Take my breath away - it’s impossible not to arrive for your first flying lesson without that song from the soundtrack of Top Gun in your head.
Funfly Aerosports is Ireland's newest flying school and here I am, a taller, balder version of Top Gun’s ‘Maverick’, come to check out my flying ace credentials, even though I don’t even possess a current valid driving licence.
I haven’t even driven a car for about two years - a detail probably best not shared with my flying instructor.
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Funfly is currently based out of the National Skydiving Club at Clonbullogue Airfield near Edenderry in Co Laois. Clonbullogue is a cute mini-airport, replete with its own control tower and little hangars full of tiny, impeccably kept aircraft.
Hopefully, there will be no skydiving today, as the general idea is to stay inside the cockpit while you’re up there and to take off and land safely.
It is with some trepidation that I look forward to going up in the tiny Savannah aircraft with just about room for two on board, powered by the equivalent of a small car engine.
I can handle heights, depending on the context. Give me a vertiginous roller coaster any day, but don’t ask me to cross a rope bridge. I don’t have a fear of flying, just one of falling to my death from a couple of thousand feet.
Funfly was set up by Paddy O’Reilly, my instructor for the day, along with friends Mark Dwyer, Mark Brereton and Padraig Tyrell.
O’Reilly, 54, is also the club’s safety director, which is reassuring.
Between them, the team has about 30,000 hours of flying time, which is also reassuring.
“We fly about 2,000 hours per year. We get all sorts of people wanting to learn to fly,” O’Reilly tells me.
“We have 80 members and they are from all walks of life from bus drivers to older people who have it on their bucket list to learn how to fly an aircraft.
"We have had leaving cert students and we have had 75 year-olds.”
Most of the members are male, but O’Reilly says they have 12 women students at the moment, one of whom he says is the club’s best pilot.
Rookie pilots will go up with an instructor initially and build up to doing solo flights after about 10 to 20 hours of training.
Flying costs €140 per hour, but O’Reilly says it can work out a lot cheaper than at other flying schools, due to the fact there is little or no waiting time spent queueing to use the airstrip.
The instructors are all highly experienced in general aviation and some have flown with airlines, as well as flying helicopters, gyroplanes and on parachute jumps.
For those interested in taking their flying seriously, the school can offer a path towards a PPL (private pilots’ licence) or an LAPL (light aircraft pilots’ licence).
The club was established in 2019 to offer low-cost, high-quality aircraft and fun flying.
It received approval as an official training school in 2020 and now has a fleet of four of the tiny Savannah S planes, powered by the equivalent a small car engine.
These highly manoeuvrable aircraft cost about €80,000 each to buy or can be bought in kit form for about half that price.
Before I fly, I am required to join the club, so that I can be insured and I have to go through some safety instruction and learn all about the aircraft on the ground. They say every day is a school day but this seems like the equivalent to taking a degree as O’Reilly and his colleague Brereton go through various aspects of the aircraft, the rules of the air and safety protocols. I am beginning to have second thoughts, before O’Reilly assures me I don’t have to remember it all before the first flight.
Outside, O’Reilly demonstrates how light the aircraft is by dragging it out of the hangar by the nose cone towards the airfield where I am put through another series of safety procedures and shown the controls and dials inside the cockpit. There are a lot of them and I instantly forget what they are for.
There are two pedals, which do something or other and a throttle, as well as a joystick in the centre. We are strapped in and after a very short taxi, head off down the bumpy airfield. The bouncing does nothing for my nerves but the take-off run is mercifully short as the little plane seems to sort of leap up off the ground. That’s what the pedals are for then, it dawns on me.
“That’s the great thing about this little aircraft,” O’ Reilly tells me as we head skyward.
“You could land her nearly anywhere if you ran out of fuel.”
Later, teasing me, he adds: “Hopefully that won’t happen, because she glides really well too, so it wouldn’t be a problem,” which he illustrates by momentarily switching off the engine.
Truth be told though, I am not the slightest bit nervous. In fact I am having a perfectly relaxing time taking in the spectacular views over the Midlands as far as Mount Leinster to the south of us.
But my state of relaxation is short-lived. “You take her now,” O’Reilly says over the headset as he takes his hand off the joystick and the aircraft begins to lurch off to the left at a terrifying angle.
I quickly realise just how sensitive the joystick control is and do my best to follow his instruction to keep the nose pointed at the horizon. A terrifying exhilaration comes over me as I realise I really am flying a plane.
In my innocence, I hadn’t quite realised how much actual flying of planes a short flying lesson would involve.
After what seemed like the longest ever few minutes where I got to turn the craft a couple of times in order to avoid flying across a substantial wind farm, it was time to come in and O’Reilly rested back control of the aircraft, taking us down in one of the smoothest landings I have experienced.
There are some things you will try and only once. I thought this would be one of them, but to be honest, I can’t wait to get back in one of those things. As Maverick himself might say, “an aviator is not what you are, it’s who you are”.
See funfly.ie for more
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