A Young Eagle is born!
Happy Birthday and Congratulations to Allison! This afternoon she and her mother Ellen joined me for a local flight around San Antonio. This was a special flight since Allison was earning her official status as a Young Eagle!
We departed San Antonio International Airport at around 2pm this afternoon and enjoyed some sightseeing of downtown San Antonio from a lofty perch of 3,000 feet. We could see that Fiesta activities were getting underway and Allison was able to spot several unique landmarks from the air.
Our airplane - Skyhawk 23758 - provided constant awareness of other airplanes by displaying their location and track on the Garmin G1000 Multi-Function Display.
We then headed to West to see how things were going over at Sea World of Texas. At over 120 mph, the eight mile distance took just a few minutes. We peered down at the popular park and saw whales swimming in the pools and daring souls riding on the parks primary roller coaster, the Steel Eel.
The West Practice area (a segment of airspace designated for flight maneuvers) became our playground and Allison briefly took control of the airplane and did some very impressive left and right turns! She made it look so easy!
Soon we were heading back East to make our landing. We were assigned the tower arrival and cut across the center of the airport to enter the downwind for Runway 12 left.
Before long, we were back on the ground and taxiing back to Wright Flyers.
A big thanks to Ellen and Allison! It was a pleasure flying with you and I’m honored I was able to introduce you to the fun and adventure of flying in a small airplane!
Allison Hall said,
April 24, 2006 @ 4:55 pm
Thanks for a great ride, Justin!!!
Justin said,
April 24, 2006 @ 7:19 pm
My pleasure Allison! Thanks for flying with me!
Don Jones said,
May 7, 2006 @ 7:43 pm
Justin - Where did you get the plane? That Garmin 1000 looks great. Did it take much to orientate yourself to it?
Justin said,
May 7, 2006 @ 8:16 pm
Don - the airplane is from Wright Flyers! They added it to their training and rental fleet a few months ago. It did not take much to get oriented with the system because a requirement to complete the aircraft checkout is completion of the KING “Cleared for the Garmin G1000″ CD-ROM course. It is quite thorough. I’ve flown the plane in IMC and the extra large attitude indicator and MFD is a real help!!