Good God
Almighty… It was HALF my life ago. Twenty four years. It
can’t be.
Damn... I'm getting old.
We all have our turning points… points in our lives in
which we made a decision, conquered an impediment, or came upon an
event that was to have a lasting effect on our
existence… and for me, one of the greatest of those was an
amazing day twenty four years ago that takes on greater prominence
with each passing day.
Despite the years, the memory is indelible… kinda like
those slow moving thoughts we have in the middle of a car wreck,
when time slows down and the clarity of thought takes on
Technicolor proportions (with subtitles).
Late one May morning, I was working my way laboriously to a
point four miles above the earth in an amazing ultralight
contraption that weighed little more than I did. It was a highly
modified Pterodactyl Pfledgeling that started life as a
weight-shift “Dac” and was later modified to include
both a canard, a prop reduction drive (this was even before
Designer Jack McCornack released his own, better, reduc drive) and
a whole gaggle of other goodies. It was easily one of the most
ungainly contraptions to ever take to the air, with a huge
semi-rigid fabric wing, quasi 3-axis aerodynamic control and a
pusher mounted Cuyuna engine that allowed this aluminum critter to
climb as if commanded heavenward by the Lord himself. It was often
compared to what night happen if a dragonfly had mated
(reluctantly) with a lawnchair. It creaked, it rattled, it swayed,
it was aero-elastic as hell… and was easily one of the best
flying machines I have ever flown in my life… if flown by a
pilot who spent enough time with it to learn its MANY intricacies
and oddities. With practice and insight, it could turn on a dime,
leap off the ground in but a few paces (any wind at all and you
were off the deck in 50' or less) and was a surprisingly stable
critter. It was way cool.
The Dac was unparalleled in its ability to land and takeoff in
places that even made helicopter pilots cringe (no kidding…
I used to mow a special crosswind Dac runway in the grass alongside
Hanover airport in New Jersey… I rarely wasted my time in
mowing more than 50 feet or so). The Pterodactyl had so many
amazing features… it could be folded up and thrown on the
top of a van (or ptruck) for the ultimate in transportability, it
was incredibly stable with all that dihedral, it could easily house
a folded tent and sleeping bag inside the wing so that it
became quite the traveling adventurer, and it was a really
inexpensive flying machine… rarely burning more than 1.5 GPH
and cruising all day long at 40-55 mph, depending on how many
June-bugs per hour you were interested in ingesting (many of which
had unique textures and tastes -- take my word for it). Its only
major caveat was that it couldn't handle a crosswind... but since
it landed so short, all one had to do was point it into the wind
just before touchdown and hit the brakes (which just happened to be
one's shoes... flintstone-style).
The actual control of the Dac was a marvel of aerodynamic
compromise, with a simple canard attached to a right side stick
controller via a beefy pushrod and two huge vertical tip rudders
that were operated by lateral stick motivation via a simple cable
and pulley system. The tip rudders produced a subtle combination of
yaw and roll that, with finesse and practice, could be operated
with the delicacy and precision accorded a fine instrument, though
it really took experience, experimentation and patience to develop
such expertise. However; once one learned the beast’s
innermost personal habits, the Dac became a beautiful tool with
which to tour the skies, the ultimate off-road exploration vehicle
and one hell of a climb-out king.
The climbing abilities of the Dactyl, were in fact, so
impressive, that one naturally wondered just how high a Dac could
go… which got me to where this story began… trying to
see how high Uncle Jack’s delightful little Dac could really
hoof it and to set a world-record for foot-launchable ultralight
aircraft, in the process.
Meanwhile... Back Above Lakehurst NAS
So there I was… four miles high (in more ways than
one)… with my butt hanging most of the way out of a
way-too-insubstantial half-hammock hang seat over four miles above
Terra Firma… While the Dac was a helluva great flyer, the
last few thousand feet pretty much proved that in such rarified
air, the Dac flew like five pounds of bat guano in a two pound
bag… the lack of air was making the Dac a ponderous little
beast that was hanging onto the rarified air for all it was
worth… and all that kept it flying and climbing, it seemed,
was a combination of prayer, luck and f***ing magic. Still, it was
obvious that even the Dac had its limits and that I was THERE...
and maybe a little past there, to boot. We could go no higher.
