We took the flight on Sunday. The whole experience went well but not
completely smooth.

My wife is disabled so I have to help her into the plane. She bumped
her head on the door frame when I helped her a bit excessively--ouch. I
was thinking, well this is over before we even started. I asked her if
she wanted to stop, she said to continue. After we settled into the
cockpit she suddently asked "what's this, what's that?" I had to do a
full instrument intro to her. I was thrilled. She was extremely
interested.

Before taxi I checked the intercom. It seemed to work fine. We did the
runup and takeoff very smoothly. With the full engine noise she had
trouble hearing me. The intercom squelch didnot work very well and
picked up the noise as well as our voices. The rest of the flight was
"blah blah blah. What did you say? I said BLAH BLAH BLAH"
Once we were at cruise, she noticed that the instrument panel was too
high and she couldn't see out the view out front. Then when she tried
to look out the window the excessively high shoulder strap was in her
face. Since we were at cruise I removed the strap. The rest of the
flight I did a lot of shallow S turns to show her the views.
We flew over our house on the way and back from the Columbia River
Gorge. She enjoyed the sight. I should mention the weather was
perfectly clear, sunny, and the morning air was still smooth. We had a
great view of Bonneville dam with flood gates wide open.

As the flight continued the intercom became increasingly worse. Since
we could only talk by shouting or using sign language we decided to head
back home.

Afterwards, as she was rubbing her head, she said that she felt very
safe with me flying(in contrast to my driving the car); I acted very
professionally and when I flew without her she would not worry as much.
She also, is willing to fly again with me(maybe with a bike helmet on
during loading) and despite the difficulties enjoyed flying. Her final
comment was the she was very impressed with the landing. Actually it
was a bit fast and long, but it was very smooth.

I found out later at the FBO that the airplane we flew was notorious for
its intercom.

We will do one more local flight to work out the bugs and then do a
cross-country to visit a friend we haven't seen in a couple of years.



Eric Ross wrote:
I recently received my license and I am taking my somewhat nervous wife
up for the first time. I am aiming for a clear, reasonably smooth day.
Any suggestions for making this flight as positive as possible for her?

Thanks much,
Eric Ross