Blimey. It's been five months since I last flew. Things happened. I got married. I went on honeymoon. I spent months in penury after my wife frogmarched me into every jewellery shop in the Caribbean.
So, today was the day to get back in the air. I popped along to the flying school, met my instructor (a different one to my last few lessons, but never mind) and... ummm... a different aircraft. Hmm. It seems there'd been some confusion over my booking, and so I'd ended up with a Piper, a hefty four seater rather than the little two seater Cessna I was used to. "Do you want to go in the Piper instead?", well it had been five months and I wasn't going back home without at least flying something.
So, briefing over, we wandered out to the aircraft. It was different: the Cessna's high-wing, so you have to make sure you don't take a lump out of your head on the way in; the Piper's low-wing, and you have to clamber over the wing to get into the cabin. A quick look around the controls and instruments showed that it was the same sort of thing I was used to, but with everything in different places. Baffling.
Being towards the end of a lovely, warm day, we experienced a bit of turbulence around 1,000 feet. The heavier Piper wasn't too affected by it, but as I found out on lesson two my usual Cessna would have been less fun.
We spent some time recapping, to make sure I'd not forgotten it all in the five months since I last flew. Fortunately, all the time spent sitting on the bus reading the book and actually going through the motions using the imaginary control column coming out of the back of the seat in front of me helped. I don't think I got any funny looks while I was doing this on my morning commute; at least I managed to restrain myself from making plane noises while I did it.
Having satisfied himself that I'd managed to remember at least something, my instructor moved onto climbing. It may seem odd that climbing doesn't happen until my fifth lesson, but that's how it is. Quite how I've managed to get this far with the wheels off the ground, I'm not sure. Equally odd is that descending doesn't happen until the next lesson, so the fact that I'm not still up there is a bit of a mystery.
After doing a bit of climbing, we got discussing the aircraft. Back in the flying school office, there were people asking my opinions - how did I find it compared to the Cessna? Everyone seemed to expect me to say that I loved it, and I wanted to fly a Piper from hereon in. Well... I'm not so sure. It's heavier, and it feels that way when you fly it; being light, the Cessna seems to do things so much quicker, and with less persuasion. That said, the Piper did feel more stable. I guess I'm going to have to figure out which one I preferred before my next lesson.
