Up, Up and Away

Well today I finally managed to use a present that I got from Katy for my 40th back in Febuary.It was a introductory 1hr microlight flight. It had been booked for a couple of weeks and when I called this morning to to if the weather conditions were ok for flying I was told yes.

Well since the place of the flight was just outside North Berwick we headed off at 11:30. The skies when we left Aberdeen were grey and drizzly but was sure it would clear by time we got there. Well it didn't clear and got worse on way down and thought that I would have to rearrange for another date.

We finally got to East of Scotland Microlights and the weather had improved a bit but not greatly. I met Gordon (affy fine bloke) who would be taking me up and he said the conditions weren't perfect but ok for the flight so off I went to get ready.

After getting some simple instruction and flightsuit on we headed to the microlight. I'm not a fan of heights and was a tad nervous but excited at the same time. We then headed off down the runway for take-off. Katy and the boys waved me off and took some pice and vids of my while in it.

The flight lasted about half a hour but seemed much longer. We only went to about 700ft instead of 2500ft because of low cloud. The view was still spectactular even from there. The two islands you see here are called (top) Fidra and (bottom) The Lamb. Fidra is where Robert Louis Stevenson got his insperation for Treasure Island and the The Lamb is owned by Uri Geller who believes is has something special about it.

At the time of taking the pics we were doing about 85MPH. On the way back to the airfield I got control of the microlight and did some basic turning, ascending and descending manourves in it. This was a great experience to actual take control of it and "FLY" for the first time myself.

If anyone ever fancied doing this I would thoroughly recommend doing it and EOSM as I had a first class day with them.