Bring her home!
Visibility: about 8k, scattered clouds at 2.500 feet
Temperature: 18°C
Wind: 210°, 7 knots
QNH: 1020hPa
Location: EDCE (Eggersdorf)
Equipment: D-MAKT (FlightDesign CT)
I am eying the sky with apprehension. Gray clouds and light rain, the sun is nowhere to be seen. There is an improvement in the forecast, we will see.
My flying buddy is picking up his new aircraft today, “Kilo Tango”. He has asked me to come along. I will use the occasion to get a check ride on the FlightDesign CT LS. I am excited.
The sky is still gray when we arrive at the airport but the rain has stopped. I start with ground school, he has got some more paper work to attend to. “Kilo Tango” is a very clean flying machine. The speed management is very important and needs attention. She is not as forgiving as my training ships.
Many buttons
“Kilo Tango” has an EFIS (Electronic Flight Instrument System), a so called “glass cockpit”. The flight instruments are electronically displayed on two screens. The advantages in safety and comfort are hugh. The integrated system can relate important information to raise situation awareness. But it requires a lot of training.
Ground school completed
The sun has come out and its time to fly the beauty. “Kilo Tango” climbs at a 750 feet per minute and I take her through a hole in the clouds. The sun is warming my face up here and we begin with some air work. The aircraft is fast, responsive and easy to direct. She wants to go.
After a quick set of turns and the regular routine of stall drills in various configurations, we are back in the pattern. I’m fighting to slow Kilo Tango down, just as I was told. On the last turn into final, she starts talking to me. “Five hundred” she whispers into my ears. Gotta love it!
We fly for almost two hours and conclude the training with a special kind of emergency drill. The instructor shuts the engine down completely. I have done this before, but it is a very special sensation every time. “Kilo Tango” seems to think so too. Her warning voice sounds a bit shrill, or am I imagining things?
Sun set
After the check-out, it is time to get going. The weather is still good and we are not going far tonight, but we don’t want to push our luck. And we have a quick stop-over in Strausberg planned. My buddy is flying and I am in the right seat. A very odd perspective for the approach into the home base.
The sun is low and the sky starts turning a warm orange. The clouds are beautiful today. I get ready to go home. Before I leave, he takes the second set of keys for “Kilo Tango” and hands them to me. “Keep ‘em, it’ll make it easier in the future”, he says. They are small and unspectacular. But to me they are more impressive than Porsche keys.
To be continued…
(originally posted on September 30, 2012 by tilbo at aloft.blog.com/bring-her-home/)