Aerolite 103 Flight from South Carolina to Oshkosh 2023

what would you do for Adventure on your summer vacation at a very mature 14 year old high school student named Alina Scott she flew solo over a thousand miles from South Carolina to Oshkosh Wisconsin in a single seed ultralight aircraft to participate in the largest air show in the world air Venture Oshkosh so stay tuned to experience this young lady's incredible Adventure [Music] thank you thank you Lord yes [Music] [Applause] hi my name is Alina Scott and I flew from South Carolina to Wisconsin for Oshkosh this year I flew in ultralight 103 and I it it took me six days in total and then the rest of the days were just mosing around in hotels um in total I did about 41 hops from airport to airport and that's where my dad met me to fuel me up each time um typically I I would do 10 to 8 flights a day except there was one day where we did two because of bad weather but we were lucky enough to have very good weather while we were flying up here my dad was the pit like the pit stop crew he would have all the fuel the food the breakfast because we would normally wake up at like cracking on before the light the sun had even come up yet so we would be out there with headlights I would be walking around like a zombie because I could I was barely awake and then I would get flying and then that like sleepiness would go away immediately on my trip I saw many different views especially the sun rising the sun setting um I saw a lot of clouds mountains there's a lot of scenery in it but then there was also a lot of other weather things like turbulence that I had to fight and being not very experienced when I started turbulence was something that was a little bit nerve-wracking to deal with but as I kept flying turbulence wasn't something that really bothered me anymore but there was one point during my training where I would just do hops back and forth down the runway to get better better at um taking off and Landing overall the trip was very exciting it was uh interesting and there was a lot of um memories that I've gained from it and different skills that I've learned while flying I've also gained a sense of Independence when I'm flying because I'm the only one who is uh up there and no one can really tell me what to do I remember one time my dad told me you could go ahead and fly all the way to Myrtle Beach and I couldn't do anything because you're the one in command and that's one of the things that kind of like made me realize ah I'm on my own now because all he could do is drive after me and just worry that um worry that everything's okay or something's gone wrong there wasn't much he could do from the ground while I was flying and through this trip I realized that I kind of gained like a some sense of Independence because um there's many many different skills that I had to learn on my own like different techniques when Landing what was right with the airplane and what sounded wrong because I was I was the pilot in command aside from all the all the journey and the fun stuff that I learn or Independence and skills that I gained from this overall the airplane is just a fun thing to fly by itself as soon as I started flying it I got hooked on it and I just wanted to keep flying and flying and that's what made my flight from South Carolina to Wisconsin a more interesting one I had more patience than I thought I would because I got to see all the scenery the sun setting the sun rising clouds mountains but overall the this journey has been something that will help me with the rest of my flight career and it'll be something that helps me when I have to fly on my own and without a pit stop Crew That's following me behind my name is William Scott my uh my daughter Alina flew from South Carolina to Oshkosh this year we started the process of just taxiing around in the arrow like you know sitting in there making sure she's comfortable we talked about RPMs we assume we talked about aerodynamics every once in a while I would fly with her and my Cessna 150 to to talk about slow flight and talk about spins we alternated with the taxiing tests testing taxiing practice and the aerolite with other lessons about flying the the steps in the after you start taxing it's a it's a transition into the wheelie where you're you're holding back on the controls you're holding back full elevator in the up position until the nose wheel gets light then what we do is we position I position the arrow light in the attitude that is the I call it the climbing attitude and I have her sit in it when she's there and I took a zip tie on the uh this here and I positioned I positioned that zip tie that that's her that would be her Target attitude for the when when she's getting in a wheelie she wanted to Target that zip tie on the horizon once the wheel started coming up in the air the the rudder pedals still still controlled the directional the left right direction of the airplane but now is actually controlling it aerodynamically not through a wheel so she was simultaneously learning how to use the rudder and the elevator at the same time at the same time uh her her goal not just since it was not just full back because that would eventually just hit the tail