Pegasus Flight School (Phgasos pthsh hcoleio) Part 2

Pegasus Flight School (Pegasos ptisi scholeio)

Part 2

“Most of this,” Pegasus says to me in soft voice, “will come to you quite naturally as I know you have ridden many non-winged horses before. On the ground the signals are just the same. However, in the air there are a few changes you need to be aware of. Since we are now dealing with three dimensional motion, the commands change slightly. Pulling on the reins on either side signals me to bank in that direction. A leg pressing is a request to yaw away from that leg. This isn’t dissimilar to the way you ride non-winged horses. The way you use your body weight is very different and can take some getting used to. Leaning back doesn’t mean stop, it means climb, likewise, leaning forward means dive. Both legs means go faster and finally a slight tension on both reins means slow down. If you let go of the reins I will take over and try my best to follow other cues for banking. Slightly leaning in either direction will alert me that you want to bank in that direction. The best turns you can do will be in a bank with a slight outside leg applied, and leaning back slightly to apply some lift. A slight yaw into the turn will make the bank very tight and keep your weight centered on my back. The positive lift in the bank changes the vector of lift which further increases the rate of turn and holds you firmly in place. If done right, I can literally turn around in the length of one wingspan. Handy if you are fighting monsters that ! Lifting up on both reins is a request to swell lowering both reins low is to sink. Got all of that?” Pegasus smirks at me obviously knowing that it is a lot to take in at the first sitting, but also knowing, or hoping that I will get the hang of it shortly.

“Ready? Put your goggles on then!” Pegasus chuckles to me, knowing that I will be quite glad I had them on later, “They keep the bugs out of your eyes, as well as the cold wind. So, just drop the rains and hold on TIGHT………...”

Turning his body he points into the direction of the wind, looking into the direction a very long length of clear and level field ahead. “Were going to do a long field take off. Its harder on me to do this, but since this is our first flight, it is the most comfortable for you. The transition is smooth between ground and air and isn’t met with as much contempt as a ‘leaping’, performing a ‘cliff dive’ or a ‘perch jumping’ take off. Most people panic with those the first time. But there again, I know you’ve jumped non-winged horses off banks across country, right?”

Pegasus giggles playfully and waits for me to get the goggles in place and grasp a firm hold of his mane. He takes a few steps, his forelegs popping up and down like in a walking horse gait as he begins to move forward steadily. Slowly Pegasus increases his speed ; walking, trotting, and finally cantering. Nothing feels unusual about this, it's familiar and relaxing. Slowly his wings spread from his body, I can feel the muscles tense through my seat as they stretch outwards, the wind beginning to swirl and blow about us. Speeding up his canter, the familiar three beat rhythm changes to the four beat of a slow gallop. Pegasus’s head and neck gracefully rises up and down in time with his gallop marking the beginning and ending of each four beat group.

“Now with the wind whistling around, you may have difficulty hearing me” he shouts, “so listen carefully, OK ?” The feathers on his wings that were previously standing and blowing about randomly are now slowly laying down flat as he travels faster and faster. Reaching the limit of speed that his legs can carry him on the ground, Pegasus pulls his wings forward and quickly flaps them backwards with a sound like a dull ‘flap!’ He returns his wings back to the outstretched position and looks back at me.

“You may feel your belly become a bit queasy now, don’t worry about this” he shouts again. “That’s a normal sensation which you will get used to”. His forelegs lift off the ground for a moment and then touch the ground again almost like a horse doing a very small jump. Snapping his wings back a second and then a third time, I feel his speed increase further, his body hopping through the air like a gazelle. It would be very difficult to sit to if I wasn’t so used to a normal horse when it’s bucking !

His wings flap again, this time there is no lurching, just a slight pressure as I am forced down tighter into his back. Pegasus gives me a playful squeal, his wings fluttering quickly as the ground seems to lower away from me as his body turns upwards towards the sky. His wings flap quickly now, just like a birds that just jumped from limb of a tree. He continues his climb and increases his speed. The ground seems to move a bit faster, but it doesn’t seem to move as fast as I thought it would. As I look down at the buildings, ponds and trees below, each of them is in complete detail and giving me the illusion that I could literally reach down and touch them. Never the less, I know I am much higher than that, and any fall from this height would be very bad indeed.

“Does it make it look more or less real?” Pegasus asks, knowing that that even he on occasions doesn’t believe what he sees when he is this low, the features of the ground appearing almost cartoon like. On other occasions, the details he sees is his affirmation that things are truly real and pure.

Stretching his wings out completely at his sides, the wind roaring beneath them and holding them straight, I for the first time get to see how large they truly are. All the feathers laying perfectly flat in the slipstream, they give his wings the appearance of being completely solid. Feeling comfortable with his current altitude and speed, I notice Pegasus is mostly gliding, his wings flap only on a few occasions to maintain his height.

“Ok back there ?” Pegasus asks, obviously checking on me to make sure I am OK with handling the strange sensations of being in flight. “For any creature that has always had connections to the ground, the first transition to flight can be truly unnerving. Lets get through the boring stuff and I will take you on a ride and show you a few things that I find endearing and am sure you will also enjoy.”

“Go ahead and take the reins. Don’t worry, we will run in AP-Assist so nothing bad will happen. This is probably where we will do most of our work. I will let you push me to the limits, but I wont let either you or I get hurt by it. I may be a bit unforgiving right now, but you are learning and I want you to see how many things you have to keep track of in order to fly gracefully.”

