It all started with a trip to the Hillier aviation museum in San Carlos, CA in early December 2011. After touring the exhibits inside and outside, we went upstairs where a few computer stations were setup with Flight Simulator. We all had a chance to try our hand at flying and landing a plane. My elder son Srinath was hooked by this experience and asked Santa to get him Microsoft Flight Simulator X and a Thrustmaster T-Flight Hotas X Flight Stick for Christmas. He has been flying the simulator ever since, starting with gliders tracking guideposts in the sky, then slowly graduating to larger aircraft and now working his way up through Virtual ATC.

My interest in aviation started when I was growing up in India. We were located close enough to and on the approach route for Meenambakkam airport (MAA) that we could tell the rough time without looking at the clock simply based on the roar of jet engines as the occasional scheduled flights flew overhead. From the terrace we could see planes take off and land at the airport in the distance. It remained an interesting pastime. A number of years later when living near Denver, I used to frequent a local airport to watch GA flights and shoot pictures. What was an interesting pastime graduated to an interest but it was trumped by the other priorities in my life at that time. When Srinath became interested in flying is when I began looking more deeply into flight training options.

After months of superficial research, we finally called Ahart Aviation in Livermore, CA and scheduled an intro flight on January 18, 2014.  The weather was perfect – SKC, P6SM, 00000KT. We were paired up with James as our pilot and I let Srinath fly the left seat. My plan was to shoot images and video to remember this first flight. After going through the pre-flight checklist, James obliged our request to fly to the Golden Gate bridge and execute a touch-and-go at Oakland en route. The Cessna 172 felt very compact and my nervous jitters vanished upon takeoff.

Here is the video of our first flight: