Flying up the Sunshine Coast

Recently I had a chance to check another item off the bucket list…fly a plane! My friend John has a 3D printer which I helped him get dialed in and he paid me back by taking me for a spin in his plane on a perfect day.

It’s quite a bit smaller than a Cessna or the various float planes I’ve been in before. With a cruising speed of over 200 mph, it’s quite the little plane.

We took off from Pitt Meadows and got to fly over my house and headed towards Vancouver. Something I was fascinated by was the amount of work a pilot has to do, communicating with the various towers on the radio, keeping a vigilate watch for other air traffic, tracking our position and our speed with the various instrument panels. John also had a slick flight app for his iPad used in conjunction with a navigation system.

Once we cleared Bowen Island, John asked me if I wanted to pilot the plane…before we took off, he explained how this plane was a little different than the usual Cessna’s and similar. Those planes have large steering controls (duplicated for the copilot) but his plane has a very small, fighter jet-like stick that was literally between our legs. It was very sensitive so I was a little nervous taking control. After some prodding by John, I finally loosened up a bit and was able to relax.

This was the perfect time to capture the moment through my Google Glass:

It’s amazing how well the noise cancelling headsets work as you can hear from the Glass video.

It was also pretty cool how John was able to control the plane…I was trying to take a photo out the window and he just tilted the plane to give me a better view of the islands below.

I ended up flying the plane until about Powell River then John took over again. We continued on until Lund and then turned around and headed back to Pitt Meadows.

I put my GoPro behind us in the cockpit but as you can see, it was a little snug:

It was an incredible experience and a perfect day for flying up the coast.