Rewards.

I went straight from my exam to meet RTH for lunch. A place that does awesome Sushi and cold beer.

That evening, as promised, RTH and I sat down to season 4 of Game of Thrones, as a reward for finally getting the damn written exam out of the way. RTH has been the right mix of supportive and pushy though out this process, believing in me but giving me the proverbial kick in the pants when needed.

One of the congratulatory emails I received was from our friend D. Short and to the point “Congratulations, may I take you flying tomorrow evening?”

You see D owns this…

Note the registration. D assures me it stands for “Faster Than Light, F#ckers!” and she is fast and sleek and beautiful and I was going to get a ride in her. I simply couldn’t wait!

We agreed that a nice scenic hop to Niagara Falls was called for. I’ve never flown the Falls route before, so I was more than happy with this. I assured D that I’d read up on the airspace procedures (there’s a specified route and restricted airspace to deal with as well as the US border) and off we went.

Actually it wasn’t quite as simple as hopping in a plane and getting airborne. As D has quickly come to realise, owning your own plane means that you don’t have the nice dispatch guys to schlep your plane around. You do everything yourself. Or you get your passenger to help.

Which I was more than happy to do. I used to sail, so I’m familiar with the concept of “all hands on deck”. D was patient enough to walk me through what needed to be done and in what order we needed to do it. I’m very conscious of the fact that he’s invested a lot in this plane. I don’t want to be the muppet passenger that breaks it.

The passenger briefing was a little more extensive than usual, D running through a quick guide to the controls I might be unfamiliar with. She’s got a variable pitch prop and retractable under carriage as well as a few other features I’m not used to. A lot of fancy avionics that I’ve never used before either.

Flying with D is fantastic. He’s smooth, calm and competent. He’s always treated me as a fellow pilot as well and yet he seems to understand that just being a passenger in a small aircraft is an achievement for me. The fact that I was squealing with delight when we did a steep turn over the Falls rather than screaming in horror, a major triumph.

The trip to the Falls was uneventful, Terminal providing us with flight following but there was precious little traffic around. I tried my best to navigate us into the correct oval pattern for the Falls, but although one curve of the oval is fairly obvious, its opposite partner not so much. We didn’t stress too much. We were the only plane on frequency and had allowed ourselves a good 1000ft buffer over the restricted zone. We weren’t in anyone’s way and I was keeping a watchful eye on our DME to ensure we stayed our side of the US border.

I’ll leave you with the shot that D felt summed up our journey. The iconic shot as it were…