I love small planes, and over the years I've gotten acquainted with quite a few - so here are some very short reviews from what I remember of them. The notes below are in reverse chronological order - most recent at the top. The numbers in brackets (#xx) refer to the number of powered aircraft types in which I have been checked out to date.

Briefly sold as the PiperSport, the SportCruiser looks a bit like a Lancair - speedy and sleek - but of course this is an LSA so it isn't going to be speedy. 

Although excellent in some ways, visibility over the long nose is not good, and visibility down is seriously impeded by the pilot's position, not far forward of the flap hinge. Being a big fan of visibility I didn't think I'd like this airplane, but to my surprise, I liked it a lot. 

The cockpit is so big it feels downright luxurious. There's space for bags, and you can use this machine to travel without feeling like you're cheating - in many other LSA's you find yourself cramming bags into corners that weren't really meant for them, but not with this one - although you do need to remember to keep an eye on the weight. This is a metal airplane, not carbon fiber, and with that very large (heavy) canopy, an autopilot and ballistic chute, the useful load will be around 480 lb. The fuel tanks are huge too, at 30 gal (about 6 hours), but when they're full there's only about 300 lb available - so the availability of all that space doesn't mean you can just "fill 'er up and go" without giving some thought to the weights. 

From the outside, the airplane looks like a flying sports car (the Tecnams look much more utilitarian/serious), but it doesn't look small. Like all low-wing airplanes, you have to scramble inelegantly onto the wing to get in. Open the large tilt-up canopy, though, and your reaction is likely to be similar to mine - wow! The cabin is huuuuuge! The SportCruiser's cabin is 46.5 inches wide - that's 4.5 inches wider than a Bonanza! - and the reclined seats put so much space between the windshield and the seat-back that the overall effect causes everyone to use the same word: "cavernous." There's a pretty good-size baggage area in the back, and two more in the wings! 

The aircraft has a castoring nosewheel and differential braking; this means you have supreme maneuverability and can pivot around one wheel, but steering can be directionally imprecise so you need to taxi with care and may need to ride the upwind brake in a crosswind. Because the nosewheel is free-castoring, you can taxi the airplane into its parking space nose-first, then get out and spin it around on the spot by hand - you don't even have to lean on the tail to lift the nosewheel as you do with the Tecnams. 

Takeoff is straightforward, needing a lot less rudder than the Tecnams or the Evektor. Also, because of the castoring nosewheel there's no need to lift the nose early for a yaw-free takeoff run. I've flown three examples, and there were some marked differences between them. One was quite a spirited performer; with 2 people aboard I saw 1,000+fpm repeatably and 110kt or so at 5,200 RPM; while the other two offered much less performance, with 600-650 fpm climb and requiring 5,500 RPM in a shallow dive to reach 110kt. I don't really know what to make of the difference between the two except to say that it clearly wasn't about prop pitch (since one both climbed and ran better).  

The controls are fairly crisp and effective, but again the examples I've flown seemed like different aircraft. The spirited one had poorly-coordinated controls, with light pitch forces and noticeably heavier roll forces. The less-spirited two had fairly well-balanced control forces that were a bit too light in both axes, especially at lower speeds where I felt that a bit more control surface feedback would have been welcome - the aircraft felt neutrally stable because so little control force was required. The aircraft with the heavier roll feel had an autopilot fitted and I may have been feeling the drag of the autopilot servo, but I think it was more than that. Although all three examples - especially the more balanced two - were good, the Tecnam Sierra is markedly better in terms of control feel, especially at lower speeds. 

Despite its very low wing loading (10lb/sqft) the SportCruiser rides surprisingly well in light chop, but in more than that it will get tossed around about as is to be expected. It also requires much less active rudder use than the other LSAs I've tried to date, being very yaw-stable in flight; unfortunately, this also imposes a relatively low crosswind limit (10-12kt, depending on which version of the manual you read) because the airplane will weathervane on the ground. 

The airplane stalls well into the 30-something range, which offers the ability to arrive on terra firma going very slowly if needed, a nice safety factor. Ballistic parachute is optional, and one of the examples I've flown was fitted with a glass cockpit and autopilot - serious practical utility. 

