Addison Airport
Addison, Texas
30 October 2002
1:00pm
Twinkle, twinkle, little bat!
How I wonder what you're at!
Up above the world you fly,
Like a tea-tray in the sky.
Lewis Carroll, Alice in Wonderland, Ch. 7. After Taylor.
The Schweizer 300CB is a two-seat, piston-powered helicopter
designed for pilot training. Since the weather had begun to cool
off, we put the doors back on. Too bad.
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The instructor, Scott, pushing the heilcopter out of the hanger. It's not much more than 2 seats and an engine. There had been heavy fog in the morning, but it cleared off enough in time for my flight. |
The miracle is not to fly in the air, or to walk on the water, but to walk on the earth.
Chinese proverb
The instrument panel and the cyclic. |
My soul is in the sky.
William Shakespeare, 'A Midsummer Night's Dream,' Act V. Scene
I.
You haven't seen a tree until you've seen its shadow from the sky. Amelia Earhart
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Dad, I left my heart up there.
Francis Gary Powers, CIA U-2 pilot shot down over the Soviet Union, describing his first flight at age 14.
| That inverted bowl they call the sky,
Whereunder crawling coop'd we live and die. The Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam
I fly because it releases my mind from the tyranny of petty things . . . Antoine de Saint-Exupéry |
Here I am in the right seat during the pre-flight. I have no idea what the expression on my face is about. |
In our dreams we are able to fly . . . and that is a remembering of how we were meant to be.
Madeleine L'Engle, 'Walking on Water: Reflections on Faith and
Art.'
The helicopter is probably the most versatile instrument ever invented by man. It approaches closer than any other to fulfillment of mankind's ancient dreams of the flying horse and the magic carpet.
Igor Ivanovitch Sikorsky, comment on 20th anniversary of the helicopter's first flight, 13 September 1959.
Flying south back to Addison Airport at 1400 feet with me at the
controls. I did some straight and level flying and turns. We
had a near miss with some egrets which could have met with many regrets.
Scott auto-rotated the heicopter a couple of times. It's a controlled
descent when the motor loses power. Quite fun, too!
We could see the rain moving in from the west as we headed back. Back at the airport, I tried some hovering - NOT EASY. I didn't do well at all in the ten minutes that I tried it. |
I was sold on flying as soon as I had
a taste for it.
John Glenn
As soon as we left the ground I knew I myself had to fly! Amelia Earhart, after her first flight in an airplane, a ten minute sight-seeing trip over Los Angeles, 1920. |
To put your life in danger from time to time... breeds a saneness in dealing with day-to-day trivialities.
Nevil Shute, 'Slide Rule: The Autobiography of an Engineer'.
Motor cut. Forced landing. Hit cow. Cow died. Scared me.
Dean Smith, telegraph to his chief, quoted by Amelia Earhart, The Fun of It, 1932.
Piper Flight |
Stearman Flight |
Ultralight Flight |
Say Hello |
 |
I could have gone on flying through space forever.
Major Yuri Gagarin, first man in space, quoted in 'The New York
Times,' 14 April 1958.
