Turbulence Tale

Posted on August 24, 2018 by admin

Wolf Creek Pass (way up on the great divide) behind me, I dropped the Robin’s egg blue Piper Warrior down into the loving arms of the San Luis Valley. The air was smooth, the hard part of the trip was behind me. I trimmed the plane for level hands-off flight, sat back, and pulled a Camel Hard Pack and a Zippo from the sleeve pocket of my flight jacket. I tapped a cancer stick free of the box, lit up, then snapped the lighter shut one-handed, enjoying the satisfying snap-clunksound of the Zippo as I exhaled a stream of blue-grey smoke towards the cabin roof.

Ain’t life grand? What a view. I inhaled deeply, the tip of the cigarette glowing bright orange for a moment, and scanned my instruments. What a lovely panel, midnight black with a bank of avionics that exceeded my net worth five times over. Enough dials, switches, and needles to make me feel like I was a full-grown adult flying a corporate jet, not a teenage boy in a four-seat put-put.

The next order of business was lunch. I tore open a bag of Fritos and positioned them on my lap. I was reaching for the can of Pepsi when Bam!

My seat belt dug into my gut. My head hit the ceiling. And a cloud of yellow Frito chips levitated out of the bag, dancing, suspended in air around my face like a swarm of giant mosquitos, turning and twisting as if in the zero gravity of space.

Then everything was deathly still. The plane calm. Fritos rained noiselessly down from the ceiling, bouncing off the throttle quad, the glare screen, and the empty copilot’s seat. Holy shit. I looked left. The left wing was still on. I looked right. The right wing was still on. Hand shaking, I gently took the yoke. Gentle bank left. Gentle bank right. Nose up. Nose down. Everything is working as it should. What the hell…?

Then I realized: I’d just had my first encounter with clear air turbulence, what pilots call a pot hole in the sky. It was just an angry patch of air in an otherwise friendly atmosphere. I’ve learned since, by experience, that these isolated butt-kickers pack a bigger wallop than the turbulence you get when the whole sky is in chaos, but I’m not sure why. It’s just one of those things.

I scooped the Fritos from the copilot’s seat into my mouth, and thought better of opening the can of Pepsi, just in case another pot hole was lurking ahead in the deep blue sky.

When I landed at KGXY, after slipping over the last bastion of the Rockies at La Veta Pass and flying IFR up Interstate 25, I parked at the furthest tiedown spot from the Imperial Aviation building so I could surreptitiously clean up the mess. Everybody smoked in their planes in those days. But Fritos? That was a no-no.

I thought I did a pretty good job, but about three days later one of the instructors stopped me on the ramp, “Hey, Wil, the weirdest thing happened the other day. I dropped one of the checklists on the floor when I was pre-flighting Eight Two Charlie and there was a ton of Fritolay chips under the pilot’s seat. You know anything about that?”

“Nope,” I lied with a straight face, “if I was going to have Fritos in the plane, I’d eat them, not pour them out on the carpet under the seat. But I do smoke in the plane all the time.”

“Yeah, yeah, well, we all do that,” said the instructor, snapping his Zippo shut one handed and blowing a stream of blue-grey smoke towards the flight line. His eyes narrowed as he studied the distant horizon, “Huh, I wonder where the heck those chips came from?”

First Solo

Posted on June 29, 2018 by admin

Confession: I don’t remember my first solo—even though every pilot is supposed to. The date is immortalized in my logbook, April the 23, 1982. As is the plane, N6633R, a Beach Sundowner, and the name of the instructor who trusted me no to kill myself: John F. Miller.

But the actual flight, which every pilot will tell you was such a powerful experience that they will never forget it, is a blank.

About all I can remember about that day is worrying about my shirt.

You see, there’s a tradition in aviation that your shirt is torn off your back after your first solo. Well, there useto be that tradition. With lady pilots on the rise, its been modified to a more civilized cutting off of your shirt tails instead. It basically symbolizes getting though by the skin of your teeth.

Anyway, my only memory of April 23^rdwas Miller telling me to pull to the side of the runway. Then, engine still running he opened the door and stepped out onto the wing. “What are you doing?” I asked him.

“Three times around the patch,” he told me, “you’re on your own.”

I was wearing my brand new—and far too expensive for my budget—tan Arrow pilot shirt, that I had just bought mail order through Sporty’s Pilot shop. I knew if I soloed, Miller would destroy the shirt. “No way,” I shouted over the idling engine, “this is a brand new shirt. Get back in the plane.”