The tilt-forward canopy has no doorposts, no windshield frame, nothing to block the view, which is consequently spectacular in most directions. You don't realize how much doorposts and canopy frames block the view, until you try a plane that doesn't have them! After being in this airplane, when you next sit into most other airplanes - especially any of the high-wing LSAs with their low side windows and thick A-pillars - you feel like you just put blinders on. That said, the airplane's setup is not so good for showing a friend their home from the air. The seating position, low behind the engine, means they won't be able to see it over the nose; and the seatbacks are well aft over the wide-chord wing, so they'll lose sight of home under the wing at a mile or so unless you get into a really steep turn and show it over the wingtip (not something most land-dwellers are going to appreciate). Also, visibility over the nose in the climb is nonexistent. 

The downside to the large canopy, of course, is greenhouse-effect heating. Taxiing with the canopy open means having to hold it up, and it's quite heavy; after a short time I was looking for new ways to position my left arm to hold it. It could use a stronger spring, or (better) some kind of taxi latch to hold it slightly open. In flight, each seat has access to a large-diameter fresh air duct that helps to keep things cool, although the solar heating effect can overpower it in warm weather, and owners would do well to think about a good sunshade.   The canopy latch is between the seats and activates hold-down catches on both sides of the canopy. There is an over-center mechanism to prevent the latch opening under load. I'm told that if the forward-tilt canopy comes unlatched in flight, there's essentially nothing to be done about it as there's no grab-handle on the inside; however, I gather the aircraft will climb with it open. 

Despite my visibility issues (due to the seating position) I wound up, grudgingly, liking the SportCruiser as much as, and maybe more than the Tecnam Sierra; the Sierra is more of a pilot's airplane, with a clear edge in terms of handling, both on the ground (the nosewheel steering is much surer) and in the air (the control feel and harmony is just that bit better, and it has much better crosswind capability) but it's cramped with 2 aboard and I have the sense that some of the details didn't get enough attention, while the SportCruiser is much more spacious, comfortable, and thought-through. I should touch, for a moment, on the utility of these aircraft for "real aviating." This airplane is quite capable: it's very nearly as fast as a legacy C172 or PA-28 (over realistic distances the travel time will be within a few minutes), has better runway performance, and has a glass cockpit, autopilot, and parachute. Because of the much lower "certification" cost for avionics, LSAs are available with electronics that would put many much larger airplanes to shame, and allows them, in many ways, to be more "serious" XC machines than their "big brothers."

After liking the Sierra so much, I was expecting to really like the Eaglet also; it's a newer design, for one thing. Sadly, I was a disappointed; although the Eaglet has much to recommend it, I liked the Sierra much more. However, the Eaglet has the distinction of making it an even dozen single-engine airplanes in which I have checked out. 

The Eaglet, like the Sierra, looks from the outside like a "full size" airplane, and its cabin is light, large and spacious. It feels much more spacious than the Sierra, in fact. Again, the cabin dwarfs the front seat space of a C172 or even a Bonanza. However, getting in and out requires something of a contortionist act - there isn't quite enough room for an adult male to get in there without getting tangled between the doorframe, the seat, and the base of the stick. 

On walkaround, the elevator trim motor is exactly the same setup as in the Sierra, i.e., vulnerable to rain, so the company apparently didn't get the message about the need to redesign that layout. You cannot check the fuel tanks by climbing onto a fuselage step a la Cessna; you need to find a stepstool somewhere! Worst of all, you have to be careful putting things in the baggage area because the aileron control cables are exposed as they run vertically through the cabin back there, and you could conceivably wind up with something latching onto a cable and creating a control problem. I was surprised that the new ASTM standard would permit this kind of "feature," frankly. 

The parking space spin-on-the-spot routine is the same as for the Sierra, and I do get a kick out of doing that! 

