan picked a good day. The coastal Humboldt County summer fog created a solid ceiling as it often does. I have never been up in the air in clouds/fog even in an airline flight so I had no idea what to expect. Side note: Heather is so small that she uses a booster seat in the 172 I'm serious! I really don't think she could see over the instrument panel otherwise. Quite a contrast with me, eh? In fact I was joking with her about noticing a difference in performance with me sitting in the back seat. She and Ryan said that they were used to taking passengers, so no problem! I tried to take in everything Ryan said to Heather and also listen to everything that was going on over the radio. There's a lot going on, even in the low traffic area over Humboldt here. When we took off and started to climb out over Humboldt Bay, I looked at the blanket of fog overhead, wondering how high it was and what it would be like. I'm not sure what altitude it was when we went in but we got out at about 3500'. We were not totally in the fog for long, maybe 1 minute? I'm not sure about that. Maybe I should have taken notes. I'll say this, being totally surrounded by nothing but white was disconcerting. I'm glad I wasn't flying. Heather calmly expressed that she was getting a bad case of the "leans". Ryan told her to keep looking at the instruments. I think she did a fantastic job. She ignored the misleading information her body was telling her and did what she was supposed to do. How great! I mean I have read about this and heard about it in ground school but here was the reality. Cool. This was Heather's first time flying through the clouds. Wow, it's completely white all around and suddenly there is the bright blue sky and a rapidly receding brilliant white blanket beneath us. What a rush for me. How beautiful. I could see the tops of some of the mountains poking up through the fluffy white blanket. The word that comes to mind is the word I used last year on my very first aerial look at our wonderous north coast- "enchanting!" While we were flying along and Heather was "chasing" (my word for it) the Fortuna VOR, I was thinking to myself how happy I am when I'm up in a plane. It's unfortunate that it took so long for me to discover this about myself but on the other hand, I'm grateful to have discovered it at all. With the blanket of clouds beneath us and with me not following the numbers maybe as closely as I should have, I didn't know where we were some of the time. Then I saw some holes in the clouds through which I could see the vegetation. I guess all the satellite vegetation mapping left more of an impression on me than I thought. To myself, I was able to identify where we were by looking at the veg. Positive id to tree species and geographic location from 5000'. I felt good although if you are a air photo interpreter, it is no biggee. That's OK. I still felt good about it! It was clear over Shelter Cove and the Lost Coast! This won't mean anything except to folks who know this area, but I thought I's throw it in anyway for anyone with a Klamath Falls sectional. Heather did so well and her CFI praised her often. On the way back we popped back out under the clouds just where we were supposed to. I'm sure Heather was as delighted as I was. She has an interesting landing technique. She kept muttering something about John Wayne flying and I think that fits. I felt like I was riding in a rodeo on final. However she did put it down on the runway very nicely. I am looking forward to accompanying her on another lesson. I learned more and understood more than I thought I would. And I had a fabulous time. Spook __________________________________________________________________________ ______ To unsubscribe from this list please send mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] ___________________________________________________________ T O P I C A The Email You Want. http://www.topica.com/t/16 Newsletters, Tips and Discussions on Your Favorite Topics
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