Just before heading home, I did something smart (possibly the
first such move of the day...). I looked around…
What a moment: the colors were amazing… the thoughts
profound, and the feeling of accomplishment beyond all imagining. I
did it… though I was having a hard time remembering what
“it” was. I wasn’t sure exactly how high I was,
but I knew that I had reached an altitude that would serve my
purposes, set something of a record, please my friends, and give me
something to crow about for many moons to come.
Every sense screamed in response… the caustic, eerie,
ear-splitting blare of the screaming Cuyuna, the gluey feel of the
side stick controller in my right hand and the mushiness of its
response, the sweaty/metallic air that I sucked in through the
frosty/slimy mask, the sharp chill that leaked in from all
quadrants (especially that which was coming in through the bottom
of the pant-leg), the rocking motion of the ever-present
cumo-bumpies, and that view… Lord, that view. I was colder
than an Eskimo using an outhouse, having a really hard time (OK,
impossible time) trying to talk to my chase plane though a Rube
Goldberg lash-up of oxygen mask and microphone, and coming to the
certainty that I was getting fairly hypoxic.
Not all that sure of where I was, how high I was (in more ways
than one), the whole thing got to a point of truly bizarre
proportions as high speed jet traffic was called off to me at 10
O’clock LOW. A Boeing. A big ass Boeing. A big Mother of a
high-tailing-for-home Boeing. And me running around in little more
than an aluminum mosquito.
Oh lord, the sky so big, the traffic so huge, my butt so
exposed, and my craft so small… It was time to get out of
Dodge.
Yeah, buddy.
There was this final moment though… one in which my mind
threw off the hypoxia, and took one last look at the rich panorama
before me. The only way to have improved the visibility from that
teeny-tiny perch would have been to do a half-gainer over the side.
But… enough was enough. So… with the annoyances of a
frost encrusted oxy mask/beard and mike combo threatening to rip
off my face as I turned to look from side to side, I slapped the
kill switch on the 30-hp Cuyuna, shut that little puppy down, and
enjoyed the first cool silence I had known for nearly an hour and
headed home to Mother Earth.
It was a surreal moment
containing the fiercest calm I had yet known. …The warm
greens, browns and blues of central New Jersey looked so inviting
and so bloody far away… but for the moment, all I could
think of was the fact that I was thoroughly lost (but making damned
good time…), freezing my ass off, and not all that sure of
what it was that I was doing so high to begin with.
I had no idea where my starting airport Lakehurst NAS was, where
my chase plane had gone to, or just what my next move was (outside
of “don’t screw up”)… but the silence was
a blessing and allowed me to collect my thoughts as my Pterodactyl,
the aforementioned 220 pound contraption of endearing quality
and ever-surprising ability, mushed its way home in rarefied air
for which it was obviously only barely qualified to flit about.
What the hell was I doing there?
Well… that was kind of hard to explain… even then.
Ostensibly; it was for an altitude record for foot-launch capable
aircraft to kick off one of the largest airshows on the East
Coast… I had left the Lakehurst Naval Air Station less than
an hour before where a crowd of HUNDREDS of thousands of people saw
me off as they waited for the airshow to begin, where I was
something of an opening act. I now had less than half an hour to
return before the airshow started (Silly me, I really expected to
get much higher, much quicker -- yeah, right) and all that I could
think to do was to reverse course and head South with the hopes
that I would spot Lakehurst before my clearance to land was killed
off by the start of the show.
They say the Lord looks out for fools and little
children… and it sure helps to be qualified in multiple
categories, because the light haze could not hide a field the size
of Lakehurst NAS. Hot damn! In no time at all, I had that sucker
right off the nose… and not all that far away (having had
the foresight to take off into the prevailing wind at
altitude… which was not all that bad -- never more than 50
knots… a good thing, otherwise I’d have probably found
myself out over South Carolina by then…).
