Our First General Aviation Flight Experience

Well Logan and I had our first GA flight experience out of Westchester and it was fantastic.

Meetup - Trinidad Discovery Flight

We met John at Panorama Flight Services at Westchester County Airport at 11:30 this morning. We went out to prepare his Socata TB-20 Trinidad GT for flight, but there wasn't much to do as it had already been up that morning. A quick safety orientation was all that was needed before we were on our way. It was pretty cool departing Westchester because there are 737s, Dash-8s, and a bunch of ERJs that fly out of there... JetBlue, USAir, etc.

While taxiing to the runway we came face to face with another GA aircraft on our taxiway. This awkward situation was alleviated when we moved over to the skirt to let the other plane pass. This was the first of a few unexpected things to happen on this flight. One of my first "lessons" was that one should always be prepared to make changes to the plan! John completed his checklist and professionally took the Trinidad through its departure, calling out each step as we traveled down the runway. The Trinidad rotates at 60 knots and gets airborne at about 70, and then climbs at 85.

I quickly discovered that being in a small plane is a lot like being on a pleasure boat. Lots and lots of movement, slipping, bumping, etc. I had no problem with it after the first 5 minutes, but I was constantly afraid of how Logan might be feeling. Turns out we were all okay throughout the trip, but Logan was "iffy" for a few moments later on. This was technically my 3rd experience in a small aircraft... having ridden in a open-cockpit bi-plane at Old Rheinbeck and an aerobatic glider flight in Arizona.

We turned west and headed straight out over the Tappan Zee bridge at 2000 feet. It was about this time that we discovered that the GPS was not getting fix. John even completely rebooted the system and it still didn't seem to solve the problem. He was about to resort to finding the tiny Greenwood Lake, NJ airport manually when the system started to respond.

Even after obtaining updated GPS information, we still couldn't visually spot the small airport until we were just about over it. John reported our position again and again to general traffic and there wasn't a single active response, so approach and landing was free of any interference.

As we pulled up to the main building, I was surprised to find an old Constellation attached to the building. Apparently they are attempting to use it as a sort of lounge or cafe. I could just barely see the shadow of an old TWA logo on the the fuselage. Too bad there weren't any tail numbers visible, otherwise one could learn the history of that aircraft.

I just searched airliners.net and found out that the tail numbers were N9412H. A little more searching turned up a wonderful history of this aircraft Indeed, at one point in its history it was TWA's "Star of the Azores".

At Greenwood Lake, we picked up John's cousin Ken so I moved to the back seat with Logan. We made a nice departure climbing up into a right hand turn North to Orange County. On the way, John gave us a demonstration of the Trinidad's turning ability. Very cool stuff.

It was a very hazy day and as we approached Orange County we started to pick up a lot of traffic, at least 5 other aircraft around the airport. I learned then how difficult it is to see other aircraft in the sky. Here I was listening to the other planes report their position and I still couldn't see them! John decided to skip Orange County, head out to the Hudson River, and then back to Greenwood Lake. As we passed near Orange County, I was able to spot only two of the aircraft in the pattern.

We landed again at Greenwood Lake to drop off Ken and have a little lunch. Re-taking the front seat, we took off and headed back towards Westchester. As John was alerting ATC as to our airspace transition we were traveling straight back approaching the Tappan Zee bridge at 2,500 feet. Suddenly a black dot appeared ahead of us. It was alarming for second until we noticed it was a mylar balloon! It passed to our left at perhaps 200 feet. We just sort of looked at each other for a second.

Approach and landing at Westchester was very cool as they have a full control tower and traffic control. We asked for landing clearance and were told to cut in tight in front of a Bonanza that was a few miles straight out from our runway of choice. At the same time, a JetBlue Embraer was holding at the end of an intersecting runway. Just as we were passing over JetBlue and turning hard to swing around for final, the tower gave JetBlue clearance to take-off. I was a bit alarmed by this as we were about to land in front of that aircraft. About 5 seconds later the tower realized the problem and told JetBlue to cancel their directions and hold for the Trinidad. I wonder if the JetBlue had started to spool up their engines.

We landed and taxied back to Panorama. It was a very cool experience and taught me a lot about what it's really like to fly private aircraft. I was actually surprised to discover that MS Flight Simulator is extremely accurate with regard to the aircraft controls. I didn't realize that you really could simply dial in Nearest Airport, and I also didn't realize that planes that small have autopilot. I thought those were always just "simulator shortcuts".

Thanks very much John! I've got to figure out a way to make that commitment.