Takeoff is also very similar, but on climbout I noticed a distinctly "soggy" feel to the ailerons, reminiscent of a C-172 although not as bad. Above 80kt the airplane is very pleasant to fly, and seems to have a slightly smoother ride than the Sierra (which hits the bumps a bit harshly at high cruise), but below 80kt the feel starts to become "mushy" and the airplane becomes quite unhappy at 60kt, even though it can slow a long, long way from there. The "mushy" feel is more pronounced with flaps down, and I was warned that a slip with full flaps would produce pitch wandering as disturbed air passed over the tail - which it did. 

Visibility down is great, of course, but like many (most? all?) high-wing light airplanes, the top of the windowframe in the door was below my eye-line (I'm 5' 10"), making it necessary to duck to see directly to the side, and the pilot is always largely blind into turns despite the clear panel in the ceiling (which would only help in very steep turns to the right). In addition, the front door frame creates a large vertical obstruction at about the 10 o'clock direction; it's not a minor obstacle, either, especially in a left turn, where I found myself leaning forward and craning my neck to see around it. Visibility forward and over the nose is excellent. On the whole, however, I was disappointed by the visibility.  

My overall impression was that this is an airplane that will feel very familiar to Cessna pilots. Its small size makes manhandling into parking spaces significantly easier than even for a C152. Its cabin space is enormous, although access to the C152's cabin is easier and the C152's baggage area is much bigger and doesn't include exposed control runs. Control harmony is good; the ride seems softer than the Sierra's at cruise speed but more "wallowy" at lower speeds - better than a Cessna, but still not optimal in my opinion. Visibility is Cessna-like also, i.e., good for looking down over the side, but only adequate for most other purposes. I was disappointed that this newer design hadn't addressed the elevator trim motor; the exposed aileron cable is not good; the fuel tank inaccessibility is a problem; and I didn't care for the airplane's low-speed feel. It's a perfectly functional little airplane with good performance (better than the C152); but overall, for my taste, the Sierra is better.

This is the Tecnam Sierra. It's much more conventional-looking than the SportStar, and looks quite large from the outside. Inside, perversely, it feels smaller than the SportStar, although the cabin is only an inch or two narrower. Partly, I think, it's because the footwells are quite a bit narrower, but also the cockpit sides are higher, you sit closer to the panel, and the roof is lower. Make no mistake - it's still got more elbow room than the front seats of a Cessna 172 or even a Bonanza! Still, it was (and remains) the only LSA I've flown that felt like a truly small airplane inside - to the point where I think passengers might find it claustrophobic. There's a baggage area about the size of an airline overhead bin - adequate but not large - and a parcel shelf behind that. The airplane's interior features lightweight plastic trim, whose appearance is liable to degrade rapidly once out of the showroom.

Where this airplane is tops, though, is in the handling department. Although it feels cramped with 2 people inside, I enjoy flying it solo.

On takeoff roll, it needs plenty of right rudder at first, if not quite as much as on the SportStar. Again, the trick is to lift the nosewheel right away, so that you are steering with the rudder throughout the takeoff run; otherwise you tend to get a swerve at speed as you transition from nosewheel steering (rudder straight) to rudder steering (sizeable deflection needed). Liftoff is quick, especially solo; climb is elevator-like, with solo climb rates well above 1,000 fpm. To the Cessna/Piper pilot, the climb is unnaturally steep, and without care it's easy to wind up accelerating out of the white arc by holding the nose too low.

This has a MUCH more big-airplane feel than the Evektor; control forces are light but a little stiffer, although responses remain both crisp and quick, and control harmony on the stick is about as good as I've come across (the rudder forces are too light for true perfection). There's no feeling of "floating" in light chop; holding altitude and heading are easy, but at 110kt a thermally summer day starts to become a rough ride and the aircraft feels like it's being "driven." Crosswind limits are an incredible 22kt, higher than a Bonanza's! The sliding canopy is both fun and functional on a warm day; you can taxi with it open (with your elbow over the side, and white scarf trailing in the breeze), which is a major plus, but you can also fly with it open, which is not only fun but means you can't have an "unlatched canopy emergency." It does get pretty windy in there, though, and you can get a back-eddy that could whip your glasses right off - and you don't want to be wearing a hat. The sliding canopy unfortunately means there is a canopy frame positioned just above the pilot's eye-line, and it is positioned in such a way as to create a surprisingly significant visual obstruction. As a result, visibility isn't nearly as good as one might expect for an aircraft of this layout. Downward visibility is blocked, to some extent, by the wing, but the seats are located close to the leading edge, which helps a lot, and few low-wing airplanes offer better downward visibility (it's comparable to a DA-40). Visibility over the nose is excellent; I can't imagine it's possible to do much better while still having an engine up front. 

