I thought for sure there was no way I was getting to sleep the night before, but, surprisingly, I slept like a baby. I awoke feeling calm and well rested. My only concern was about the weather. Ottawa, Canada, in mid-November, is usually windy, cloudy, wet and miserable. Not the best conditions in which to take a first flight.

But as I peaked outside, the fates had decided to be nice. It was a glorious day. Clear blue sky, only a mild breeze and quite warm for the season. Perfect conditions.

I ate a hurried breakfast, kissed my wife goodbye, grabbed my trusty bike and peddled the half hour trip to the local Flying club. I had given myself plenty of time and arrived about 20 minutes before the flight. I approached the dispatch desk and was greeted by the smiling face of one of the pilot instructors who was manning the phones.

I informed the dispatcher that I was there for my first flight. He asked the name of the instructor I was booked with, which I gave him. As the dispatcher was in the process of letting me know my instructor had not yet arrived (the flight was for 09:00), the instructor I had booked the flight with walked into the club house, also smiling.

You know you have a great job when everybody arrives to work with a giant smile on their face.

Ofter a 15 minute ground briefing, the instructor and I walked out to do the preflight on the Cessna C-150 I was booked for.

And there she was... the ugliest, oldest looking hunk of junk you can imagine. The paint was cracked and faded, the prop chipped and worn. The canopy glass was green tinted plastic that was almost opaque with age. I think there was actually duct tape on one of the struts.

I could hardly wait to fly it.

The instructor and I did our preflight walk around while he described the various systems. I had been in the air force for six years, so this was all very familiar to me, but I still listened intently as a Cessna is a very different aircraft from an F18. It wasn't long before we climbed into the aircraft. I was surprised by how small it was. There was no gap between the two narrow seats at all and two grown men could not sit side by side with out rubbing shoulders. It is one of those moments where you wonder if your antiperspirant is working and you smell OK.

Once inside and strapped in the little plane, I took a look around. The instrument panel was basic. There were few gauges, and a number of empty holes. It was made of some of the cheapest looking plastic I had seen. It reminded me of a very inexpensive car made in the seventies. But I did not care, I loved it. I was excited to even be in it.

We fired up the engine and the sound was incredible, but the vibration was more than I expected. This was one rough running engine. Not that surprising being a horizontally opposed 4 cylinder engine built in the early 70's. Modern engines use a variety of tricks to smooth them out and they do not vibrate anywhere near as much.

"OK," the instructor said, flipping through the pages of the checklist. "For this flight I will be doing the taking off and landing. Once we're airborne and level I will give you the controls."

While we were waiting for the engine to warm up and clearance from ground control, the instructor and I chatted a bit about my own experience with aircraft.I mentioned that I had been in the air force and was an avid flight sim enthusiast. He seemed surprised by my level of understanding. I liked him immediately. He was relaxed and confident, which made me feel relaxed and confident.

“First thing we need to do is...", he started to say as he was about to call ground control.

Being familiar with ground control procedures from my air force days, the radio calls were familiar and I knew what to do, so I filled in the rest of the answer.

The instructor looked at me for a moment and then smiled.

"Thats right". he said. He looked and sounded impressed which made me happy, as I wanted to look prepared. He pondered my face for a few moments and then said.

"OK, change of plan, here is what I want you to do. I want you to taxi to the runway. When you are lined up, increase the throttle to full and take off, we already have clearance. Climb at about 65 knots.

My heart leaped into my throat. I thought he was going to do the taking off and landing. He was now letting me take off? I was both flattered and scared, but I only said:

"Alright".

I eased the throttle out and inched the aircraft forward. The little plane turned easily with the brakes (you do not turn the yoke wheel – each rudder peddle has two axis, one for the rudder, and one for the brakes and the left and right brakes are activated independently of each other, which is how the aircraft is turned. The front wheel is simply a caster.)

I slowly taxied into position and began my takeoff run. Being conservative and having lots of runway I did not immediately apply maximum throttle as I was unsure if it should be run full out, so I asked. The instructor told me to take it to maximum, and soon the engine was screaming loudly, even through the sound deadening headset.

It seemed like we were airborne almost before we got rolling and soon we were climbing toward the open sky. I maintained my speed by adjusting the pitch of the plane, and kept the throttle wide open during the climb, and before I knew it we had gained our assigned altitude, and leveled off at two thousand feet. It was incredible to see my home city below me so close. I found my own street and was simply in awe of the view.

