I’m working on developing an arrangement with a fellow EAA club member to rent his Cessna 150 on occasion. I just have a voracious thirst for general aviation. Airline flying just doesn’t do it for me in the same way. Too scripted and structured.

Today, I met up with him at the airport, and took a shot flying the 150. Its been well over a year since I last flew a 150. I believe that within the last 18 months, I’ve logged 4 or 5 hours in small piston airplanes. Needless to say, its quite a change from flying the EMB-145 around.

By and large, I did well. I began in the right seat, as that is what I am most comfortable with. The owner of the airplane is most comfortable in the left seat, so I figured this was the best arrangement for the first flight. Besides the very sensitive controls compared to what I have gotten used to, it didn’t feel very strange at all. My first landing left a bit to be desired, but the next one was well in the green.

We landed at ZPH to refuel and switched seats. From the left seat, it was surprisingly familiar. In fact, I performed just as well in the left seat as I did in the right seat. Two decent landings later and we were back at Lakeland airport.

It was a short flight, but great to do to work towards getting my small airplane feel back. We are talking about pricing and other details right now. But hopefully, within a short period here, I will have an airplane that I can fly when I have the itch to head out.

Also, I am so used to saying “Waterski” on the radio (our call sign for Trans States), I said it twice while talking to tower. Oh well.

Should I go back to accounting (which is likely going to be the case really soon), I will be looking to buy my own airplane. It brings a huge smile to my face to think about it!!!

This entry was posted on Wednesday, October 22nd, 2008 at 1:50 pm and is filed under General Aviation. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.