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Sep. 20th, 2019 08:34 amI had my first night flight in the R22 last night. Real night, not 'we're on our way back from a late afternoon lesson and happened to be in the air when civil twilight ended'. Civil twilight officially ended in Lawrence, Mass. yesterday at 7:16 PM; we took off sometime around.... I'm not sure. 7:45? 8? Something like that.
Barring a lottery win and an expansion of Virgin Galactic, I'm unlikely ever to be in space during my lifetime. But when you are flying from Lawrence to Portsmouth, and the tower tells you to make right downwind and follow behind two fixed-wing craft, and you're 1200 feet above the waters of Great Bay when no one has their boats out and the clouds are few and the wind is calm and the Big Dipper is RIGHT THERE at eye level, and what separates you from the stars is a sheet of plexiglass rather than a porthole smaller than both your feet put together...
I can't look at the night sky now without going, "I was in that." I was up there and I was at the controls (my instructor assisted in a few regards but frankly at that point he was checking Instagram so yeah, it was me at the helm) and I was as close as I have ever been to being among the stars.
... okay, I was gonna give the Leonardo da Vinci quote about walking with your eyes turned heavenward, but it seems that digging by Quote Investigator has not been able to track that line to any of Leonardo's own works; it seems to have come from a 1965 educational movie about the man. Still:
"At the edge spring unafraid into the void. The current holds you. The earth stretches limitless below you. Be not afraid. Your wings are your salvation even should you plummet; the hurts will be slight, I know.
"And once you have tasted flight you will walk the earth with your eyes turned skyward; for there you have been, and there you would return."
-John H. Secondari, script writer, "I, Leonardo da Vinci"
Barring a lottery win and an expansion of Virgin Galactic, I'm unlikely ever to be in space during my lifetime. But when you are flying from Lawrence to Portsmouth, and the tower tells you to make right downwind and follow behind two fixed-wing craft, and you're 1200 feet above the waters of Great Bay when no one has their boats out and the clouds are few and the wind is calm and the Big Dipper is RIGHT THERE at eye level, and what separates you from the stars is a sheet of plexiglass rather than a porthole smaller than both your feet put together...
I can't look at the night sky now without going, "I was in that." I was up there and I was at the controls (my instructor assisted in a few regards but frankly at that point he was checking Instagram so yeah, it was me at the helm) and I was as close as I have ever been to being among the stars.
... okay, I was gonna give the Leonardo da Vinci quote about walking with your eyes turned heavenward, but it seems that digging by Quote Investigator has not been able to track that line to any of Leonardo's own works; it seems to have come from a 1965 educational movie about the man. Still:
"At the edge spring unafraid into the void. The current holds you. The earth stretches limitless below you. Be not afraid. Your wings are your salvation even should you plummet; the hurts will be slight, I know.
"And once you have tasted flight you will walk the earth with your eyes turned skyward; for there you have been, and there you would return."
-John H. Secondari, script writer, "I, Leonardo da Vinci"
