{"id":1161,"date":"2006-06-16T11:56:00","date_gmt":"2006-06-16T16:56:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.boldulysses.com\/?p=1161"},"modified":"2006-06-16T11:56:00","modified_gmt":"2006-06-16T16:56:00","slug":"patterns","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.boldulysses.com\/?p=1161","title":{"rendered":"patterns"},"content":{"rendered":"

Larry and I went for our second flight yesterday evening. The atmosphere was much like the first time, albeit a bit warmer. But the same long shadows stretched from the trees over the fields below as we took off and turned toward the south. We flew down to Rowan County Airport<\/a> in Salisbury, about 20 miles away, so I got a little cross-country practice. Every flight since getting my license in April had been little local hops, with a couple of landings at Twin Lakes<\/a>, which doesn’t really count since it’s only 5 miles away and a bit run-down. Rowan County is a “real” airport.<\/p>\n

Larry had a lot of fun. He has 50 years of experience as a pilot (no joke–the 50th anniversary of his first solo flight in 1956 is coming up this October) and it had been 23 years, by his reckoning, since he had been at the controls of an airplane as small as the 172 I was flying, but I let him take the helm for a couple of landings while I worked the radio. It certainly wasn’t a casual thing–as the PIC (pilot in command) I kept my hands on the controls the whole time–and it was fascinating and inspiring to see someone with thousands of hours of experience performing next to me in the cockpit. <\/p>\n

He has such a feel<\/i> for the airplane. He hadn’t been at the controls of an airplane of any size in at least 5 years, and he landed it perfectly. I did two landings first, then let him fly once we were on the downwind leg<\/a> of the third time around. He asked me what the approach speed was; I told him 60 knots. Without having to give him any more numbers, he finessed the yoke, throttle, trim and flaps to get us on the approach speed and keep us there more consistently than I’ve ever<\/i> been able to, and set us down quite gently. It’s certainly something to aspire to. My own flying seems very rigid, mechanical and by-the-numbers in comparison.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Larry and I went for our second flight yesterday evening. The atmosphere was much like the first time, albeit a bit warmer. But the same long shadows stretched from the trees over the fields below as we took off and turned toward the south. We flew down to Rowan County Airport in Salisbury, about 20 […]<\/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":"https:\/\/www.boldulysses.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1161"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.boldulysses.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.boldulysses.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.boldulysses.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.boldulysses.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1161"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.boldulysses.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1161\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.boldulysses.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1161"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.boldulysses.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1161"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.boldulysses.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1161"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}