I got to fly a full scale plane today! A flying buddy at my field is a mechanic at the commercial airport, and is also a volunteer mechanic at a private plane club in return for use of the club plane. He asked me if I wanted to tag along for a ride today (too windy to fly our RC planes which we had planned to do). We got to the field and I saw Decathlons, Cessnas, reconditioned warbirds, the whole gamut of private aircraft. I was totally amazed at how similar the 'real' planes are to the RC planes - right down to the little exhaust pipe sticking out of the bottom of the cowl like a Pitts muffler.

We dragged the plane (by hand) out of the hangar, my buddy went through a pre-flight routine, and we hopped in and took off. Of course I was asking questions the entire time, and after a few minutes in the air I started asking about controls. He told me briefly what they were then started telling me what the gages meant (I was wondering why at first) then he said 'ok, take over'. It's just like flying an RC plane! Coordinating the turns is exactly the same, the rudder works the same (I used it a lot), many of the same couplings exist... We were in the air for one hour and I flew for 45 minutes! Around lakes, over hills, lots of turns, climbing, diving. I still can't believe it happened - it's always been a dream but I never thought it would be a reality (preconceived ideas that it was too expensive, etc).

The club is $50 a month, use of the club plane is $25 an hour (engine hours only), and the plane gets 450 miles on a 20 gallon tank, so it looks like I might be joining a full-scale plane club after January! There are even club instructors to help me get my license at a low cost. How cool is this?!

Well of course I wanted to share my excitement, but I actually wanted to post all this for other new rc pilots - this is one advantage of joining an RC club - if you like airplanes as much as most of us do, it can open up a world of opportunity - literally!