We really lucked out getting Tony for a next door neighbor, here in Korea. We happened to meet him out front, on the day we moved in, before the moving truck even arrived. He greeted us warmly, welcoming us to the neighborhood. We could tell right from the start that he was a great guy and would be a fun neighbor to have! After little more than an introduction, he said to Jeff, “Hey, I run the simulator at the airfield. You should come with me after work some time and we’ll have fun for a couple of hours and I get to log hours when I take people. It’s great!”
Wide-eyed and hardly believing my ears, all I could think was, “No, me. Me!” My husband pointed to me and proudly said, “She’s the pilot!” Tony and I talked briefly about flying before parting. He’s a Black Hawk pilot, but also has about 80 hours in fixed wing. I too have about 80 hours in fixed wing, including 7 hours of Instrument training. Tony promised to take us to fly in the simulator and would let us know when he found an open time slot.
It was very hard to move away from my favorite airfield in Kansas, and the States all-together for that matter. We had to leave just four weeks after I got my Private Pilot’s license which I worked so hard to get. The Army just sent us to Korea only two months ago, one of the few countries, or maybe even the only one, that Active Duty Army families can be sent to where General Aviation doesn’t exist. Poor visibility in Korea due to Asian Dust, a seasonal sandstorm, also limits VFR flying. It’s heartbreaking to me that flight training and even flying, for the most part, has to wait. I already had to put my first career dream on the shelf, long term, because of our Army life, and now a second big dream of mine has to wait. Meeting Tony and learning of the opportunity to fly in a helicopter simulator gave me something to look forward to at a time when I really needed it.
A few weeks after meeting Tony, we went to fly in the simulator. I couldn’t believe how big it was! A UH-60 Black Hawk Simulator is something like a large metal box on hydraulic lifts which simulates the full effects and sensations of flying the actual aircraft. On the outside it looks nothing like a helicopter, but inside, the cockpit is fully equipped like a real Black Hawk. The screens display a virtual airfield and landscape. The graphics aren’t X-Box quality, but they accurately depict our local area, so we were able to virtually land at military airfields nearby.
Tony sat right seat as my daughter, Tony’s adult son, and I took turns in the left seat. He had me fly first. Looking at the instrument panel, some things were familiar to me, but there were many instruments and controls I had never seen, having never set foot in a helicopter before. When we “took off” from the virtual runway, I was grateful it was only a simulator because I had little idea how to control a helicopter. I soon got the hang of it as we did a couple of traffic patterns and then flew to another airfield to land.
Marin, my 11 year old daughter, went next. She did great! Having heard of some maneuvers that can be done in aerobatic airplanes, she wanted to know what a helicopter could do. Tony chuckled when Marin asked if they could do loops. He explained that helicopters don’t do loops. When she asked if they could do barrel rolls he laughed again and very kindly explained if a helicopter flew upside down it would corkscrew into the ground. I’m not sure how much of that she understood, but it sure gave us a good laugh!
Tony asked Marin where she would like to fly. She could go land at one of two airfields, on an aircraft carrier, or even in the Olympic Stadium! Heck, why not!? Of course, she wanted to land in the Olympic Stadium! That was fun. It certainly isn’t something we will ever get the chance to do in real life, but a virtual experience is more than good enough! Marin also enjoyed flying around and landing on the aircraft carrier.
Flying in the simulator was great, especially getting my daughter involved too!! Her hope of doing barrel rolls in a helicopter still cracks me up. And now, when I see helicopters land on our military installation, I almost feel like I was in that airspace recently, because in the simulator I did fly there!! To have had the sense of flying an aircraft again was a joy, a tender mercy from a God who knows how much I long to fly again.