The descent from my apex of 21,210 feet (according to the
barograph) took a lot less than the climb had taken… and my
mind started clearing s-l-o-w-l-y even though my body, swaddled in
several layers of the finest in borrowed snowmobile apparel,
refused to even consider the thought of thawing out.
The landing went well, the aluminum tubing rattling and rumbling
as I trundled to a stop next to a taxiway at Lakehurst NAS dead in
the middle of the airshow staging area… but as it came time
to get out of the critter, I found that the cold had seeped so
thoroughly through my weary soul that there was no energy available
to actually extricate myself from the beast… so I sat there
gathering strength and willing my way out into the warm New Jersey
sunshine and back to real life.
In a few minutes, my spirit convinced my body to get with the
program and I was out and inserted safely into a
reviewing car so that people could wave and clap as the announcer
informed the crowd that I had set something of a record… I
waved to nameless faces… though my mind was miles
away… in a vertical reference… and it would take
quite some time before normality returned to my thawing,
experientially overloaded and thoroughly
victorious soul… It was a pinnacle for me... one of
many to come... but one that set a standard for much of the rest of
my life. Every inch of that 4 mile climb was won as much by force
of will as by aerodynamics... and the lessons learned that
day were intensely valuable.
What a highpoint -- but best of all; I’ve had many
amazing moments since then…
...blasting through the
Mojave desert at well over Mach One, or boogying along at
400-500kph--wingtip to wingtip in a flight of nearly a dozen
Snowbirds, freefalling-all alone-from nearly ten miles up, testing
incredible new aircraft that had never flown before in any form,
fighting the good fight alongside my friend and hero Bob Hoover,
dogfighting with Scott Anderson F-16 to F-16 (I miss you,
Scott…), practical joke after practical joke after practical
joke with Randy Gagne, doing inverted spin after inverted spin with
Bob Herendeen and laughing our asses off with the fun of it all,
flying an impossibly tight formation with the irrepressible Jim
Moser (so close I could touch him if the canopy hadn’t been
in the way) and trading really sick jokes over the radio all the
while with one of the most amazing guys I EVER met, telling a
wonderful girl that I loved her while doing a barrel roll around
the moon, freefalling through the blackness of 2 a.m. on
a full moon with seven other skydivers lit only by man in
the moon and the chem-lights taped to our jumpsuits, landing
an ultralight on the island that supports the Statue of Liberty,
looping side-by-side in TIGHT formation with Jack Britton, flying
another Dac from coast to coast and having more adventures than any
person has a right to, fighting for my fellow flyers against those
who would harm them, aerobatically representing President Reagan
and the Air and Space Bicentennial at airshow after airshow,
kissing yet another very pretty girl underneath a red Staggerwing
at Oshkosh under a nearly full moon, logging dozens of hours
of Zero-Gravity time among some of the finest people I've ever
worked with, chasing SpaceShips and recording history from an
unbelievable vantage point... so many memories, so many highs (and
a few bizarre lows), and I thank God I’m not quite all the
way to my fifties… meaning that there is plenty of time and
opportunity for even greater adventures… and I can hardly
wait.
Hot Damn!
Times a wastin’!
Twenty four years/half-a-lifetime ago… a record set, some
personal demons slain, and the realization that for several minutes
in that rarified air, the only thing that kept me alive and aloft
was a sheer force of will and clarity of purpose. I remember the
feelings and sensations well…and have called upon them again
and again as I grew older and had to summon personal resources to
see my way through the many challenges that have come about in the
interim.
No matter what has happened… no matter how difficult the
journey through life became, no matter how much I had to fight to
make it to the next day, it was moments such as that frigid
panorama at 21,210 feet that have allowed me to grin through the
travails of life and get my butt in gear to take whatever next step
was necessary. All I had to do was take a moment and abandon the
world around me to return to that lofty perch and the joyously
insane wonder of it all…
It was a turning point… one of many… but an early
and a pivotal one that returns to me the minute I close my eyes and
relive the moment… in perfect clarity.
Time after time…
--Jim Campbell, Editor-in-Chief, and World's Highest
Ultralight Pilot, twenty four years ago.