The instructor recommended keeping the speed up when landing with full flaps, which somewhat negates the whole point of full flaps - but he was right; the pitch handling becomes a bit weird if you get slow with full flaps. It may be better to think about full flaps as a dive brake rather than a way to lower the stall speed. With this one exception, this airplane was completely predictable. 

On landing, the routine is to hold the nosewheel off the ground until the airplane slows to about walking speed, for the same reason as on the takeoff roll - in any crosswind there will be a significant deflection of the rudder (and, therefore, nosewheel) and if the nosewheel comes down it will cause an exciting direction change! This airplane can be parked by pulling in nose-first, then leaning on the tail to spin it on the spot by hand, a trick that tends to draw a crowd! Overall I felt that this was a good "first cut" at a fun and very capable two-seater, but one that needed a version 2.0 to get the details right. For example, the elevator trim motor gets wet in the rain, which causes it to fail; this needs to be redesigned. The sliding canopy doesn't seal at all, either front (at the windshield) or rear (sliding over the aft fuselage), when closed. As a result, there is a considerable breeze and wind noise at all times; and when it rains, the interior gets wet. Those should be easy fixes. More difficult, but worthwhile improvements would be more elbow room inside and a redesign of the canopy to get the roll bar out of the line of sight, reduce the overall claustrophobic effect of the cabin, and to provide a more reassuring distance between the occupants' heads and what would be a sharp-edged metal obstacle in a crash. Although the open-cockpit-in-flight feature is appealing, I would be happier with a tilt-up canopy, which appears to be the emerging consensus solution for low-wing LSAs; they seal better, offer better visibility, and put the roll cage behind the occupants' heads instead of in front of their foreheads. And, of course, there's that plastic interior, which should be reconsidered. So, although I was very impressed by the Sierra, it felt like a really good "beta" version - I find myself awaiting the production model!

One of the flight schools on Long Island decided to introduce some new Light Sport Aircraft into their fleet. Having heard so much about them, I had to go take a look!

This is the Evektor SportStar. It's a little funny-looking, with that bubble canopy on there. From outside it almost looks like a large model airplane with people sitting on top! I've heard both enthusiastic and rather disparaging reactions to the aircraft's appearance; clearly it's a matter of personal taste. From inside, it's truly spacious, with a big baggage area and lots of elbow room. It does have a sitting-on-top-of-the-airplane feel - but the result is tremendous, like-you've-never-seen visibility. This airplane is so small you can skip the whole grunting-shoving routine when parking it - just pull into the parking space nose-first until the wings are over the tiedowns, shut down, climb out, lean gently on the tail and spin her around on the spot! 

On takeoff roll you need to use a LOT of right rudder at first, or the little 100hp engine will whirl the even littler airplane to the left. Liftoff is quick; climb is elevator-like, and solo she'll put any of the "spam can" aircraft to shame, climbing at well over 1,000 fpm. Handling is light, quick, and crisp, and the combination makes the pilot feel like this is a much more powerful machine than it actually is. At first, the airplane was a lot of fun, but a number of things put me off it after a bit. First, there was the rudder needed at the start of the takeoff roll - I wondered if the airplane would be controllable in a left crosswind. Second, it felt very "light" in any kind of turbulence; it was surprisingly hard work to hold heading and, especially, altitude, and even light chop was quite disconcerting. Third, the canopy latch failed during one of my flights, and the drag generated by this was enough that we started to lose altitude very quickly, until one of us held the canopy down while the other landed at a nearby airport; I don't know how well this would have ended if I had been flying solo. I understand a new canopy latch design is now in use, but it seemed to me that the consequences of a latch failure were a bit extreme.In steep turns I found the airplane bled off airspeed quickly and needed plenty of power. Also, in slow flight I found the airplane lost aileron authority almost completely when approaching the stall, and aileron action showed some tendency to reverse early in the stall, with the lowered aileron deepening the stall on that side and causing that wing to drop, rather than rise. I was disappointed by this, in a modern design.

