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Tuesday, February 9, 2010

Flight Training experience

In our final semester we aerobians were supposed to get familiar with certain basic things of flight and conduct some experiments during flight. (Challo acha tha or else people used to ask us, u guys are from aero, have you guys ever flown an aircraft)

On the first day the morning session there was a lecture. In the afternoon session there was a familiarization flight nick named Joyride in a glider. The pilot cum instructor was a retired airforce experienced person. I happened to be the volunteer for the first flight.

Before the start of flight we had to sign two documents.
1) One was normal that if during flight or anything related to it we get injured or die IIT Kanpur is not responsible for it.
2) It was the second one which was a bit strange. It precisely said that in case of any injury or death, once cannot sue President of India or hold him responsible for it. What were the guys expecting, we were going to sue President of India or gherao him?

Soon the two technicians present helped me in strapping the buckles. Soon after receiving the go signal from the pilot the winch was released and i felt a jerk and we were racing on the runaway. within some few seconds we were airborne. After reaching some desired maximum altitude the plane made a nose down attitude. Since i was in the front seat, that was scary, but some kind words from the pilot reassured me. And then the pilot asked me to pull the Red bulb situated in the cockpit. (Bhai dar se to bulb bhi nahi mil raha tha). That released the winch. Then he showed me the effectivness of the controls. After some 10 minutes in the air we were on the ground. First ride successfully completed.

On the second day, we had a lecture in the morning. The professor informed us that there would be a power flight in the afternoon. We would go int batches of four, and since it would be a flight for recording flight parameters, the aircraft will be made unstable, so have a light meal. Heavy meal or no meal means greater chances of vommit.

Here the fun starts. Most of us were day scholars and were not used to the hostel life. In the Hall5 Mess, lunch was reasonably priced at 20bucks. The good thing was you could have unlimited quantity for that amount. Our sunnyji as usual was in adamant mood. His mission to grab as much as possible for 20 bucks despite our warnings.

The aircrfat was a six seater including pilot and copilot piston engined aircraft Piper Saratoga. The flight was really hectic and i developed a good headache. The eventual scene sunnyiji's batch was the last one to be airborne. We were discussing about the flight and then after 20 minutes Sunnyiji's flight also landed back. Now imagine the scene Sunnyji getting down as fast as possible and running towards the restroom with a polythene.

Well after the first uneventual day we were preparing for the second day. As ususal i asked sunnyji to have a light breakfast. He refused to take any breakfast (Doodh ka jala Chanch bhi phook phook ke peeta hai) and instead had a single half lemon with salt. Perhaps too frightened by the previous days events.

At the end of the flight there a was one familiar sight and one strange one. Sunnyiji was as usual running with the plastic pouch, but there was more fellow with him.

There were three DGCA guys who had joined us in training. One of them was a part time flyer. So during this trip he had opted to fly the plane for some times, and guess what started the chain of events.

He vomited while flying. Seeing him take the lead how could sunnyiji remain back and he too committed. Soon there was one more participant, and this probably would have been the worst flight in which 3 participants vomited out of 6.

1 comments:

Tej said...

hey you forgot. Seeing me vomit, Shiv Charan was laughing like anything on me. Saying that I chickened out in flight. And then next day he took flight with me and vomited earlier then me and I was laughing all over him.