Hi! Jon here! Today I'm going to take you on your very first flight lesson. We're
going to go over the very basics of flying an airplane. Starting off with our
pre-flight, moving on to our engine startup checklist, and then after that
taxiing around and taking off. We'll go through the four fundamentals of flying
an airplane: climbs, turns, descents, and straight level flight. And then circle
back around for some scenic flying over the beach. We'll go ahead and make a
landing with the help of your instructor and answer any questions you have after
the flight. If there's anything else you'd like to try on your flight, go
ahead and let your flight instructor know and they'd be more than happy to
accommodate any where you want to fly to or any different types of maneuvers
you'd like to try. Let's go ahead and taxi out here. I'll go ahead and release
our parking brake down here and then you'll notice that I steer with my feet.
To go left I'll push on the left pedal in to go right I push on the right pedal.
We'll make a right turn here with our right pedal. At the top of the pedals there
you can see those silver parts, those are actually our brakes and we also have a
brake handle right here. So from the right side I'll use my brake handle over
here and from the left side you could use those brakes. St the top those silver
portions if we needed to stop the aircraft these flight controls here do
absolutely nothing for us on the ground. They won't turn or control the
aircraft in any way. We'll just leave them alone as we taxi here or your
flight instructor may place them in a certain position to accommodate the
direction the wind is coming from on a given day. We'll just go ahead and use
our feet as we taxi around here use our hand for our brakes
and of course looking outside the aircraft looking all around us making
sure we don't run into any other airplanes while we're driving around out
here. Your flight instructor will walk you through how to complete your engine run up
checklist at this point. Before we take off we'll ensure our doors, windows,
all those things are closed and latched. That the engine is producing good power.
We'll even rev up our engine a little bit to a certain rpm to make sure all our
gauges are looking good and then once we're satisfied we'll go ahead and get
sub for takeoff. To communicate with the other aircraft we use that little red
push tock switch on the left side of the control yoke and we simply just press
that down and then speak into your microphone and other people can hear us.
As we're flying along today we won't press that button and we can talk back
and forth all day long without anyone else hearing our conversation and of
course when we're ready to announce our position we'll simply press down on that
button and let everyone else know where we're at and what we're doing. As we pull
up to the whole shoreline here that's the two solid e lines followed by the
two dashed lines we'll look around check further traffic make our departure call
announced everyone that we're going to be departing the runway and go ahead and
take flight. Your instructor will work the rudder pedals for you during takeoff
and landing as well as the throttle, but if
conditions permit in the winds are calm he may ask you to help him on the
takeoff simply by holding the controls neutral or in a preset position that
he'll talk to you about and then slowly easing them back as we accelerate. We'll
be climbing out at about 85 miles per hour today and we look at our airspeed
indicator to read how fast we're going through the air. We look good here. Time
to make our radio call:
Looks all good our pre takeoff checklist is
complete our doors windows are closed and latched our flaps are set and our
trim is set our lights are all on we are ready to go take off. W'ell swing the
airplane around here onto the runway. Get lined up all the way down it. As soon as
we're lined up we'll slowly ease in the throttle and as the power comes up we'll
check all our gauges everything's looking good
and we're simply just looking for about 65 miles per hour on airspeed indicator
once we have 65 there it is will pull back and we are up in the air. We're
looking for 85 on climb out here and it is that quick and simple we're already
flying. As we fly along here the name of the game is just keep the panel level.
Keep that dashboard of that instrument panel level with horizon the same amount
of sky on each side of the airplane with the relative to the wingtips and the
airplane will go straight. As long as we keep this level with the horizon the
airplane will fly straight. If we want to make a nice gentle banked turn we could
simply ease the controls over to the right a little bit set them back to
neutral once we're happy with the degree of bank we have and now the airplanes in
a right-hand turn if we wanted to go fly straight we would turn our controls back
to the left get our instrument panel level with
horizon and controls back to neutral as soon as it is. So our controls here, our
ailerons, set the bank angle of the aircraft. While the actual bank in turn
controls our turn.
So now we know what makes the airplane turn right and left now we can
talk about what makes it go up and down. So what ultimately makes your airplane
go up and down isn't necessarily tilting up or down or raising the nose up or
down it's actually power think about it like a bicycle if you want to go uphill
on a bicycle you're going to have to pedal harder or use more power . If you
simply just keep pedaling the same speed or the same intensity you're eventually
going to slow down and the airplane works exactly the same way. If we start
to go uphill and we don't add power we'll just slow down. If we lower our
nose and start going downhill on a bicycle or in the airplane we'll start
speeding up. So if we want to go up or down we'll actually apply power or
subtract powers. Now as we're flying along we just want to stay level, all
we're going to do is just maintain the same sight picture with the instrument
panel in the horizon, so the same amount of ground showing between the horizon in
the instrument panel will give you a level flight attitude and hold the
airplane level. If you pull back or push forward you'll really just change the
airplane speed and not really its altitude.
We use small changes in power to make small changes in
altitude say to go up or down just a hundred feet. So once we're ready to
return to the airport and start a nice general descent on towards the runway,
we'd simply reduce power a little bit and let the airplane lower its nose
automatically. The airspeed will stay exactly the same and the airplane will
start a nice gentle decent about five hundred feet a minute.
So that means when you're at 2,000 feet it's about four minutes or so until the
airplane will reach the runway. As you get close back to the traffic pattern
your instructor will let you know when you're about two to three miles out and
he'll go ahead and take the controls of that time and line you back up for a
landing. At that time you can just enjoy the beautiful view out your window in
the last few minutes of your very first flight. Thanks so much for coming out for
your very first flight lesson with us. We hope you found it interesting and
educational. If you have any questions all before come out to the airport for
your first flight leave them in the comments below of this video and we'll
get back to you as soon as possible. Remember we do this every day and you
should too hope to see you soon!
Thank you everyone!