Conquering the tiny plane

One of the top 10 fears: flying in a small plane or prop plane in general. Another in the top 10: being trapped in the middle of nowhere with no cell service. Did all 3 in 24 hours the other day...a good victory :-)

First was a 5-seater single engine prop plane that did a flyover of Devils Lake, ND (seen below). I got to sit in the co-pilot seat and wear nifty headset to talk to the pilot. It was a pretty smooth ride...only few things that flipped me out - the turning radius of one of those itty bitty planes is very small, so you can bank pretty hard to turn, and basically look directly down at the ground as you turn. Didn't like that so much... Other thing - hard to keep things level when you take off & land, so the wings shimmy a lot, and keeping the line straight for landing is a bit difficult. But other than that swinging back & forth, it was neat to watch the landing from head-on, seeing the runway #s and touching down on the zebra stripes. (I tried to catch a picture of that, but my memory card was full. I also forgot to turn off the B&W feature of the camera, so everything came out old-school. See pictures below.

Cockpit view of my seat.

Icy lake overflight (those are roads cutting through the lake. White portions are ice on lake.

Second prop plane was from small town, ND to Minneapolis. 30-person prop plane. Not so smooth, we were flying on a very high wind day, so I think it was worse than the little plane. We got swung back & forth & up & down so much it felt like we were on a rollercoaster. Spilling drinks and giving whiplash and whatnot. As we were coming in, the pilot tried to keep steering on course, but the winds were so high that only 1 set of rear wheels initially landed, then the other side of the plane slammed down, since the wing (on my side of course) was still tipped up to a significant degree. Not so much a fan of that.

A little background on the whole "trapped in the middle of nowhere" issue...Devils Lake, ND, only 1 commercial flight comes in per day. So the 5-seater was in the clear air-traffic wise, but we couldn't necessarily fly direct into there. Grand Forks, ND (90 miles East) was where we flew in/out of. The road is straight between the towns, nothing along the side of the road except brown fields. No gas stations, no pull offs, no houses. 1 rest stop with a bathroom in a little house. Just mile markers and flat land. To start off the day, as we drove back down to GF, a loud knock came from under the hood when we were about 45 miles out, near absolutely nothing. The engine started to make this high-pitched sound which was really disturbing since I had no cell service out there, but at least my coworker did. It stopped feeling like accelerating at times, maybe it just didn't feel like it anymore...damn Dodge Avenger. 25 miles out of GF there is another clunk clunk clunk and we actually see a part of the hood bump up with each clunk...oopsie...doesn't look good. Then several alarm beeps go off in the car, red lights flash, and the oil light comes on. The car wouldn't accelerate; when I tried, it just revved the engine, then another clunk and the sound was gone...thus, a call to Hertz asking for some help...we basically crawl into the airport, Flintstone-style...though making it in time for the prop flight from hell, of course. But, we did survive...which makes me all the happier to be home...and to get a new cell phone that has service in the sticks of North Dakota. Cross some of those fears off the top 10, and bring a few more into the fold.