Aero-Tips!
A good pilot is always learning -- how many times have you heard
this old standard throughout your flying career? There is no truer
statement in all of flying (well, with the possible exception of
"there are no old, bold pilots.")
Aero-News has called upon the expertise of Thomas P. Turner,
master CFI and all-around-good-guy, to bring our readers -- and us
-- daily tips to improve our skills as aviators. Some of them, you
may have heard before... but for each of us, there will also be
something we might never have considered before, or something that
didn't "stick" the way it should have the first time we memorized
it for the practical test.
Look for our daily Aero-Tips segments, coming each day to you
through the Aero-News Network.
Aero-Tips 08.15.06
My shoes were wet with dew as I climbed into the back seat of
the white-and-red Piper Super Cub. Morning twilight ceded to a
yellowish haze as the summer sun sprang from behind a line of
trees. Its glint bounced off the tilted wing-tops of half a dozen
sailplanes huddled before a day of flight.
I was 15, and I had flown before. My first flying memory is of
being strapped three across in the back seat of what must have been
a Cessna 172, my father at the controls and my sister and brother
at my sides. I'd already logged a good bit of passenger time in
airliners, mostly 727s and DC-8s and United Air Lines' first 747s
running back and forth from my father's maintenance base in
Honolulu. But this was my first real flight, my premiere launch
airborne in a seat with access to controls, and the first
lightplane flight of what would evolve into a career looking up at
planes, looking down at the ground and, most importantly, looking
to my left as I teach others the science and the art of
aviation.
My dad's cousin Raymond, an Air Corps veteran of America's
retreat from the Pacific into Australia in the dark, early days of
World War Two, and holder of a few endurance records in his
homebuilt sailplanes, brought me to this hazy, misty glider strip
on the banks of the Ohio River. Hoping to help but mainly staying
out of the way in the predawn chill, I'd watched gliders be drawn
from flat, white trailers and assembled on the slick grass in
anticipation of being pulled aloft. Raymond and his son Brian, who
was about my age but already a veteran of this Saturday glider
ritual, motioned for me to come over to the Super Cub after it was
pushed out of a low Quonset hut, the only structure on this field.
I had come along hoping only to see the gliders fly. But Raymond
had more in mind.
The pilot had a habit of taking the Cub up for a short hop
before the first glider tow of the day. He wanted to warm up the
engine and get a feel for the air before climbing with the awesome
drag of a sailplane in tow. But mostly, I think, he wanted the dawn
sky to himself, to loft for a brief moment as the only aviator in
the blue, before the air was filled with gliders and the later
risers from the paved runway across the river. Whether out of his
own generosity or some urging by my dad's cousin, the tow pilot
ushered me into the Super Cub's back seat, to share the sky that
West Virginia summer dawn. My earliest flying memory was as a
dream, my airline travels akin to sitting in a plush drawing room.
But today, this very moment, as the Lycoming engine sputtered to
life and thick metal blades spun into a powerful blurring disc
ahead, I was truly going to fly.
My memory of the pilot is that of the stereotypical ex-bomber
captain, then only three decades removed from far less joyous lofts
over murderous skies in a craft crewed by kids only a few years
older than I was at that point…and the captain still in
en-route climb to age 25. Today he worked efficiently in the front
seat, saying nothing-this was before radios, intercoms and headsets
reached such sporty cockpits-glancing back just once to see I was
strapped in and clear of the controls as he latched the Cub's door
against the still-chilly wind. Noise grew faster than speed when he
pushed the throttle forward, but in an almost impossibly short
distance we were airborne and the rumble of tires against dewy
grass hushed to slick air whisping past the wings and windows,
engine and propeller noise muffled far ahead. Long morning shadows
arched quickly away and we sprang into bright sunlight, angling
slightly as "my" pilot banked low over the river. Tendrils of steam
fog strained upward, trying to join us in the cloudless blue, but
they were no match for the Super Cub's power and made it only a few
feet above the mirror-like river.
The shore, a line of trees, and the bright green runway were now
on the left side of the airplane as we sped a few hundred feet
above small fishing boats tucked into the shade along the river's
banks. A minute later my pilot tilted the left wing down sharply
and, although it still felt as if "down" was toward my seat, the
shoreline twirled to appear out the front windscreen, our runway
still on my left. In a shallower bank we lined up with the grass,
trees along the sides growing and shadows lengthening to again tint
our wings dark as the mowed turf smoothly rose and again rumbled
against our wheels.
Landing is my most favorite and least favorite part of a flight,
for as I later learned it is the ultimate test of a pilot's finesse
and command of his or her craft, but it is also the end of another
day's dream as we trade the sky above for the world's reality
below. As we rolled into position for the first sailplane hook-up
and Raymond helped me out of the Super Cub's back seat, pilot still
in place and propeller bending blades of grass in its blast, I knew
that I'd felt something that I could never feel in the first-class
seat of a 747 or even the passenger seat of a light airplane.
Although I didn't touch the controls that day I could see their
movements, large and coarse on the ground but small and smooth,
almost imperceptible movements at times in the air, and I knew that
next time aloft I would ask to reach for the controls, and I too
would touch the sky through them.
Visibility was good, the air was cool and smooth, and the flight
long enough to give me a taste but short enough to leave we wanting
more. It was the perfect first flight.
My dad's gone now, and so is Raymond, and likely my veteran
pilot as well. What they started that day, however, carries on, and
I hope will continue forward through my students and my readers and
my friends and my son. In the terrible turmoil of today the sky
remains a refuge and an opportunity, but only if we pass it along
to others who will help us retain this wondrous freedom.
Aero-tip of the day: Saturday morning's not too
far away. Give someone a "first flight" to remember.