Well, I spent most of the day in the quaint little town of Vandalia, IL. Yeah, I'd never heard of it either until today. Apparently, the flight school is looking into buying another multi-engine trainer, and we flew up there to look at one for sale. The terms "project airplane" and "fixer upper" definately come to mind.
The mechanic that went with us seems to think it won't cause much (in relative terms) to fix, so I think the school is going to buy it. When I say "fix" I basically mean re-build the damn thing. Someone fucked up the takeoff pretty bad, the gear was ripped off b/c they ran into a ditch, they hit a pole (which dented and crushed half of a wing), and THEN the pole went flying into the tail. All fixable if the price is right, though.
Getting to this metropolis was most of the fun, though. I got to fly the brand new airplane up there that still had the nice leather "new airplane" smell. In addition to that, it has the killer instrument panel that looks like this:
Garmin 1000 glass panel
Pretty cool, huh? As far as how the airplane flies, it's the same as any of the other late model Cessnas. When it comes to running the instruments, the bells, whistles, knobs, dials, gizmos and GPS, it's more like flying a damn jet. Sad thing is that it's got so much cool shit on it, I don't want to go back to flying the older ones now....
The mechanic that went with us seems to think it won't cause much (in relative terms) to fix, so I think the school is going to buy it. When I say "fix" I basically mean re-build the damn thing. Someone fucked up the takeoff pretty bad, the gear was ripped off b/c they ran into a ditch, they hit a pole (which dented and crushed half of a wing), and THEN the pole went flying into the tail. All fixable if the price is right, though.
Getting to this metropolis was most of the fun, though. I got to fly the brand new airplane up there that still had the nice leather "new airplane" smell. In addition to that, it has the killer instrument panel that looks like this:
Garmin 1000 glass panel
Pretty cool, huh? As far as how the airplane flies, it's the same as any of the other late model Cessnas. When it comes to running the instruments, the bells, whistles, knobs, dials, gizmos and GPS, it's more like flying a damn jet. Sad thing is that it's got so much cool shit on it, I don't want to go back to flying the older ones now....
cicatrixsid:
So the Landing bar & grill kinda sucked. The 2 free drinks with dinner was the only tasty thing about it. Are ya coming camping?