I don’t remember how long we argued, with him crouched on the wing and me stubbornly refusing to solo, but eventually he promised to leave my @#%!&$ shirt alone if I’d just get the hell up in the air and solo the plane.

I could bring another shirt the next day for the ritual.

And so I did. Solo. And bring another shirt the next day. An ugly bright kelly green T-shirt I hated. Years later, when I paid a visit it, along with dozens and dozens of others was still on the wall of the flight school.

I remember all of that. But the flight? My first time in the air by myself? The flight indelibly printed on the minds of all aviators?

It’s a complete blank.

I wish I could fly like that

Posted on June 15, 2018 by admin

An ear-piercing scream reverberated across the hangar deck. I stood transfixed, horrified and fascinated as I watched the bright yellow box pitch upward then roll completely upside down. More screams. Terror mixed with pure joy.

Roller coaster screams.

The yellow box pitched violently down, then rocked side to side. Adrenaline surged into my blood stream. My mouth began to water. I wanted to join in the fun. Rio sighed deeply. “Go on, dad,” he said, giving me a gentle push on the small of my back, “go break your neck if you want to, but I’m having no part in it.”

I reached for my wallet, my right foot stepping toward the long line of teenagers. But my left foot stayed rooted firmly in place, as if riveted to the metal deck of the aircraft carrier. Damn this sense of parental responsibility! We were aboard CV-41, the USS Midway, which is docked permanently in San Diego Harbor as an awesome must-see-at-least-once-in-your-life museum; it was a Friday afternoon and there must have been double her original crew of 4,101 aboard—all tourists. The hangar deck looked like the mall at Christmas. I couldn’t leave my 12-year-old alone in that throng while I flipped myself upside down for fun. And deep down, maybe I was worried about embarrassing myself in front of all those teens. Much as I like to think I do, I wasn’t sure I had the Right Stuff.

I looked one last time at the pitching boxes (they had a full squadron of them), then sighed and turned toward the Fantail Café. “Come on, kiddo,” I said, as I turned my back on the delighted screams, “let’s go get some lunch.”

Actually, it wasn’t the first time I’d seen one of the twisting, turning boxes. My first encounter with one was just the day before at the San Diego Air & Space Museum, an awesome must-visit-at-least-twice-in-your-life museum. Somewhere between the Spitfire and the Apollo program was a bored teenager standing in front of an empty black box, a truncated windowless mini-van on giant hydraulic brackets.

A sign indicated it was a flight simulator ride. “Let’s take it up for a spin,” I said to Rio.

He wasn’t so sure. He hemmed and hawed.

“Oh, for crying out loud,” I told Rio, “it’s not like I can turn it upside down on you.”

“Actually,” said the bored teenager, who could have cared less if we bought a ride or not, “you can turn it upside down.”

Adrenaline surged into my blood stream. My mouth began to water. Now I really wanted to take the simulator up for a test flight; and now Rio really didn’t want to go. Somehow I talked him into it, but from the second the teenager locked us into the dark ride, Rio ran a constant monologue of “don’t you dare flip us upside down, don’t you dare flip us upside down, don’t you dare flip us upside down.”

A child of few words in general, I think it’s the most speech I’d heard come out of his mouth at one time in his entire life.

In the end, I ended up flying straight and level for the duration of the ride, while simulated Jap Zeros flashed by, taking pot shots at us.

It was pathetic. The ego of my inner-barnstormer was bruised, to say the least.

But the rest of the visit to the museum was great.

Flash forward two years. AOPA has sent me to Los Angles and I’m caught in a busload full of senior citizens at the delightful Museum of Flying at the embattled Santa Monica Airport.

As the seniors flow past, following their docent, I’m left alone in the large central foyer of the museum. And that’s when I see it: Squeezed in between large models of race planes and an honest-to-God Lockheed Vega 5B with a mannequin of Amelia Earhart in it, is a truncated windowless mini-van on giant hydraulic brackets. There’s no line. No child to worry about. Nothing to stop me.

And yet… and yet, for some reason I didn’t “fly” it. Maybe because it wouldn’t be fun alone. Or maybe because, as much as I like the idea of being bold enough to flip a simulator upside down, I don’t know if I really have the Right Stuff to do it, and, of course, I didn’t want to embarrass myself in front of all of those senior citizens.

Still, I wish I could fly like that.

Without screaming, of course.