I went off for college at 17. The girlfriend I met and dated was also 17. She was a young pilot with 110 hours solo. At spring break she ferried a new Cessna 172 Skyhawk with no instrumentation from Wichita back to her home in New Jersey. I rode along as we navigated VFR. I cold write a nice short story about that wild adventure with a beautiful young sweetheart.
Did the plane have autopilot?
“ferried a new Cessna 172 Skyhawk with no instrumentation”
I found out shortly after takeoff on my ferry flight home in a PA-22/108 it had no working airspeed indicator (and no GPS, etc., back then to give speed indication). And it was my first flight ever in a high wing. Just had to wing it on the landing to keep above stall speed since the feel was so different from my low-wing trainer.
My dad learned to hand fly a general aircraft from Vor to Vor back in the early 80’s. A few years later he bought a Loran. It worked great in the US, but went south when we entered some miles into Canada. The Loran equipment lost a triangulation station so he had to revert back to VOR flying until I figured out how to latch on to a different Loran station. I was ex military and had some recent experience at how the Loran system worked.