Sunday, August 10, 2008

Discovery of the Ultralight - Fall 2007

For the last several years I have periodically searched for used planes on Google. I was always surprised at the price of a 30 to 40 year old bright orange plane with shag carpeting. Being the fiscally prudent (cheap) person that I am, I thought owning a plane would be out of my financial comfort range.

Then my husband came across an article in the Globe and Mail on Ultra Lights. These planes seemed to be perfect for my usage. They are small, low maintenance, economical and I would only need an Ultra Light pilot license to fly one. I was told through the grape vine (turned out to be not such a reliable source) that I would only need ten hours of flying time and I would have an Ultralight pilot’s license.

After some pondering, I determined that I wanted a two person plane with floats. The majority of my family lives approximately 275 miles from my home and I thought it would be great to be able to make the occasional flight to visit family versus the four and a half hour drive that has become routine. I was not naïve about the limitations of flying the plane in bad weather but rationalized that even if I could fly every third trip it would be great. Visualizing landing on the St. John River in front of my sister’s house was also fun.

After some checking around, I came in contact with a Challenger dealer in my area. After some discussion about what I wanted in a plane, the Challenger rep thought that his plane might be a fit and offered to take me for test flight. He would give me a call when the weather was good on a weekend and we could go up for a flight. I waited for the call.

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