One of the linux.conf.au organizers (conference I'm attending and where I'm speaking) happened to know the local flight club, and set ourselves up for a flight with a CFI there.
Unfortunately, someone had just wrecked their Cessna 172, so we took an ancient Cherokee 140E, which was all in all scary for me :)
- I had never formally taken off in or landed a low wing airplane (different ground effect)
- I didn't really know the fuel management procedures in detail (when to run with the fuel pump on and when not to, in addition to switching tanks every so often)
- The stall indicator is a small light on the dashboard. That's useless and dangerous in my opinion (it should be a loud horn)
- The elevator trim was a car window pull down lever, on the roof
- There were no foot brakes, it was a hand lever (hard to get used to)
- The flaps were different too: it was a hand brake lever (that was weird too)
- The plane felt underpowered for 3 people and I didn't feel like we were clearing the trees by a whole lot
- and the runway wasn't that long, and was grass (meaning more drag and more room required to takeoff, requiring a weird mix of short field and soft field takeoff and landing)
All this to say that I was very happy the CFI was there to help :)
and the rest of the pictures of
that flight in Dunedin
