GOT HER HOOKED!

jtrain609

jtrain609

Antisocial Monster
Some of you may have noticed (or not, I'm sure some are cheering) I have not been around for the last few days, spouting off my liberal views on the squawk box and causing trouble here; work/girlfriend has kept me busy (which is wonderful news a little later in this post). Over the last few days I've driven way too much, worked way too much, and been away from my computer for way to long. BUT THERE IS HOPE!

I GOT MY GIRLFRIEND TO TAKE HER FIRST FLIGHT LESSON!

Last weekend we went out to the airport so that she could get her first flight lesson with my flight instructor. She has heard me say so many great things about her that she wanted her first experience to be with her. We drove her up from Ann Arbor, MI to Bay City, MI just for this purpose. I decided to go take a quick cross country up to HTL while she did her flight lesson. I grabbed up a friend and we went off in search of cold pop about 59nm away while my girlfriend jumped in a 172 with my flight instructor.

I came back about 1.8 hours later and she had already finished with her lesson. As I taxied up to the fuel pumps I could see the smile on her face from an easy 200' and spied a logbook in her hand. I knew at that point she musta been pretty serious about it.

I shutdown and got to talking with her; she loved it. She was hooked from the first lesson and on the drive home she was trying to find some way to fund this flying thing while at the same time trying to figure out how she was going to tell her parents she enjoyed doing it.

I couldn't be happier.

We actually had a deal going on. I would learn how to ski if she would take a flight lesson. So far we've both been pretty happy with me taking up skiing fairly quickly and her getting hooked on flying.

Updates are sure to come, she might even jump on here and post something one day. Right now she's filling out V speeds for a 172 and finding weights and whatnot, trying to fish her way through a POH.

Cheers


John Herreshoff
 
Good for you John! My girlfriend is a 100 hr private pilot working on her instrument rating. Its great, I can talk about flying to her and she doesn't get bored, and she can do the same. I love it!

Btw, What kind of skiing does your girlfriend want you to do? I do both water and snow skiing, love them both.

I wish the best of luck to your girlfriend.
 
Great to hear John! I'm real happy for you. And full of envy too. My girlfriend doesn't care about aviation, and finally after five years she has finally agreed to go up w/me this Mon. for her birthday. YAY!

I just got finished showing her 57" of camcorder footage of my trip from Portland to Sunriver from last weekend, and she thought flying over and next to the big mountains and ranges was ok(just OK?!) and said that seeing nothing but clouds was boring after a couple of minutes! "Well you can't see the ground" she said. She unfortunately doesn't find the thrill that we get at the view of mountains and rivers and the beauty of the rolling clouds. Too bad, frustrating for me that I can't share the excitement with her.

We'll see what she thinks after her flight with me, wx permitting. God, I hope it's not gonna be the day that are the crappy landings day.
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You know, only when people are watching are they not greasers.

Film @ 11:00...
 
Hey, congrats all in getting your better halves interested in aviation!

My fiancee is somewhat afraid of flying in light aircraft and doesn't want me flying them as they are "so dangerous..."

Everytime I read about a MAPD crash (last year) or Sunday's ATP crash, full of 20 somethings... it makes me cringe. God I feel bad for those guys, just pursuing their dream.
 
Wonderful to hear that significant others are getting the bug too!!!!!!! I have one that will fly only with me, because of me, otherwise she feels best on solid ground.
 
That's great! You had better luck then one of my students. He invited his girlfriend to come flying to try to get her hooked. She enjoyed the night flights but then went on a day cross country with us and puked her guts out in the back seat, about five times. I thought she would stop after the fourth time simply because I didn't think she had anything left in her, but she continued!
 
Awesome! Pretty cool deal you had there. Heck, I thought I was lucky that my girlfriend put her hands on the controls and made a little 30 degree heading change. That was about all I could get out of her. Maybe someday she'll go up for a few lessons, so she doesn't get mad at me when I decide to go VFR instead of IFR...
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(long story)
 
[ QUOTE ]
so she doesn't get mad at me when I decide to go VFR instead of IFR... (long story)

[/ QUOTE ]

Umm what's the story? ....
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LOL, ok. Well flying up to Wisconsin, I filed IFR from MDW. So the whole time they were giving me radar vectors up toward the MKE area, and also were giving me traffic reports (lots of planes up that day). So here I am flying along, and they keep calling traffic... well my g/f is really good at seeing other planes, and kept pointing them out for me. We didn't see a few though.

