{"id":983,"date":"2005-11-08T23:51:00","date_gmt":"2005-11-09T04:51:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.boldulysses.com\/?p=983"},"modified":"2005-11-08T23:51:00","modified_gmt":"2005-11-09T04:51:00","slug":"le-rez-de-chaussee","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.boldulysses.com\/?p=983","title":{"rendered":"le rez-de-chauss\u00e9e"},"content":{"rendered":"

Did the “airport tour” today with my instructor. Having already been to Class D airspace on Saturday and thus a little ahead of the game, we decided to up the ante and fly into the local Class C airspace, i.e. Piedmont Triad International<\/a> in Greensboro. Flying the airplane is much easier on account of the fact that ATC (Air Traffic Control–the control tower) gives you vectors–headings to turn to–every step of the way and also that the runway is much (read: MUCH) longer and wider than anything. I felt like a fly landing on an empty dinner table.<\/p>\n

That said, communications are much more difficult. You have to know what to say exactly when, and how to say it as well, to convey only the relevant information in the shortest space possible. It’s going to take practice before I get the hang of it. I can’t imagine learning to fly from scratch out of a Class C airport–I’d go crazy trying to learn to control the airplane and<\/i> talk to ATC at the same time.<\/p>\n

We landed at Greensboro, employing probably only a tenth of the runway to land, stop, and turn off at the first taxiway. After contacting Ground Control and taxiing back around to the hold short line in position to move on the same runway we just left, we sat and waited for a jet to land. Turned a little bit so we could see the approach, I watched the jet on final (i.e. about to land), nose pointed at the runway. Suddenly, with just a few hundred feet to go, I saw its nose rise and its landing gear retract. It did a go-around and flew perhaps fifty feet directly over us, giving me a good view of its underside. It betrayed sharply swept<\/a>, artistically tapered wings and tailplanes<\/a>, a relatively thin fuselage and two huge engine nacelles<\/a>. I recognized it immediately as a Cessna Citation X<\/a>, one of my favorite airplanes since before its first flight in ’94, probably on a training flight. Absolutely unmistakable. And beautiful.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Did the “airport tour” today with my instructor. Having already been to Class D airspace on Saturday and thus a little ahead of the game, we decided to up the ante and fly into the local Class C airspace, i.e. Piedmont Triad International in Greensboro. Flying the airplane is much easier on account of the […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[1],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.boldulysses.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/983"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.boldulysses.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.boldulysses.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.boldulysses.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.boldulysses.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=983"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/www.boldulysses.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/983\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.boldulysses.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=983"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.boldulysses.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=983"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.boldulysses.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=983"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}