Thing 40 Fly A Plane

Yep. That's what it says. It's not a mistake. It says "Fly A Plane". Seems like Sundays are turning into "take your own life into your hands with high powered machinery" days. Well, I guess two in a row hardly makes it a sequence, but you get where I'm coming from ya? Yes indeedy; fly a plane. Pilot style... chicks dig pilots, guys want to be pilots, and now I'm a pilot, in my head anyway...

So we're clear about this, and so I don't have to listen to the Blog Police giving out later - I didn't take off, and I didn't land. I didn't even do most of the flying. That's what Colly Wog was there to do, and it's his plane, sort of... But for a little while, I had my hands on the controls, I was controlling the plane. I was flying a plane.

Jesus, it looks terrifying when it's written down.

Doesn't look so bad in the picture does it? Seems professional and reasonable enough... I'd trust that (handsome) guy to fly a plane. Wouldn't trust his fashion sense with that fruity stripy shirt mind you.

First and foremost, you've got to take the hat off to Colly Wog. Pilot extraordinaire, and all round decent bloke for getting up early in the morning to take myself and Bean Bag up for a jaunt. The alternative involves me building my own plane, and trying to take off down the hill by Browne's Pub in Parteen. And let's be fair, even my Lego airplanes looked cruddy, what chance of building my own... So here's to the Collywog. And here's a picture of the Colly Wog...

I've got to tell you, there's nothing more beautiful than Irish countryside from 1,000 feet up. You can't pick out all the tools, and jackasses, and all you can see is beautiful coastline and rolling fields... American tourists would love this shit. Kilkee looks awesome from above by the by...

The other cool thing about the plane we were in today (Cessna 172 for all your aviation nerds), is that it's a pretty stable plane. You'd want to be some kind of moron that drinks his own pee and walks about town in ladies' nails and odd shoes to screw this up... Thanks be to whatever powers exist, we made it back safely eh?

There's a proper reason why it takes so long to train to get your PPL (Private Pilot's Licence for all you non-pilot types that don't understand our thrill-seekers language - yes, I still think I'm a pilot). There's so much to this, and I know that seems like a stupid thing to say, obviously there's going to be a lot to defying gravity by putting a heavy metal box stuffed with people up into the air, but it's even more than you'd think. Safety checks outside the plane. Check fuel, oil, tyres, windows. pitot tubes, static tubes. Check all the bright shiny lights inside the plane. See AED, Comms, transponder, fuel pump, and a whole bunch of other stuff that's all spelled in acronyms and amounts to about six alphabets full of letters.

Take off involves detailed instructions, balancing thrust, lift, weight and drag. Flaps, slats, rudder, trimming are just a selection of things that get mentioned that I pretended to understand. I'd love to do it for real, the whole thing. Take off, landing, climbing descending and all that, but it would take a while...

Maybe when the project is all done...

P.S. Ireland really is a smashing place to look at from above... Check out the Cliffs of Moher... that's right, I flew over them this morning... in an airplane...