wheel on the ground it was trying to Target that zip tie for the horizon so that she got comfortable with that and we kept on adding a couple hundred RPMs or 100 RPMs to the uh to the scenario we didn't talk about air speed at all at this point it was just all it was just about engine power Elena was very uh disciplined and listened to everything I said and so when she actually started getting Airborne she just started climbing you know it she she got into a ground effect so and she started using this little tugging technique to try to to get the airplane airborne and that helped her with the control so she was able to get up and the airplane would not naturally come down so we kept on adding RPMs and now she had the good sense to I probably just told her also nose down you know pushed to go into sort of a a cruise flight in the middle so she started making longer and longer hops nice um and as an aside all of these hops were in Dead Calm weather it was crack of dawn she got better and better at flying at low altitudes and she was able to fly hundreds of feet you know at at two or three feet off the ground then I could tell that she started to correct you know she started to correct with the Rudders and started to correct with the ailerons things that I didn't tell her but she just started naturally doing you know so she was figuring out a lot of interesting things along the way she was she was now starting to modulate the throttle based upon what she says I feel like I'm I'm I feel like I'm losing lift so she will nose down a little bit you know she says I'm too high so I'll pull back the throttle a little bit you know so so back and forth and back and forth she was starting to get the the higher than the buildings nearby you know she was probably 35 feet in the air we had a 2400 Feet 2 400 foot strip so you can imagine any airplane flying 35 feet in the air and managing to land on the other end of a 24-hour trip that you know that's getting pretty pretty uh pretty adventurous and and she was handling it just fine and so the next step was to was to keep going you know as it was to get out of the pattern and keep going so back into the Cessna 150 we went and we talked about like when you get out of the pattern here's where you're going to be we talked about this island over there that's a good place what happens if your engine quits so we we got up in the Cessna 150 and flew around over the Inland water area and talked about different like what ifs and what if and what if and um and she got a little nervous like do you think the engine is going to quit I said no no but I don't want I don't want to just start this conversation if the engine quits you know we we need to know you need to have at least a battle plan and we talked about sort of this this range that you can expect you know this angle even if there's the best landing spot that's beyond your gliding range don't even think it it exists because it's not you can't land there you can't you can't will yourself to land there one day she just took off and actually the neighbors had been listening and they all ran ran out because they were like whoa she didn't stop you know because they they had gotten used to her going back and forth and back and forth so they all rushed out to the end of the runway and I'm running out there you know sweat coming on because I'm nervous you know that uh you know that I this is the first time and I ran out on a dock that we have that took me out over the mud and I'm looking at her and there she is she's twirling around at you know 1500 feet or something like that um and now she just started practicing turns and you know 180s and 360s and you know just basic flight control stuff that she had learned a little bit of that in the Cessna 150 but um you know this is a different airplane and so she had to get she had to figure out how this one felt we then started I started we um I talked to her about an HSI a horizontal situation indicator which the Garmin 196 has a little HSI in it it also has a moving map but it has HSI I said you could navigate either which way you wanted to but uh she actually liked the HSI better so when she would fly up there I would say Okay type in myr you know which is Myrtle Beach and it's Northeast of us a little bit and she would circle around for a little bit and when when she had figured out where to go she would start flying in Northeast I said ah there you go there you go type in uh eyw and she would circle around and she starts pointing I said how long is it going to take you to get to Key West she says well it says the 13 13 and 40. what does that mean I said that means 13 hours you know you think you can make it she says no you know so we started adding in the idea of like looking at her instruments and seeing looking at her gauges and saying does this make any sense she knows she only has about an hour maybe maximum of two hours of endurance so what is she gonna you know she when when she was pointing to her myr she says well I could make it there Key West no we tried Oshkosh even she said it was 17 hours you know straight you know straight out we're working on an air-to-air refueling uh uh strategy for next year but I'm just I'm just joking but um then we