It's pretty ironic when you're studying at an airport but never went close to the school's aircraft. So, the time has finally came. Thank God Captain Jaafar who taught Batch A50 was very understanding despite we most of my batchmates slept in his class. LOLOL... He finally brought us to the hangar. After collecting our pass at the airport security, he headed straight to the hangar; all were eager as beavers. The weather was perfect that morning despite the heavy showers for the past week. As soon as we arrived at the hangar, our seniors who were waiting for their sortie greeted us and took us to the planes. We'd split to several groups - some going to the Piper Warrior III and some headed to the Diamond DA40.
I headed straight to the Diamond since that's the plane that we're going to fly throughout our single engine course. After having a close-up view, I thought to myself, "Pewiiitttt... What a sexy aircraft." Yes, indeed it was sexy. The closer you look, the sexier it gets. I fell in love with the aircraft since the first time I saw it flew over my house since it was first introduced into APFT's fleet. My senior, Hong, who was also a Kelantanese, asked me to sit in the cockpit while he explained about the Garmin G1000 display.
What an awesome cockpit it was... After that, he brought me to the brand new Piper Seminole - a twin engine trainer. Unlike the Diamonds which had full glass cockpit, the Seminole had a semi-glass cockpit. Another difference between Diamonds and Pipers is the Diamonds use joysticks instead of yoke - so it's quite similar to the A320 we'll be flying soon. After that, we had some demo about the pre-flight checks that had to be done. Alan was asked to suck the stall warning sensor at the leading edge of the wings to check the stall warning. LOLOL...
Then we were explained about the 4 cylinder piston engine by Captain Jaafar. Only now we had a better view of what's what instead of just staring at the whiteboard in class - well, at least some of us are still looking at the whiteboard. Hahaha... Well, all in all, it was an awesome experience. The trip had made us more eager to fly... Unfortunately, we heard some news saying that we have to finish our Phase 1 of ground school first before we start flying. That means ground school for the next 3 months........... $#@!
