Last week I discovered a pretty sizeable aviation messageboard called Pilots Of America, and made a few posts introducing myself and contributing to conversations. They're a very knowledgeable and friendly bunch of people.

Last night I got a message from a girl on the board named Danielle who lives in New Orleans and just got her private pilot's license a few months ago. She invited me onto this web-based chat hosted by the messageboard, and it turned out there was another pilot there, Steve, who is also in the general area — about 100 miles north of here (which isn't all that much in an airplane).

Everyone raved about Steve's impressive piloting ability and the cool airplane he has (an IAR-823, a Romanian military trainer, one of only 41 in the country). Later in the conversation, I lamented that I had wanted to go flying the next day (today) since the weather was unexpectedly nice, but without advanced notice nobody would be there at the flight school to rent me a plane. Steve offered to fly down and pick me up and take me flying in his plane. Danielle suggested that she drive up and meet us at the airport. And suddenly, within the span of an hour or so, I had gone from meeting these people to planning to go flying with them. Friendly indeed.

I drove out to the Slidell airport this morning and met up with Steve and Danielle. He introduced us to his plane, answered some questions about its capabilities (Such as the 295-horsepower engine, the 5-G aerobatic capability, and the hardpoints under the wings for mounting bombs or gun pods for training), and we got in. He showed us how to fasten the four-point seat belts, and we got ready to set out.

Apparently fuel-injected airplane engines have a hard time starting again when they're hot, and sure enough he had some trouble getting it started. But that was fine, it just gave us a chance to wander around the hangar of the local mechanic and check out all the interesting planes he's got, like an Aircoupe from the WW2 era and an autogyro, probably the silliest-looking type of aircraft ever.

Finally, we tried again, and the plane started just fine, and off we went. I graciously let Danielle have the other front seat, and I sat in the back, which meant that she was the one who got to fly the plane when he let go of his stick and said, "OK, your plane." Aw, man. Stupid chivalry.

Still, it meant that I had plenty of time to take a bunch of pictures and enjoy the ride. Most of the gauges are still the original Romanian gauges, and so they still have writing in Cyrillic and airspeeds marked in km/h instead of knots. And I don't know what their reasoning was behind showing the ground in blue and the sky in brown on the attitude indicator (top center gauge). Maybe that "CNYCK"-looking word on the gauge means "This is backwards to be sure you're paying attention."

We spent about half an hour in the air and then headed back to the airport, Steve dropped us off (and kept the engine running, this time), we said thanks, and he flew off. It was fun. Not how I had expected to spend my Sunday morning. Danielle commented that next she and I should take a plane and fly up to visit Steve on his home turf, and I agreed. And just like that, I've got two new friends in the area.