went and um uh when she would rather been chit-chatting with her friends online I said no you gotta sit down and I showed her the flight plan that I come up with going sort of east north of uh Atlanta uh east of Chattanooga and then up through Kentucky Illinois and into Wisconsin and then we did a a piece where we just flew to Mount Pleasant you know which is four miles from our house so we flew to Mount Pleasant she lands there and there's like a twin uh a Navajo or something like that in a jet prop and you know a like a piper Meridian jet prop thing whatever that is and uh she's right between him getting back on the runway you know she's behind the jet prop and she says what I I said don't worry about it it'll be fine just wait a little wait a little time after that jet prop has left because it might be a little bumpy so she left and um flew back to our our home grass strip and that was our that was sort of our trial that the trial balloon for uh for our cross-country abilities right I guess it would be a 10 days prior to Oshkosh starting right you know um that morning she she took off and she left and um it was quite a it was quite an adventure you know that that uh that flight and so she would uh she would take off uh and she would invariably beat me there about by 15 to maybe even an hour in some cases so I then I would once I would get there we would discuss the next airport I'd fill her up with gas and and off to the next airport she'd go um so those morning those morning flights were picturesque but uh interesting too in some of the video I took I would watch that and I could see how the you know it was Pitch Black and then it was the Sun would rise while she's in route you know and that would make it kind of cool um um and then when we got to Fond du Lac uh up until then it was about kind of the same routine every time it wasn't it wasn't terribly different but Fond du Lac we were going to go into a towered airport and she had done that before so when she left Fond du Lac um uh included flew to Oshkosh again I was like well this is it you know here she's going and I just I I didn't know what to I had nothing else to say to her so unbeknownst to me that the just that just as she was about two miles outside of Oshkosh the muffler a a flange on the muffler she breaks off clean you know just breaks off and that it starts making all this noise and it's it's she's getting all nervous because well I didn't know this till afterwards um that you know it makes a different sound and she's like oh is the thing gonna blow up on me she doesn't know what's gonna happen it was just just barely made it to Oshkosh and when we got here um I had talked to uh Tim bogenhagen prior to her getting here so all the Oshkosh volunteers sort of gathered her up and wished her well welcomed her here and so forth but I think she was in a bit of shock you know when she got here because uh because she had just experienced this strange sound in the motor and she didn't know what was going on and they uh they they towed her up to um towed up to here but then thanks to these guys that uh project first flight they within like hours they picked up my muffler and welded it you know welded it fixed it and so now it's back in action and well that brings us to now I guess where she's flew a little bit a little bit yesterday but uh you know she's flown enough now here at Oshkosh that my nerves are settling down a little bit and um you know she's got it so I guess that's it [Music] foreign [Music] [Music] all right [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] seeing a lot of change been through a lot of days things are not the same as they were a year ago all be okay I'll move on each and every day the past is where it stays way back a year ago I've changed for the better this time I thought I would never be fine I strive just to say I'm alright and for the first time in a long time I'm all right a lot of change been through a lot of things are not the same as they were a year ago but I'll be okay I'll move on each and every day [Music] all right [Music] [Music] holding me back no more a lot of change a lot of pain things are not the same as they were a year ago [Music] [Music] thank you all right [Music] way back a year ago hey tell me again why you like this end of the field or maybe not or the other end of the field which one do you like the best because I'm more space and also the spotters the launchers are more they have the same view and normally when I'm coming in when I see the this launchers and they're not waving a paddle at me to stop and then I know like because we're talking here it's okay to land thank you if you enjoyed this video hit the like button subscribe if you haven't and as always I appreciate your comments a special thanks to Alina and William Scott for sharing their story until next time take care [Music] [Music] [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Music] [Music] thank you

Channel: WhitleyVideos

Views: 74,884

Keywords: Aerolite 103, Ultralight, Ultralight aircraft, uflyit.com, Airventure, EAA, Aerolite Experimental, Aerolite Experimental kit, Oshkosh 2023, Alina Oshkosh

Id: Xr593ilhKLY

Length: 23min 50sec (1430 seconds)

Published: Tue Aug 08 2023