Last Tuesday I was minding my own business, trying to sell a website to the Gallatin Airport Authority (doesn’t that have a nice ring to it?) down in Bellgrade, Montana. The airport, BZN, is the main entrance point for Bozeman and the Big Sky resort located around those parts. So after my meeting, I saw a place called Summit Aviation that had a hanger and everything, so I decided what the hell. They need a new website too.

So I was schmozing with the lady at the front desk when I noticed a plane outside that looked like this:

Aparently Summit Aviation has all new aircraft that are manufactured by Diamond Aircraft Industries. These Diamonds are just great. Previously I had taken a ride in a Cessna 152 and it wasn’t all that amazing. I mean, I loved flying but the plane was very small and cramped for someone as tall as I am and was just a little rickety. I had real trouble reaching the peddles correctly and the visibility is less than ideal. I mean the thing rolled off the assembly line about 35 years ago. There is a little dust on the gauges if you know what I mean. It is a little scary to ride around in, even though you know it is all kept up to date.

So before I know it, the lady has talked me into an introductory flight in a Diamond DA20 Eclipse. It has a 125 horsepower engine which isn’t bad and it cruises at about 130 knots which is great for such a small plane. The other nice flight characteristics is that it climbs at 1,000 feet/minute which is about twice that of any of the older Cessnas. That makes a huge difference. When we took off he rotated at about 50 knots and the plane just jumped off the ground. It was great. It also has a glide ratio of about 14 to 1 which is extremely impressive. That means the thing can go 14 feet forward for every 1 foot of elevation lost while it is gliding. You can imagine in an engine out situation how important all those extra feet come into play. For comparison, the Cessna 152 has a glide ratio of 7 to 1 which is more like an, oh god, we are falling ratio.

So we took off and it was a brilliant day around BZN. I overheard an “experimental jet” talking to the tower as we were taxi’ing, and it turns out that someone has a T-33 that they were firing up. That is a 2 place jet trainer that was used by the air-force. I never got to see it however and pretty soon we were airborne in the little DA20. The view of Bozeman was extremely impressive. The Gallatin valley is just amazing from the air. You could see the Spanish Peaks off in the distance along with so many other mountain ranges and valleys.

Once the pilot handed off the controls to me the first thing I did was to pull back on the stick (oh yes that is another thing, these Diamonds use a flight stick rather than a yoke) and watched the airspeed bleed off until we were down to about 50 knots and then he pushed the nose back down and told me not to stall out the plane, which is what I was trying to do, mainly because I haven’t done it before. So I settled for just doing some turns and whatnot and talking about how much better the canopy view is from a Diamond as opposed to a high wing plane such as a Cessna. I then asked the pilot what this plane could do so he did a “wing over” which is where you bring the plane up into an almost stall and then roll it over with the rudder. It was pretty exciting. I was a little worried at the apex and so I shot a look of concern to the pilot who exclaimed- don’t worry I have done this lots of times, which actually didn’t reassure me all that much that what we were doing was safe. It all turned out for the best though, and pretty soon I pushed the nose down and banked north towards BZN, hitting about 140 knots and trying to stay on course by using the nifty little GPS avionics system.

The only problem now is that I want to fly more and there is no company in Missoula that has a Diamond. Such a shame. I think people who want to fly really have to want it when they start going up in older planes. These new airplanes are just so much better, I think many more people would be enticed to get licensed if it was in a Diamond. So perhaps I will have to convince one of the companies here to get a Diamond. They should. I will probably try to sell em a website as well.