In the end, I was left not entirely happy by the way the airplane handled turbulence, along with a queasy feeling about build quality after the latch incident, and feeling that the little airplane just wasn't really something I would want to use regularly for serious aviating. Don't get me wrong, though; in calm weather, this airplane is an absolute blast!

I discovered that here in New York I could check out a glass cockpit, glass aircraft.  This is a Diamond DA-40, a 4-seater, the modern equivalent of a Cessna 172-type aircraft.  The aircraft really is made of glass, although it's glass reinforced plastic, or "fiberglass."  

The cockpit instruments mostly appear on two flat-panel displays instead of using the old-style gauges - thus a "glass cockpit."  While a licensed pilot probably could just jump in and use a glass cockpit, it's worth taking time to learn to use it properly, largely because it's got so many capabilities and you have to learn where to find them - it's a bit like trying to learn Microsoft Excel while flying the plane!  

Handling-wise, the DA-40's handling is much more crisp than that of the old Cessnas and Pipers, in my opinion, although I found the controls grew a little heavy in cruise, especially in roll.  The Tiger and the Debonair remain the best-handling four-seat aircraft I've flown, I'd have to say. One thing that's striking is that the lift slope of that high aspect ratio wing is much steeper than in the older designs, so the aircraft appears to "levitate" on takeoff in an almost level attitude, and pitch attitude isn't especially helpful for airspeed control in the landing approach - you need the ASI.  

The visibility from the DA-40 is superb, and of course it's new, so you don't have to apologize to passengers for the condition of the aircraft.  The passengers even get their own separate entry door at the back, instead of climbing in through the front door and over the seats, as in the Cessna/Piper days.  Very nice.

I first read about the Falco when I was about 15.  It sounded to me like the best airplane in the world. That may be close to the truth.  

A friend owns one, and he was good enough to let me check out in it and take it on a cross-country or two, with my longest run in it a multi-leg trip to Northern California. The Falco looks like a Ferrari with wings. That's about how it handles, too. It reacts - fast - when you move the stick.  The controls are well-harmonized, but sen-si-tive! Unlike the Cessna or Piper, you do not want to manhandle the controls in this airplane; you barely want to move them at all. Test pilots describe the handling as "fighter-like," and in fact, a (larger) derivative of the airplane, the SF-260, actually is a light fighter plane! 

I loved it! I had been concerned that something as sensitive as this might be tricky to fly, but I found it's actually easier to fly something that does exactly what you want it to do, and does it right away. I haven't done a lot of instrument flying in it - people say that's harder - but certainly I feel much happier with a quick-responding aircraft than with one where I wonder if the controls are connected!

Well, if we're moving up the performance chain, why stop at the Beechcraft?  This is a Fouga Magister, a jet trainer and light ground attack fighter from France.  A friend of mine bought it, and we took it to Canada and back on a nice long cross-country! Unfortunately, since it has two turbine engines, I don't have the appropriate pilot ratings to log time in it.  So I got to try the controls and fly some rolls but otherwise it was just a great experience to have had.  It was sort of the opposite to the Katana: insanely fast, very easy and quick to roll, but quite heavy in pitch. 

The whole point of an instrument rating is to use airplanes as transportation. This calls for something faster than the Cessna. Enter... the Beechcraft Debonair, which is basically identical to the better-known Bonanza. The FAA considers this both a "high-performance aircraft" and a "complex aircraft," so I received endorsements for both as a result of flying this machine. 

On my first walk-around I noticed that everything about the aircraft seemed "solid," as if built for military service. There was no slop in the controls, which felt solid and smooth - probably pushrods and ball bearings!  