As I grab a hold of the reins, Pegasus continues talking, “At this speed, we can still just talk to each other, however, the faster we go, the more I will be unable able to hear you. The wind will carry my voice back to you, but unless you are screaming I wont hear a thing. If the ride gets too bad and you need me to stop, drop the rains and grab a hold of my mane. I will return to straight and level flight as soon as possible. This reaction was trained into me in the days of old where people fought from my back. A weapon normally requires two hands and they needed a stable platform to shoot from, rather like the way a modern helicopter is used now. Now we use this reaction if the pilot is getting vertigo and needing to see the horizon not moving about. You will get used to the sensation the more you fly.”

Pegasus flaps his wings in long full strokes, the wings cupping slightly as he pulls them backwards through the air, looking like a swimmer in water propelling themselves about. “Don’t believe your eyes,” he adds. “While the ground and heavens are real, we are not part of either of them. We are in-between them. Watch them move about us and use them as a reference, but always remember that we are not part of it. We are isolated up here.” Pegasus flaps his wings a few more times, his hind legs slowly moving backwards to trail behind his body, letting the air rushing beneath his belly lift his hind quarters and tail just like the tail of a aircraft.

“Lets start with the most misunderstood vector in flight, the yaw.” Pegasus takes a deep breath, his wings curling so that middle is pushed upwards a little more. “Take one of your legs, move it back slightly and lightly press inward as if you were asking me to take that lead in a canter. Pegasus waits till he feels my leg press against him and moves his own hind leg so the lift and drag become unbalanced. Slowly the ground spins around me giving me the sensation that I am at the center of a huge ships compass, watching the dial move beneath me.

“Very good! That was a reasonable amount of pressure, now in the other direction?” Pegasus returns to a neutral position and waits for my other leg to press inwards. The horizon stays completely flat in comparison to his wings before the world slowly spins in the other direction.

“Not too bad! A yaw is useful for making very small changes in direction over time. It keeps the world relatively flat with respect to us, but it is not a very efficient way to turn. There is a lot of drag involved with it though.” Pegasus’s wings quickly flutter, pulling the air faster past him as he lurches forward, accelerating to compensate for his previous maneuvers.

“The better way to turn is called the bank. When we bank, I will change the attack angle of one of my wings and cause it to generate more lift. That will try to turn us over completely if not corrected. Once we are no longer parallel to the ground, where is the lift? It is still right over my wings. So, we get pulled by the lift into a turn. Cool, eh? Go ahead and give it a try…”

Pegasus whickers happily as he feels me gently pull on his left rein, his head turning slightly before he begins to bank. Oddly, the world begins to rotate clockwise. I feel the weight in my seat increasing just as it did during the takeoff. It almost seems like the world is somehow connected on a shaft through the centerline of this flying horses body as it turns to the left about me. Pegasus’s wings still remain flat with respect to me as I slowly see the results of the bank; the horizon not only turned slightly clockwise as if I was leaning a bicycle or motorbike into a turn, but the ground is spinning just as it did with the yaw. However the increased sound of the wind rushing past my ears tells me we are going faster !

“You see? Were not loosing as much speed as we did with the yaw,” Pegasus squeals back to me. “Now change the direction !”

Feeling me change the slight pressure on his bridle change to the other side, Pegasus rolls out from the bank and turns in the other direction, the horizon looking like a see-saw as it now rotates counterclockwise. As expected, I begin to turn in the other direction, the buildings and tree’s seeming to come diagonally out from the top corner of my eye and disappear to the bottom.

Pegasus gives a soft laughs and rolls out of the bank, “Ok.. Lets talk about what you just felt. The world seemed to be turning around you, right ? But you weren’t moving all that much? There is a reason for this. First of all, my head and wings make a very good reference for your body. I don’t seem like I am moving because you are moving with me. Also, your own senses in your ears are telling you that gravity hasn’t moved. It was right beneath you just as it always was. There are some very complex reasons why this happens, but in short it is what we call banking turn coordination. I am doing that for you. What I am doing automatically, because of my experience, is pulling myself into a slight climb and also adding opposite yaw. This puts the center of our relative gravity right beneath us. I will show you what happens when I don’t do this on a much smaller scale.. Put the reins down now, but you MUST hold on tightly!”

The flying horse waits for me to put the reins down and take a firm grip of his mane. Slowly he turns into what feels like a 20 degree bank to the left, the sensation just as it was before.

“Ok.. Now, let me take out the yaw.” Pegasus centers his hind legs. Slowly I feel as if I am leaning to one side, one leg pulling hard against his downward side as I feel the centrifugal force of the turn trying to throw me sideways off his back!.

“Now I will remove the climb.”

I watch as the horizon visible between his ears raise slightly, and I instinctively grip tightly as I feel a sensation that not only am I going to be tossed from his back sideways, but also a stronger sensation that I will slide down his back and off his rump too!

Pegasus holds this uncoordinated bank for a few more seconds waiting to feel for that detached panic that every horse does right before the rider looses grip with their legs. Snapping the bank hard in the opposite direction, Pegasus climbs fast. His body seeming to rotate beneath me, centering itself between my legs again and then pressing hard into me. Slowly he rolls out of the bank and flies level for a few moments, flapping his wings to gain more speed while I recover myself from this somewhat frightening experience !.

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