Atmospheric Flight

So, being stuck out in hisec I decided to refresh my atmospheric flight skills. Handily I had been shopping in Jita and the best Temperate planet I know for atmospheric flight has to be New Caldari Prime which, funnily enough, is in the New Caldari system right next door to Jita.

Small Blue Marble

It was relatively trivial to hire myself a small aircraft for my little challenge. I registered a little surprise at a capsuleer booking such low-tech transportation, but I guess that's only to be expected. I also assume I was grossly overcharged but the extra cost probably means more to the owner of the aircraft than me so that is also not a problem.

Once on board the airplane I had to undertake a series of manual checks. I mean, I'm not in a pod so if this baby goes down it's probably going to hurt... or worse. Everything seemed to check out fine which is what I would expect when paying good money to hire something All that was left was for me to taxi to the runway and take this ship, sorry, plane up into the air.

I really enjoy the extra mental challenge required by having to balance real forces against each other. In my Tengu I pretty much point and click where I want to go (mentally, of course). In the aeroplane I have much more to consider: speed, altitude, attitude, am I upside down?! There actually feels like some skill is involved in just flying this thing. I would dread to think of the extra workload required to do all that whilst also getting involved in combat. Now that would be some challenge, eh?

Clearly I survived my little jolly otherwise I wouldn't be regaling you with this tale, but I'll leave you with the following set of pictures to ponder just how I managed it. Now, who want's to try this in a Rifter?