This weekend I flew down to Bangalore to fly a Microlight plane and celebrate Vinit’s birthday (but that’s another post). It was an awesome trip and I had a lot of fun.
On Friday I left the office at about 1 am and my flight was at 6:45am and I had to get there by latest 5:45 which meant that I had to leave home at 5am as the airport is about 45 mins from my place (depending on traffic). Obviously I hadn’t packed the night before so I had to get up at 4 to pack which meant I had about 2 1/2 hours of sleep. I flew Kingfisher so the flight was comfortable and the food was decent. I got there at 9:30 am and Surabhi and Vinit picked me up from the airport and we went straight to the airport for the flying lessons.
Vinit, Surabhi, Vinitha (The pilot) and me with our plane
Surabhi and Vinit had both already done one session of 1/2 hour each before I got there. When I first went up the weather had cleared so the instructor let us stay up there for an hour instead of 1/2 hour as initially planned. The visibility was very good and although the air was a bit turbulent it was good weather to fly.
The plane we were flying can stay up for ~3-4 hours and go to a max height of 10,000 feet. We only went up to 1,500 feet though and were traveling at 80 – 90 km/hr for the most part. The plane is very light as you can see in the photo below where the pilot (Vinitha) is pushing it out of the hanger to prepare for launch.
Vinitha pushing the plane out of the hanger to prepare for flying
I got to control the plane for a while and learnt how to turn the plane, go up/down etc. The control stick was super sensitive and most of the time we were moving the stick a couple of mm’s to control the direction. I even did 2 takeoff’s and one landing. The controls were very basic and minimalistic (see photo below)
Control Panel of the Microlight
After the hour of flying we went back to vinit’s place and I crashed for a few hours. Then we drove back to the airport for another round of flying. My flight was the last flight of the day as no flying is allowed after the sun sets. I got to see the sun set from an altitude of ~1000 ft. It was an amazing view. The best part was that this time we took out the doors of the plane (which were made of pexi-glass anyways) and so we were at ~1,000 – 1,500 feet with no door between me and a free fall back to earth. Then we did a couple of sharp turns and believe me when you are up there at a 60 degree angle looking at the earth below through an open door it gives you a thrill like few other things can. The view of Bangalore from up there was superb as you can see from the pic below.
Bangalore from the air
We finished our flying sessions with a last round of flying the next day. I was a bit worried that we would have to postpone the flight as it was raining earlier but by the time we got to the airport it had stopped. This time we flew through and above clouds which was also fun. Though I prefer to fly with a high visibility as its a lot more fun.
View of a Quarry from the air
I have about a gig of photos from the trip and I am in the process of sorting through them so expect to see some more pics in the photogallery sometime over the weekend.
This is all for now. Will post more later.
– Suramya