For such a big machine, it wasn't at all spacious inside, to my surprise, and I did not care for the complicated fuel system, which was an exception to the otherwise beautiful engineering. 

This airplane was an eye-opener. It was fast, around 165 knots (190 mph), and it handled like you'd want an airplane to handle; someone at Beech knew what they were doing in that department. 

Stalls were interesting, compared to the Cessnas and Pipers I knew, because the recovery procedure for a simple stall was to add power and hold the nose above the horizon while the aircraft powered out of the stall! 

The airplane called for aggressiveness if you lost an engine in the airport traffic pattern, as I discovered when we simulated that, because best glide speed was higher than the speed for downwind in the traffic pattern, so we needed to dive for speed after losing the engine, which left us much lower than I'd have thought, very quickly. Best to fly the downwind fairly close in! 

Flying this airplane spoiled me for lesser airplanes forever! Gee, I thought, for the price of a fairly nice Tiger one might be able to acquire an older Debonair... The photo was taken inside the hangar.  I should have taken one outside.  Pretty aircraft!

While in San Diego I finally got around to my instrument rating. Since the club had a fleet of Cessna 172s, I trained in them. These airplanes are very popular; I would guess that a healthy majority of the world's fixed-wing pilots have flown one. They can haul 4 people and some bags in no great hurry, at relatively modest cost, and the folks in the back actually have decent legroom. 

Personally, I have never liked 'em and probably never will. Despite having an uncomfortably narrow cabin only 40 inches wide, they're not speed machines - the Tiger, which looks as sleek as a Yugo, will outrun a C-172 by 15-20 knots. I don't like the poor visibility, I don't care for the inevitably cracked plastic interior, and in particular I hate the controls, which are set up to be very insensitive, so much so that they sometimes scare me when I wonder if the ailerons are still connected to the yoke!. To show you what I mean,here's a flight training video from Sporty's, shot inside a C-172 - go to about the 2:15 mark and watch how much the pilot swings the yoke around and how little effect it has. (And note the poor visibility over the nose, too.) I don't get the appeal of these planes. In fairness, I got my instrument ticket in this one - so, it wasn't all bad!

When I moved to San Diego, the club there had a Grumman Tiger, so I checked out in it. I loved it! That particular one had seen better days, but it had light, crisp handling, it was a good 15 knots faster than the Cherokee on the same power, it had remarkably good forward visibility in the cruise, it had the fighter-pilot-style sliding canopy (which - how cool is this? - you could open in flight!)... 

I flew it only once, but I thought "if I ever buy a plane, this may be what I'm looking for..." 

Again, I didn't get a photo of it, so here's a publicity shot.  They manufactured them for a time in the early 2000s, so you can buy one fairly new, but they're not cheap, I'm afraid. 

I checked out in one of these at El Monte airport in 1994. It was the cutest little training aircraft I'd ever seen!  It had a little Rotax engine that sounded incredibly smooth compared to the familiar Lycomings. The visibility was fabulous, the interiors were new and clean, it had a stick instead of a yoke, like a proper airplane should... Unfortunately, the little Rotax wasn't very powerful, and the airplane was relatively heavy, so useful load was limited; and, like most trainers, it wasn't fast (later models used a bigger engine and solved both problems). I found the control forces were unbalanced, with light pitch and far-too-heavy roll. And I couldn't help wondering what would happen if the rear-hinged canopy should come unlatched in flight (presumably, something really, really bad!) Less dramatic, but of everyday importance, is the fact that the aft-hinged canopy cannot be left "cracked" open to taxi, as the propwash would be right into the occupants' faces and would tend to blow the canopy open - a real drawback in hot climates like SoCal. Still, I liked the little airplane!  (I never got a picture of it; this is a publicity shot.)

