Another Day At Flying

It had been almost a month since we last went for flying, so I was getting kind of desperate. Along came Sunday and I got ready early morning, collected the flying gear and opened to main door to load the gear in my car….. and uuuuhhhhhhhhh!!!

It was dense fog outside. Visibility = 10 meters approx. 😦 It was so much demoralizing that the whole day was gloomy for me (apart from the apparent effect of fog). Next morning, I was a bit apprehensive, however, the weather was still the same. The night was even more foggy as we made the mistake of dining out. On our way back, Haroon had his head stuck outside the window, was telling me if I was driving on the road or off it. We traveled at around 30 km/hr on a virtually empty road. We had our cell-phones stuck in our socks… anything could happen at anytime at this speed on a lonely track at almost midnight :)… Anyways, getting back to flying, Monday also passed by… same gloomy day.

Tuesday was a pleasant and surprisingly bright day. I wasted no time in thinking of going or not to go, and was on the road in no time at all. Before reaching the landing strip, I’d thought I was late… but there were still quite a few flyers out there… a noteworthy presence was of Mr. Adeem (remember my first post? The Hobby-Lobby guy we bought our plane from). He, unexpectedly, recognized me immediately and was kind enough to ask about my flying-level. When I took the plane off, I immediately realized that I had forgot to trim the controls of RC. The plane started doing nasty things.. was flying sideways and nose-down. Adeem bhai came rushing thinking something bad was going on, took the RC from me and trimmed it personally. Although it was easy for me to do it myself, but his gesture was very encouraging and a pleasant one.

I was pretty comfortable with the plane then on. Slow breeze was yet strong enough for the plane. It was always going up into the wind. Did some aerobatics and there came the moment every flyer and batsman is scared of. The moment of in-decisiveness. I was in the mood of a low fly-past infront of me, but then at the very last moment, I decided to do a touch-n-go. But the angle wasn’t the best one. It was angling across the landing strip. But by the time I had realized that it wasn’t the best of the approaches, the plane was very close to a side-pole along the strip – too close for the comfort. The speed was dead zero. I immediately upped the throttle and the plane. It narrowly flew above the pole, just 5 ft above ground level. The speed wasn’t very fast so the next thing the plane did was, gradually come down sideways. I employed some serenity and leveled the plane and took it off again and there it was… safe. The point to consider is that all this was happening just 5-6 feet above ground-level, which is very very low for a plane. Everyone around me was numb… I realized it when I had made an almost perfect landing of the plane in my very next approach. Everyone around me cheered and clapped (to my surprise) and the biggest surprise was of the Grand Master, Mr. Adeem. He cheered as well and complemented the narrow recovery. This was certainly very encouraging.

It was my nastiest stuff with the plane so far 😉 . Sab was almost stunned when I told him about it the next day 😉 but was relieved to find out of the well-being of the plane. 😛

The Title should’ve been: Another [Almost Desasterous] Day At Flying

powered by performancing firefox