Well on the ground later since it was CAVU I told her I was just going to forgo filing IFR this time (since it took 1.8 to go from MDW to just north of MKE... 1.2 the other direction VFR), and instead fly VFR down the lakefront. Well she got all upset about that, because we wouldn't be talking to ATC (tried to explain flight following, but she wasn't following...). She was concerned since a few times we couldn't see traffic, and she was worried about a mid-air collision. So she got pissed at me.
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Well over MKE at 5500 feet the vac pump failed (glad it wasn't IFR, cuz the turn coordinator wasn't working either for some reason after the vac failed
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). I kinda laughed, since it was CAVU and not really an issue. She saw the ADI settling, and asked me about it, and I just said that I turned it off. I was a little worried she'd freak out up there at 5500 feet.
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Well on the ground I fessed up that it broke, and ended up getting attacked on the ramp below MDW tower.
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I'm hoping she will read a book or take a couple lessons from someone other than me, so next time we go flying (going up again soon) I won't get yelled at or beat up.
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Here's a good one:

Take your girlfriend/wife up in a Cessna and once you are in a good steady cruise tell her she can hang her purse/jacket/microphone/whatever on the red (mixture) knob, go ahead and pull it out. When she does, scream like a demon, pull back until you hear the stall horn, then start a steep spiral. recover as low as the regs allow. She'll never forget it. My wife never has.
 
I feel your pain dude. On the first flight I took my now girlfriend on we had the "gear in transit" light come on during my decent. I thought to myself "Ahh....I'm at 5,300' AGL....and I didn't put the gear down............ahhhh....." I looked down and the lever was up, and the gear never actually poped out. The light went away after a few minutes. During that few minutes I called up my FBO (about 20 miles away) to ask them if they had any ideas before I start troubleshooting. The guy that runs the FBO said it was probably just something with the auto gear extension system. I took that and decided that I'd troubleshoot further if the gear didn't want to come down when I actually went to land. I eventually found out during my aircraft system's course that the light comes on when the pump turns on to put pressure in the system. Because it happened in flight, my prof tells me it's because there is a leak in the system and that it was just trying to repressurize itself. He further told me that the default position for the gear is down and locked. Like if we loose ALL the pressure, the gear will just swing out and lock itself into place and there is no problem. Well...I didn't know that.

Here's my big SNAFU for this flight. I tend to talk out loud to myself when I'm doing much of anything, and when I got into the downwind threw the gear down and three green came on. I kinda mumbled to myself "Huh...hope we got gear." I was of course satisfied because we had three green and the system worked as it was supposed to. Well I got on the ground and the first thing I get is my girlfriend turning to me saying to me "WHAT DO YOU MEAN YOU HOPE WE HAVE LANDING GEAR!?!?!?" I tried to explain to her that I can't get a three green indication without the gear being down and I was just talking to myself. She didn't buy it. She now prefers fixed gear aircraft.

Cheers

John Herreshoff
 
HA HA HA!!!!!!!!! That's great man, going into my AIM profile now. The three pilots on my list will love it.

Cheers


John Herreshoff
 
Hey all,

As John's girlfriend I decided to browse around on here and see what he was saying about me. Yup, I loved flying it was great! But he did skew the landing gear story a bit. didn't yell at him on the ground did it in the air, cause he said "hope we have landing gear" before the 3 green came on, and at the time before he called the FBO he had no clue what was going on. As a passanger that doesn't know anything, its not very reassuring when the pilot has no idea either. Incidentally, that's the night we started dating.

*sigh*
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Well crap....I have 540 posts and my girlfriend has one....I feel like I'm not paying attention to her now......
 
Hey Skibum, good story, and welcome to our world.

Heres one you might try on John. If your driving in the car and he's right seat, do this. Aim for a wall and say "hope we got breaks!" Then pump the floorboard like your hitting the breaks!! Oh nooooo....

Sorry John, thought she would get a kick out of that.
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