Tuesday, December 21, 2004

*sob sob*

Can someone stop me from watching tv at 9pm every night? Just watched that TVB serial on a group of people trying to become commercial pilots. Today's episode was on their first flights and eventually getting their CPLs.

Haiz, all the memories started coming back. I remember how my first ever flight felt like. Still remember the imposing figure of Major Eng, the CO of Airgrading Centre, sitting next to me, showing me how to do the checks, showing me the ropes. Then we taxyed out to the runway and after getting clearance, we lined up and took off. Simply unforgettable. He showed me the effects of the controls, showed me how to climb and descend, execute middle-level turns and etc. Of course, in the first sortie there's the aerobatics. It was supposed to assess us on whether we will get air-sick. He threw all sorts of aeroabatics at me, barrel rolls, aileron rolls, inverted-flight, wing stall, loops. There was a time I didn't even know which part of the training area was I in. I remember he asked me, "Where are we?" I could only answer, "I'm not sure, Sir." Thankfully it was only my first sortie and was really disorientated, he only said that it's okie for the first sortie, but next time he expected me to know exactly where we are in the training area at all times. We returned to base, and my first landing was actually a bit scary. There was a chain-linked fence surrounding the airfield and remembering that we had fixed landing gears, we seemed to be approaching the threshold very low and I was actually quite worried that our landing gears might just clip the fence. After a couple of times, I realised that we would actually clear the fence quite comfortably and that fear was gone. Overall it was a great sortie, because it opened a new chapter in my life.

Now, 50+ hours of flying later, I probably won't have the chance to pilot an aircraft again. Sigh, oh well, who knows what's installed for me in the future. Maybe I'll really go and sign up to be a commercial pilot. But would I lose another 2 years of effort? Who knows? Degree first now.

I miss flying~~

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