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I wrote up the first part of my Knockhill experience last week, and had meant to write up the second part shortly afterwards. Alas, events and life interrupted. It’s been a particularly busy (and productive) work week. Also the complete lack of pictures from within the plane make it somewhat less interesting, so I’ll have to work extra hard on my prose.

After finishing the single-seat race car experience, we had a good few hours to kill before my slot in the aircraft, so we figured we’d go get some lunch, and perhaps visit a nearby park for a bit of a wander. Alas, we hadn’t counted on Glenrothes - where Fife airport is based - being some sort of a bastard love child of Milton Keynes and East Kilbride… There were roundabouts that sent you everywhere but the place you wanted to go, no sign of any central line of shops with nice cosy cafes that we were after, more roundabouts, and some large shopping centre that was almost entirely devoid of personality. We did get a coffee and some lunch, and it wasn’t as bad as I was fearing, but I felt somewhat cheated by the whole experience: I intensely dislike large shopping centres and resented the fact that this seemed to be the best option going. But the fault lay with me really, for not having perhaps researched a specific place to go visit in the five hours we had spare, and perhaps slowly coming down off the adrenaline high of bombing about in a racing car for a couple of hours….

Anyway, I digress. We then went and found a nice park to wander about it, which went some way to alleviating my dislike of Glenrothes. Or perhaps the coffee had started to kick in… Either way, we soon found ourselves at the airport and supping on some (non caffeinated!) drinks in the nice tea-room attached to the airport. The pilot (Barry) was running a little late with a backlog of - it turned out - other Knockhill ‘Skytrack’ voucher folk. But arrive he did, and I was the last flight of the day.

The plane was a lot smaller and lighter than I think I’d realised it would be, but that didn’t worry me at all. Although I did have some trouble getting into the captains seat. This worried me, as all the dials pointed in my direction. How was he supposed to fly it accurately from the passenger seat!? But no worries there, he clearly knew what he was doing.

Take off in these light aircraft is surprisingly quick, a function of the plane being very light: I later saw an airport assistant pushing the aircraft on her own. But still a surprising feeling of speed as we took off. We were heading over to do an aerial circuit of “T in the Park”, the largest summer music festival in Scotland, then a fly-past Knockhill circuit itself.

Barry explained how everything worked, and being the geek I am, I took it all in as best I could and asked a few questions to satisfy my curiosity. Whilst I couldn’t quite get my head around some of the subtleties, I think I got most of how it all worked. But most of all I was gazing out of the window with a mixture of excitement and some fear. We were an awfully long way up in a single engined plane. We were in uncontrolled airspace as well, but thankfully Barry was keeping a good eye out for other aircraft! But far worse was to come: I would soon be flying it….

OK, so not really an unmitigated disaster, and Barry was clearly not going to let me do anything stupid. But I did turn the plane 180 degrees, fly it higher and lower, and generally got a feel for how it all worked. Surprisingly responsive, and the additional dimension (ie. height) compared to driving, as well as the seriously increased complexity for doing basic things like turning around (and, of course, not stopping!) made it feel like very hard work. I’ve certainly picked up a huge amount of respect for anybody who can pilot a plane.

The ‘best’ part though was when Barry took control and showed how the plane responded to more aggressive manoeuvres. I think he’d established I wasn’t about to scream and jump out of the plane before doing this, but we did a very quick ascent, descent and turns. Very nimble, very quick. But no, I wasn’t sick. My stomach did leap, and I did worry, but it was a great experience in itself.

My biggest mistake? Mentioning an aborted landing I’d experienced coming in to land in some French airport on a ski trip once. Barry then proceeded (I suppose I’d practically asked for this) to demonstrate how it works. He even offered to let me have a go, but I declined. I’d not really expected it to be demonstrated, much less for me to then do it! We came in to land after a good half-hour of flying around. Again a much shorter landing than I’d expected it to be. It certainly felt great to be back on the ground again!

A great experience all said, and something I’d encourage everybody to try at least once, to better understand the complexities involved in this most fascinating of transport means. The real feeling of freedom was something quite special, and the views on such a clear day were spectacular. I do partly wish I’d taken my camera up with me, but I think that would have distracted me from savouring the experience, which after all it was all about. Great stuff.

This entry was posted on Sunday, July 15th, 2007 at 10:00 am and is filed under Personal, Scotland. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.