Senior Project - Week 2 Reflection

  This second week learning how to fly planes for Senior Project has continued to be an extremely memorable and fun experience. As mentioned in last week's reflection, the sheer amount of information that has been thrown at Ben, Henry and myself is very large, so studying this information and preparing for the next day in the air has been occupying a large amount of our time during the day. I can speak for all three of us when I say that we have been throughly enjoying learning how to fly these aircraft, as well as interacting with the amazing instructors at the concord aviation center.

    Thus far in our project, we have been educated on a multitude of topics spanning from basic aerodynamics, reading weather in the sky, learning about the many instruments in the aircraft's interior and, of course, learning how to actually pilot the aircraft. The planes that we are piloting are not very large, which makes the wind and other weather conditions affect us while in the air far more than what a person may be used to in a commercial aircraft. This hypersensitivity to weather conditions paired with the controls that are nothing like what you may see in a car have made piloting the aircraft very difficult to get used to. Speaking for myself, I have found that even over the course of just the first four sessions that we've had, I have made some serious improvements on my ability to control the plane without scaring my instructor or myself.

    The 'goal' of our project is for each of us (Henry Krehbiel, Benjamin Greenberg and myself) to be able to take the aircraft up for a solo flight without the aid or presence of an instructor. Currently this goal is looking like it's definitely not going to happen for us during this small span of time, however leaving this project we can still say that we learned a ton about how to pilot small fixed gear aircraft. For me personally, this project has inspired me to continue learning how to fly over the summer and continue on to hopefully get my VFR rated license before I start school at UVM in the fall.

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