Thierry is the CEO of his aircraft manufacturing company H. A. I. M. Aviation (http://haim-aviation.com/) , and also flies for pleasure from time to time. He's designed an ultra-light aircraft that most people can fly for recreational purposes. Getting a license for flying these birds is much simpler than getting licenses for flying other types of aircrafts. Thierry's design is soon going into production, he very enthusiastically told his eager and excited audience.
Well, this time Thierry had a couple of available seats in his plane, and I jumped at the offer and went flying with a couple of other friends on a Sunday afternoon.
We were originally going to fly in the early evening, and I was really excited as I thought that I might be able to see the sun set over Montreal. However, the weather changed, and we had to fly earlier. Thierry was monitoring the weather very closely, and it was really interesting for me to see him roll down the window every so often to check the cloud cover, enroute to the Lachute airport from which we were to take off.
The sun went behind the clouds, and stayed there for most of the time. That made the flight better (read cooler and more comfortable since the cooling system in these aircrafts aren't that efficient), and I didn't have to battle the sun flaring through my camera lens. But I did have a hard time photographing the city below which looked pretty dark, with all the clouds hovering over the city.
But the flight went off beautifully - Thierry educated us on how the radio works, what route we'd be taking, and what we would need to do in order to have a pleasant flight, etc. and we were soon lifting off the ground, for my maiden flight in a light aircraft.
He was a fantastic pilot, and he let one of our friends, Midhun, co-pilot the aircraft with him. Midhun actually flew us back to the airport and that was pretty neat. He was an excellent co-pilot, despite this being his first time flying, and we all returned alive, back to the airport. :=) Jokes apart, the flight was smooth and a dream come true!
More pictures in my Flickr Photostream, if you're interested.
No comments:
Post a Comment