Number one son has been home from his seven month stint with Uncle Sam for all of 3 days, so enough lying around the house, time to get back to work learning how to fly. It’s going to take me a little time to finish my CFI rating, especially since my flight lesson tomorrow is going to be rained out, so until I’m, you know, legal and all, I’m going to keep Connor’s informal flight training going. I started teaching Connor to fly when he was three years old and I had to break in a new engine on one of my Cessna 182 jump planes. That first intensive lesson consisted him sitting on my lap and steering for three hours. Actually he only steered for fifteen minutes before falling fast asleep, leaving me to finish the break in session all by myself. Whimp. I mean come on, do your part son, don’t make me do all the work. And to make matters worse the first thing the little dickens did when I set him down on the ramp after we landed was throw up. OK, that part was pretty funny. That was sixteen years ago. Today I needed to move another Cessna 182 jump plane from one airport to another and once again I brought my little buddy along. Only this time he did all the flying. We started off with a real life soft field takeoff from a soggy grass strip, followed by a 60 mile cross country trip where we practiced slow flight, steep turns, radio procedures, (he needs a lot of work there) and cross wind landings. He parked the plane on almost the exact spot he threw up on all those years ago. I think I’ll make a pilot out of him yet.
