- Hello, kids.

This is Steven Youngblood at North Little Rock Air, and we got Austin with us today.

We're going to be discussing the airplane and how it flies, how we stay safe, different things that we check before we take off, and then how fun it is to fly.

So let's take a look, Austin.

You want to take a look at the airplane?

- Yeah.

- All right.

So the first two things that we check on the airplane are the kind of the lifeblood of the airplane.

We've got fuel that we want to check quality and quantity.

And we're going to check the oil, and check the quality and quantity of the oil.

(upbeat music) And we want to check our propeller blade, make sure there's not any nicks or cracks in the propeller on the front leading edge there.

We also want to look inside here to make sure there's not any bird's nests.

We have a gascolater here, which is the last fuel filter before it goes to the engine.

And we're going to check that as well to make sure there's no water or contamination in the fuel.

All right, so Austin, we have what we call flaps here, and the flaps, actually, ducks use something like a flap.

When they're coming in for landing into a pond, they tuck their wings down.

What they're trying to do is touch down the water as slow as possible.

Well, that's what we do with the airplane is we introduce flaps as we're coming in for landing, and that helps us come down with a real controlled landing.

The fuselage is what we call the body of the airplane.

And then we have a elevator.

The elevator on an airplane, when it pitches up like that, it causes the tail to go down, which causes the nose of the airplane to go up.

If we want to descend, if we want to go down, then we push our yoke in towards the instrument panel, and it's going to tilt it down like this.

It's going to bring the tail up, which pushes the nose down and allows us to go down.

If we're trying to hold an altitude, we just move this back and forth a little bit to make try to hold our altitude as we're flying along.

This is the rudder, and we control the rudder with our pedals on the floor.

- [Austin] Okay.

- It assists in turning in the appropriate direction.

And now, we're ready to get into the airplane.

You want to get in the airplane?

- [Austin] Yeah.

- All right.

Go ahead and get in the airplane.

All right Austin, so to start the airplane, we're going to turn on the master switch that turns the electricity on.

Got the beacon on already.

And the avionics are off.

We're going to turn the mags on, and we're going to say "Clear prop!"

So, Austin, are you ready to start it?

- Yeah.

- Okay.

Push it now.

Yeah.

(engine revving) There you go.

You started an airplane.

(upbeat music) So now, we're doing our run-up.

So we're going to to put our foot on the brakes.

We're going to to add full power and check our instrument gauges, our engine gauges.

And they're all three green, so we release our brakes.

We neutralize our controls to minimize the drag.

We're going to look down at the end of the runway to keep ourselves centered on the runway.

Once we're clear of the trees, we're going to go ahead and let our flaps out slowly.

(upbeat music) (engine revving) At this point, we do our checklist and turn off our fuel pump, make sure the fuel pressure's good.

Amazing perspective from up above.

You get to see beautiful landscapes, a beautiful picture, every time you fly.

Some of the safety things that are incorporated into airplanes, they're designed to have a positive stability, so they're going to try to return back into a normal configuration if you get disrupted, either an extreme bank or a pitch.

The airplane wants to try to get back to a healthier orientation.

In regards to other traffic, the FAA, the governing agency, put in place requirements for annual inspections for airplanes and regular inspections on the airplanes to make sure that maintenance is done.

On our approach.

We're going to bring this in, nice and smooth.

(upbeat music) Well, Austin, what did you think today about the flight?

- It was really fun.

- Yeah.

Did you learn a lot about airplanes?

- Yep.

- Awesome.

You going to to come back sometime and fly with us?

- Yeah.

- All right.

Well, appreciate it kids.

We look forward to seeing you out here sometime and flying with us.