After settling in to California, I resumed flying and checked out in this Piper Cherokee - and more or less abandoned Cessnas, rarely flying them again until I worked on my instrument rating (when the easy availability of the Cessna 172s won the day). It would be easy to prefer the Cessna 172: the Cessna has two doors, the Cherokee only one (on the passenger side); the rear seats are roomier in the Cessna; and in turbulence the Cessna provides a somewhat better ride.  Although the handling of the Cherokee is better, the control linkages still tend to be quite sloppy.  The speeds are very similar, although the Cherokee may have a slight advantage.  The Cherokee, too, has the brittle plastic interior.  And yet... the Cherokee has a low wing.  I could see when I turned.  Forward visibility was better.  There was no roof on the world.  I felt liberated.  Real airplanes have the wings on the bottom!

One more early flying photo - this is Cork city, taken from the west as I returned to the airport from one of my relatively rare flights to the north.  Mostly we flew south, as the harbors along the coast provided lots of landmarks to help keep from getting lost, while to the north was nothing but hundreds of miles of patchwork, identical-looking green fields!  You can see the bridges across the River Lee in the middle of the city quite clearly in this photo.

Hey, I was flying!  And so I was off, cut loose to fly in the vicinity of Cork airport (we had no radio navigation equipment, so the instruction was "take the map, don't go too far, and try not to get lost!") to build up flight hours.  I could barely believe that I was now up in the airplane, not the one on the ground looking up at it, and the sight of familiar places from this new perspective was strange indeed - nothing looked like I thought it would!  So I took some photos.  Most of them were bland indeed - green fields - and the photos have degraded with age.  Still, this one of Kinsale harbor isn't too bad. (The line across the picture is the wing strut.)  The town is in the lower right corner, and the light-colored snowflake-shape on the peninsula toward the upper left is James' Fort.

My first job after college was in Cork, on the south coast of Ireland.  There, at the Hibernian Flying Club, I started taking flying lessons in a Cessna 152, seen in this photo. 

Right up front: I don't like Cessnas.  That said, they were wildly successful, and for good reason.  They are simple and relatively cheap, and with fairly straightforward handling are considered excellent training aircraft.  Passengers like the high wing, which allows them to look down.  As a pilot, I did appreciate the low landing speeds possible in a C-152.

Why do I lack enthusiasm for Cessnas?  The ones I've flown had mushy controls; the interiors featured lots of brittle plastic that was invariably falling apart, which put me off taking friends flying (typical question when they saw the interior - "Is this thing safe?"). The top of the side window was below eye level, so I had to stoop to see out to the side, and those high wings blocked the view in turns and gave me a claustrophobic feeling of being roofed-in. And they were slow; for practical purposes it was often faster to travel by car!

With about 19 hours of airtime I returned to Kilkenny and checked out in a Morane Rallye like the one I'd first flown as a pre-teen. I liked it much better. Oh, sure, its interior was a bit ratty too, and it was (incredibly!) even slower, but it had a proper stick (instead of a yoke), and the stick produced immediate response, and the airplane had awesome visibility out of that huge canopy (and over the low nose, too). I'd had an insight: I preferred low wings.

As a kid in the 1980s I really couldn't afford to pay for nearly enough 10-minute flights to actually learn very much.  I turned my attention to the cheaper pursuit of model airplane flying - but couldn't afford radio controlled models, either!  I flew free flight models (no controls - just launch it and watch) and later control-line models, where the model flew in circles around the pilot on the end of a pair of very thin 50ft long steel wires that provided pitch control.  With the control line models it was possible to climb and dive and, with some of them, to do loops and fly upside-down. Of course, the pilot ran the risk of becoming quite dizzy! 

Here are two of them I built during my teen years. 

With radio control now so affordable, free flight and control line models are only rarely seen today.

From about age 12 and through my teens I used to hang out at the local airport and try to get rides in the planes.  I tried to be helpful by operating the control tower! This is one of the two planes that were based at Kilkenny airport. It's a Morane Rallye, with a 100hp engine.  This particular one was the first light airplane I ever flew; I paid good money - IR£3.90 - for a 10-minute flight at age 12, and handled the controls as I flew over my school.  I walked on air for the entire week afterwards!  (Come on, what kid wouldn't love that?) About 11 years later, or so, I came back and got checked out in one of these, a sister aircraft registered EI-AUE.

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