When I was a kid I can remember spending hours with my Grandmother chasing trains and watching planes. I remember spending days at airshows and the fascination I had with flight in general. We used to go to the airport for no reason other than to watch planes coming and going. I loved it. I still love it.
Well time has passed and I’ve gotten older. My grandmother died when I was in sixth grade and so did the long days of plane watching a train chasing because we couldn’t get onto the air base anymore. My love for aviation took a back seat to high school and education but I always looked forward to airshows and driving by the airport. Then the events of September 11th, 2001 changed the entire face of aviation. The bottom line to all of this is that I love planes but I never thought that I might become a pilot.
This past Christmas, my wife (we were only engaged then) went to a local flight school and purchased my gift. They called it a discovery flight and I falsely assumed it was going to be like the float plane trip I had taken in Alaska. Fortunately, I couldn’t have been more wrong. As it turns out it was more a discovery of flying the plane than it was a discovery of knoxville. I had assumed we would board the plane and I would sit around while the instructor flew and then at some point he would allow me to take the controls. What actually took place was quite different. When I arrived the instructor gathered some forms handed me a headset and we walked out to the plane. He guided me through my first preflight which actually required my participation.
I started the plane and we radioed for clearance. I assumed that the next bits would be performed by the instructor but I was surprised when he indicated that I should taxi us down to runway 5L via taxiway A for takeoff. I was a bit worried because steering with your feet is an uncommon behavior to most people. Nonetheless I gave it my best, which certainly wasn’t good but could have been worse.
It was an absolutely clear day and as usual for McGhee Tyson there was a KC-135 shooting touch-and-goes. Well, as I had recently learned this was not the best traffic to have in front of you. This became even more obvious when the controller cautioned us to “hold short of 5 left” and wait 3 minutes due to wake turbulence. That did however enable a little bit longer period for the before takeoff checklist.
Finally, we recieved clearance for takeoff and I thought that my participation would come to a halt until further notice. That’s when the instructor told me he had the rudder and that I had the throttle and stick. “Go full in and when we get to 55 knots pull the front wheel up. ” I was scared to death because I’m no pilot but I assumed things would be ok and I did what he said. It was one of the best experiences I’ve ever had. In the blink of an eye we were off the ground and headed into the sky (note: this is actually a little more poetic than it really was as we were only in a cessna 172 but it was close).
After we cleared the runway, we headed out toward UT and downtown Knoxville. I realized about halfway there, which was only about 3 minutes in, that I had a white knuckle grip on the flight controls and I tried to relax a little. That’s when I learned that the perfectly clear afternoons are windy. The plane lurched a bit and suddenly we were in a mild right bank. My knuckles were white again but I didn’t say anything.
“We’ve got 40 minutes, where do you want to go?” I don’t really remember what I said because I was busy flying. We ended up doing a couple of turns around campus and then we flew down along interstate 40 to west Knoxville and Turkey Creek. Once we got out over what appeared to be a sea of houses, the instructor radioed back to ATC who put us on a heading back to the airport. I started to really listen at this point because I had just realized how much radio chatter there was. I don’t know how people can tell the difference. Nonetheless I managed to make out the calls for us which all seemed to direct us away from the airport.
Eventually they turned us around and we, rather I began to fly us back to the airport to land. We had already been cleared for 5L it was a matter of getting there. We moved closer and closer and the airport got larger and larger in the windshield and I got more and more worried. As we reached about 1500 feet on the alitimeter the instructor alleviated some of my concerns when he told me that he would help me out at the hard part. Of course by this point I had already begun picturing the burning hole that used to be a cessna 172. It was as we were just about to reach the runway that the instructor did about 4 things in rapid succession and then we were on the ground slowly rolling off the runway and beginning our taxi back to the tiedown.
As we dismounted and I shut the door I was absolutely wired. I realized that flying was a ton of fun. We went back up stairs to the flight school and started dealing with the paperwork, which included filling out an actual logbook for me. At this point they asked if I had any questions and I don’t know what happened but I asked about training and the next thing I knew I was scheduling an appointment for a medical exam and paying for ground school.