What’s a Young Eagle Flight?
Young Eagles is a program of the Experimental Aviation Association (EAA) designed to introduce and inspire kids in the world of aviation. EAA Volunteer Pilots provide youth ages 8-17 a free flight in which they can experience first-hand the joys of flying. After the flight, a partnership between EAA and Sporty’s, a popular on-line pilot shop, provides Young Eagles credit to Sporty’s on-line Learn to Fly Course (a $249 value). If the Young Eagle further demonstrates his or her interest by completing the first few sections of the online course, EAA and Sporty’s fund a free first flight lesson for the Young Eagle. It’s a great program designed to fire up those with an interest in aviation and start them on their way to a license to fly.
The Young Eagle flight itself isn’t officially flight instruction (and volunteer pilots need not be instructors). But older Young Eagles, like Katria this morning, usually come eager to learn and seem to appreciate getting to know a little about the airplane and the mechanics of flight beforehand.
As part of the preflight walk-around before any flight, every pilot checks the plane once over to make sure it’s ready to fly. So, simply narrating that walk-around for a Young Eagle, along with some Q&A, is a good way to get them up to speed briefly on what a pilot’s looking for and thinking about before a flight.
Katria and I spent a few minutes talking about the engine, the propeller, some of the airplane’s systems, and a little introductory aerodynamics. Katria was a quick study and asked some good questions.
We also discussed our route. In this day and age, it’s easy to take a house address, convert it to latitude/longitude, and place it on an aerial moving map. And here’s a rule to which I haven’t found an exception in almost 30 years: EVERYONE loves to fly over their house! Katria lives near Sugar Land Airport, a short 13nm from our takeoff point at Houston-Southwest Airport. Her house is inside Sugar Land’s airspace (the dotted blue circle), so we’d need the Sugar Land Tower’s approval to overfly her neighborhood. (As you might glean from the map, she lives near my Mom and Dad’s place in Richmond, Texas, so I’ve made this request before.)
Shortly after we took off, we called Sugar Land Tower, and they were happy to oblige. We overflew Katria’s neighborhood first, then headed south past Smither’s Lake to let her take the controls and fly us around. She was fired up to fly, and before too long, she was making smooth, level 30-degree bank turns plus climbing and descending without trouble. Here’s a 3D replay of our flight at 20X speed….
After a solid flight under partly cloudy Houston skies, Katria flew us back to the Houston Southwest Airport pattern. The big smile that appeared from behind her mask confirmed she’d had a good time. Katria was an excellent student, and all signs point to her being a great pilot one day!
If you know a youngster with an interest in aviation who’d be inspired by a Young Eagle flight, give us a call!
