SOOOOOO much fun!!! Through an email contact, I met one of the 99s out here in PEI, and she set me up with the local flight club, which meets Sat mornings in Ch'town for breakfast. Click the first photo below for more pics, and descriptions of how it all went down.... I knew I had made a new friend for real when I was eating lunch with Trevor and the boys back at the house after our adventure, and I heard and saw Tom buzz us not too far overhead on his way back to Ch'town! :-)
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Although I have flown commercially several times since beginning flight lessons in a Cessna almost a year ago, I am nevertheless amazed with new observations and understandings every time I get onto commercial airliner. This day, enroute to Ch’town , we took off from rwy 24L. Looking at the giant numbers painted on the runway, I marvelled at how I now know that means that the runway is heading more or less west, “24” indicating 240 degrees. And that I noticed the hold short lines on the taxiways we just taxied along. And that I noticed that another airplane coming in for a landing as we awaited take off clearance seemed kind of high on short final. As we climbed out and turned to head east along the shoreline, I noticed -- albeit from a considerably higher altitude -- some of the landmarks we use when leaving CYTZ in a 150. Fun! When we first got onto the plane, the Westjet captain came out and told us a bit about the flight ahead. Among other things, he shared that it would be a little bumpy until we got above the clouds. Thinking of the scattered ceiling of cumulous clouds I had seen in the sky earlier that day, I thought, “hey, I knew that!” And later, as we sailed along a vertical corridor of clear blue sky somewhere overhead the Ontario-Quebec border, I derived much pleasure out of observing from my window the thick, fluffy cumulous accumulation below, and the thin but overcast cirrus ceiling above.
What fun it is to fly once you have abetter appreciation of some of the secrets of aviation! :-) _ What’s the opposite of a bird’s eye view? Whatever it is, I think I had it yesterday at the Island! It was the first time, really, that I had been to the Toronto Islands since learning to fly, and all of a sudden, the hitherto “random” planes flying “occasionally” overhead took on purpose and meaning, lol!
As my family and I walked from Centreville to the Boardwalk (we were heading to the Wards Island Café), I could see and hear the Cessnas doing circuits above reducing their power before turning base to avoid the “noise sensitive area as outlined in the CFS”, as I walked into that same area on the ground below! Interestingly, I’ve also noticed – over my last several flights since the weather warmed up – the people on the island below, the little dots of colour along the beaches and trails (well, not so colourful along one particular beach, hehe). The Island has transformed from lush, beautiful landmark in the circuit, to tourist-infested ground beneath my wings. The ferries, too, have increased in number from my vatange point in the sky in recent months. And from below, on one of those ferry boats yesterday, I noticed the Porter and AC planes become much more prominent, as several came in for landing on 26 while we were crossing from the docks to the Islands around noon. Interesting, this change in perspective…. |
Welcome to Vera's Flight Brain...Here I will attempt -- hopefully not in vain -- to share my connections to previous knowledge. Or I might share a few random thoughts loosely connected to flying, too, as well as any useful resources I may stumble across in my studies.
AuthorVera C. Teschow is a certified teacher and mother of twin boys Alex and Simon. In addition to documenting her flying lessons, she also blogs about babies, teaching and life in general. Categories
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September 2013
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