The instructor then called for clearance to enter the practice area west of the city. We were granted clearance and I then flew west for 10 minutes or so. The instructor talked about procedures for entering the restricted practice are and talked about the various airfields in the area in case of an emergency.

Once in the practice area the instructor then had me do a variety of coordinated turns and other simple maneuvers. For me this was all very exciting, but I can imagine for him it was rather routine.

After a short while, he then looked at me with a bit of a wry smile.

“Do you like roller coasters?” his voice cracked over the headset.

"I sure do", I replied.

"Cool. Give me the controls".

The next thing I new, we were in a steep dive and then pulling a hard 3 or 4G climbing curve. The G forced played on my body like I was a puppet. I was heavy, then I was light, I was looking at the world above me and then beside me... It was quite simply the most thrilling experience of my life.

"These planes are capable of light aerobatics", he yelled, "but the engine is so weak that you have to dive first to gather speed before you do anything as it does not have the power to do it from the level."

We were wearing headsets so yelling was unnecessary, but we were both enjoying ourselves immensely. We had in the period of less than half an hour build a feeling of mutual trust and rapport. I felt very comfortable with this pilot.

"OK" the instructor said and handed the controls back to me. "Head north over the river and toward the quarry. We will do some sight seeing, then return back to the airport for a landing.”

We flew over the quarry and near the range of hills we call the "Gatineaus", and I then turned back toward the airport. As we crossed back over the river, ATC contacted us with a proximity warning.

"Beech Duchess at 10:00 o'clock".

I heard the radio call and instinctively looked toward where we were told this other plane was, and spotted it almost immediately. I pointed to it and simply said "there".

The instructor again looked at me with surprise.

"Good eye," he said. I guess he assumed I would not understand the radio call. I was not actually sure it was us that the tower had radioed (I had by this time completely forgotten the aircrafts registration number), but knew it was a proximity warning so looked anyway.

As we approached the airport the instructor radioed for landing clearance, and then instructed me to turn to a heading about 90 degrees from the runway until we were even and drop to 1100 feet. I did as instructed and when we were next to the runway the instructor then told me to turn and descend at about 500 feet per minutes, at about 60 knots.

I kept waiting for him to take over the controls but he never did. "Oh cripes" I thought to myself, "is he going to let me land it too?".

"As you approach for final touchdown, remember to flair a bit to bleed off speed. I will handle the rudder and brakes, you do the rest, are you cool with that?"

"Uh.. OK, no problem", I said confidently. I was anything but confident... I was actually starting to feel great fear. My hear was pounding and my palms were beginning to sweat. But, I was also in such absolute heaven, I figured if now was my time to die, I was going to die happy while doing the most exciting thing I could ever do.

I felt the instructor briefly touch the controls only twice, near the end to bring the flair up a tad higher. I never felt him on the rudders and I actually did the braking as well. In a few moments we were taxing back to parking, chatting about MS flight simulator. Only at the very end, when we had to do some tight parking maneuvers did the instructor ever take the controls.

We stood in the bright morning sun while we went through the post flight check and debriefing. I was feeling like a man reborn. Life had changed for me in that one hour... changed forever.

It is hard to imagine ever capturing that feeling again, but recently something came across my path that did just that. A new flight simulator model of the old C 150 made by the team of Francois-Denis Guidée and Yves Franckart.

They have created a model that nearly duplicates all the visceral experiences of the real thing, down to the beat-up paint job and shaking, vibrating cabin.

This model brought back so many memories, with such clarity, that it inspired me to write this story/review.

This model is easily pay-ware quality in every way. While they claim its for FS9, it works nearly perfectly in FSX. So far I have noticed only one bug, and that is in the Attitude Indicator. It seems to spin out on right turns.

The package comes with a variety of models and paint schemes. Attention to detail is evident everywhere and overall execution is remarkably high quality. The quality does come with a bit of a FPS penalty, but given all the little details this model has, that was expected.

This is not much of a review, granted, but thats because you can see what I see in the screen shots. You can also fly it yourself, because the authors of the model have given it to us for free.

The model is for Microsoft Flight Simulator 2004 ( FS9 ) "A century of Flight", and Microsoft Flight Simulator X.

Incredible.

Go download it.

You will not be disappointed.