August 2014
Every summer my family has a reunion in Hawaii, where my Aunt Claire and Uncle John live. This year, I was lucky to have an opportunity to take flying lessons at The Right Flight School, which is based at Honolulu International Airport (HNL).
TRFS was started years ago by Grant Lam, a former Huey and Cobra helicopter pilot in the U.S. Marine Corps. Taking lessons at TRFS was a great experience for me because not only did I get to fly in Hawaii, I got to try the Cessna 172, the most common training plane in the United States. The 172 is very similar to my usual trainer, a Piper Warrior II, the main difference being that it is a “high-wing” design. The high wing changes the flying characteristics a bit, notably on landings (the plane doesn’t “like” to land).
Flying conditions in Hawaii can be unpredictable: the winds are often gusty and the mountain ranges create strong vertical drafts. Also, HNL is designated Class Bravo airspace and handles many commercial flights from all over Asia and the United States. It’s a very busy airport.
HNL has four runways, two of which are designated for general aviation. During my sessions, we always turned right onto the Charlie taxiway and then left onto the Foxtrot intersection to take off on either 4L or 4R (airport diagram below). After takeoff, we followed Highway 201 which runs basically northwest. H201 intersects with H1 near Aloha Stadium, and H1 leads west into the practice area. The practice area is over farmland, just south of Schofield Barracks. This was a perfect place to practice S-turns across a road and turns around a point (we used a big water tank). After our exercises here we again followed H1 southwest to Kalaeloa Airport (HJR). HJR is located at the southwest corner of Oahu; it was originally a military airfield and converted to joint civilian and military use in 1999.
I did 12 touch-and-gos at HJR, using both runways (4L and 4R) and flying the base leg from both directions. (The base leg is the second-to-last leg of a landing pattern, right before the “final approach.”) Some landings were better than others, but I learned something from each one – especially the rough ones! It takes a lot of practice to coordinate pitch, power, yaw, descent rate and flare. One very useful mental image that my instructor Doug gave me was “flying down the runway.” This means keeping the plane just a few feet above the ground for as long as possible, with power at idle, basically allowing the aircraft to glide gently to a touchdown. There is no need to force a small plane down onto the runway, and a hard or crooked landing is really uncomfortable.
We passed Pearl Harbor on the way back to HNL. The USS Arizona Memorial was clearly visible, even the outline of the ship underwater.
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The best part of my experience in Hawaii was meeting Jeremy and Doug, my instructors at TRFS, and Grant Lam himself. Jeremy and Doug were great teachers and I hope to see them again next year. Grant is super nice and showed us his “baby” – a really cool open-cockpit Starduster biplane that he loves to fly for fun. He invited me to go up in it with him next time!
Click here to see the Hawaii photos and videos.
– Garrett C.
At HNL I spotted a Bellanca CH-300, Hawaiian Airlines’ first airplane, dating back to 1929. Here is a really cool video of it:
