Flying with Fokker Four. [OT]

[Mithrin]

Just thought I'd share this experience with you guys. Someone please make me a Fokker S-11. I'm in love! Any of you Dutchies out here, if you have the money (it's not that much) then this really is something you've got to try at least once!

Wow what an experience. On the 6th of June I finally got my birthday present. A flight in one of the Fokker S-11 military trainers of the Fokker Four foundation.

So I picked up one of my brothers at noon and we drove off to Lelystad Airport. I also gave one of the tickets to my brother in law who really likes aviation too. We met up at the airfield with him, his wife and kid as he is on vacation right now. We got there fairly early at around 13:00 and we were promptly directed to the roundflight checkin. Apparently some bad weather was closing in on us so we were going to get the flight going immediately instead of at 14:30. There was one other guy, a bit older who also payed for a flight. Years ago he had worked with these little planes and every once in a while he'd make sure to book himself a flight on them. So we got introduced to the pilots and after a quick briefing about the aircraft and the flight each of us got assigned to a pilot and we headed for the little trainers.

After a quick picture in front of the plane I was told how to climb up on top of the Fokker and how to get into the cockpit. Strapped in I really thought it was actually quite comfortable. Enough space for my long legs even. So my pilot introduced himself. Former Apache pilot and he demoed a few years so I'm sure I've seen him fly. Then it turned out he also served in Kosovo in '99 just like me. Pretty nice coincidence!

So I told him about my love for anything aviation and the flightsimming so he went through the checklist with me and explained everything. I can tell you, it is really fun to see someone starting such a cool little plane and actually knowing what he's doing! So we taxied out to the active. Held short and did our engine runups. We had to wait on one plane to touch down and were prompted to line up. We were number two. So nr.1 started rolling and the moment his tailwheel came off the ground we went for it. I loved it! Not nearly as bumpy as I expected and we lifted off at a sheer 50kts.

Climbing out we turned left and slowly made our way towards Harderwijk. We joined up with nr.1 and started simple with some different formation figures. Then the fun started as we started to do climbing turns and stuff. Just awesome. At one point I spotted traffic and so did nr.1 as he immediately steered clear of it. Cool to see how he was totally with his head out of the cockpit (not literally lol) and scanning the skies pretty much for all three aircraft as the other two pilots just had their eyes fixed on his plane. Man what an experience. With such little aircraft you really feel everything.

So then after probably 15 minutes we split up and my pilot asked me what we should do. So I told him with a big grin a bit of everything. So we started with one loop, then immediately went into another one which we finished with a proper corkscrewish like manouvre. Then after another steep turn and spotting the other two planes he steered towards an island in the river and had me fly a circle around it. I can tell you this plane is extremely agile and responsive. Anyone with some spare money please, I'd love to have one! One thing that was tricky though was that all main instruments were on his side, the left side so since I was doing a right turn it was kind of hard to check my artificial horizon and rate of climb/descent thingie. But it was fun nevertheless.

A few things I noticed during this very brief stick moment of probably only a few minutes. There is no such thing as a fixed horizon line like in the sim. You NEED that instrument or check your wingtips to see if you're level (well in the netherlands that works cuz everything is flat here hehe). The haze on the horizon was so strong that I just couldn't really level the plane with just that.

You don't feel a slight descent or climb if you're trimmed off properly. Again you need the instruments. Here with my stick I feel the backpressure, there was no such thing with this lovely plane.

It is easier to focus on the instruments in FS than in real life. Even though, as a human you have a broader field of view, things tend to narrow down when you're looking outside and you have to force yourself back to the instruments from time to time. I guess experience will help to get rid of this case of tunnel vision. :blushpilot:

So after that we joined back up with the lead and headed back for the field. We joined downwind and split up simply by waiting four seconds after the lead turned base. Another thing. A proper glideslope in FS looks a whole lot flatter to me than in the real world. Though I still think we came in a bit high but this was probably because the pilot had cut the power alltogether. What a cool experience, we settled down gently and taxied to the fuel point. Got some fuel and taxied back to the hangar. There we got out and lingered around the hangar for a little longer checking out some aircraft corpses and the DC-2 Uiver in final stages of maintenance. End of a wonderful experience.

Me on the left and bro in law on right.

[Cazzie]

:ernae:

Off on my bike.

Caz