Aviation Adventures

I did the following for a work newsletter...

Aviation Adventures

Several years ago, I decided to learn to fly and went to an aviation school at Whitman Airport in Oshkosh, Wisconsin. Oshkosh is the famous home of the world's largest annual aircraft fly-in, the EAA Airventure celebration. What a great place to learn to fly!

When I first started, everything seems so incredible. Even the little things seemed so great, "push the yoke in and the nose goes down and 'trees get bigger', pull the yoke back and the nose goes up and 'trees get smaller'"... that was one of my instructor's favorite sayings [he would push the yoke in and say] "See, trees get bigger" [then do the opposite and say] "Now, trees get smaller" and chuckle.

Developing into a young, confident Certified Flight Instructor [CFI] was the next step. I got to the point where doing controlled spins during student role plays and saving the plane from the student's inadvertent spin was expected without thinking. It seems very natural after you get the proper experience. It’s really amazing stuff to be able to control an aircraft at that high of a level of skill.

Within two years, I ended up with several ratings and licenses and a profound confidence in my piloting ability. I have a Commercial pilot’s license which really just means that I can fly small aircraft and charge money for it. Some of the things Commercial pilots do are flight instruction, aerial photography, crop-dusting, traffic congestion reporting and my favorite, parachute jump pilot. By the way, the next progression for pilots is a type rating [for larger aircraft] and an Airline Transport Pilot license. The folks that you fly with in jets have this type of license.

These days I haven't flown for several years, but plan on getting current again this summer. My son, Maxwell loves planes and its ‘high’ time to take him up for a few “runs around the patch”. This means to do a few patterns of local take-off and landings at a small general aviation airport.


Some memorable highlights:

~~ My favorite plane that I've flown is a J5 Cub. It is a fabric-winged, light, graceful vintage airplane. Built in 1942, but don’t let the age fool you, these planes are well cared for and have thorough maintenance by Federal Aviation Regulations. And to be honest, the saying about how ‘they don’t build them like the used to’ applies here. This plane would spin so smoothly it was incredible. [CFI's have to have competency to enter a spin and get out of spins]. Because this is a quiet and slow moving plane, with a good headwind at minimum flight speed, you would barely be moving across the ground. You literally are floating in place with that strong headwind... another terrific experience.

~~ I remember very well my first night flight. My instructor flew me from Oshkosh to Milwaukee and back. I found it fascinating to be able to easily pick out the cities by their lights and relative sizes based on the navigational direction. At night, you practice doing landings without aircraft headlights, a surreal thing since your only visual aid is the runway lights that you seem to sink into.

~~ As a new flight instructor, I recall taking a potential student on a special "Introductory flight" to see if they were interested in doing further flight-training. It was an inexpensive and quick way to show folks an airplane and what it was like to fly. So I took a young guy up in the plane for his first flight and it was a real hot, sunny, summer day which is always conducive to a lot of convective activity. In other words, it was a very bumpy ride. We departed and I showed him some real basic things... I let him take the yolk to feel the plane which he seemed to like. However, after about 15 minutes into it, I asked him if he was OK since he looked a little pale. He said he was OK, but I wasn't so sure. I decided to cut it short and head in for a landing. On final approach we were getting thrown around by the air currents and suddenly my brave student was throwing up [OK, projectile vomiting] as I was getting ready to land. I briefly considered doing a "go around", which means you don't feel good about the landing and you give the plane full-throttle to start a climb out, but thought that might add insult to injury. The interesting part of this story is that this student went on to an official flight school at a University and was its CFI Chief Pilot 5 years later. I needed him to help me get a Biennial Flight Review at that point and he put _me_ through the ringer with the most thorough BFR I've ever had. I consider him an excellent pilot and CFI.


A gratuitous, kind-of-related-to-aviation story:

As new flight instructors at a small airport, a buddy of mine and I were in charge of night-time airport operations since I lived at the airport. One of the nightly rituals was to check all the runway and taxiway lights. Incidentally, my brother had come to visit to show us his brand new 1994 Chevy Camaro. Of course, we wanted to drive it around the airport to check the lights. Since we had an airport frequency transponder [radio] and could see airplanes if they were approaching from miles away, we didn't worry too much about being on the runway with a car. So anyway, 5000 feet of wide runway, nearly 300 horsepower of sports-car with fat, slick tires and lots of pretty night lights were too much to resist. At 2000 feet before the end of the runway, the lights change color from white to amber and you know exactly where you are. And suddenly, at the light color change, I thought it best to start braking and slowing down from 150mph! I'm still not sure how I ended up going that fast... *grin*

Immediately after that we drove the car along the taxiway back to the terminal and then saw a scary sight. A police car was sitting there. We had no idea how long, but it seemed like they had just arrived so we quickly got out of the car and I decided to "wing-it"... I told the cops we were new flight instructors at the airport [true] and were doing the nightly light check [true]. The cops couldn't argue, but we were sure they had a good idea of what we had just done. I won't stay the location of this airport to protect the innocent...


The Drop-Zone story:

For two summers I worked at a "drop-zone" [DZ] for fun near Green Bay, WI. A drop-zone is the nickname of any small airstrip that has parachute jumping activity in the vicinity. Those summers were great fun; I would jump on my motorcycle on nice weekend mornings, and would hang out all day until dusk taking folks up in the air for an exciting time skydiving. As you can imagine, the people that are into parachute jumping are a fun bunch. It's a serious sport not to be taken lightly, but after everyone is down safely for the day, the beers and stories start flowing.

Parachute jumpers start in the beginning by being tethered to the airplane with a cable. They climb out and hang from the aircraft wing and then let go. The cable is tied to the pull cord which when you are 15 feet away from the plane [less than 2 seconds] automatically pulls the cord and opens the chute... this is called a static line jump.

As a pilot you are responsible for flying a rectangular “pattern” and being at a certain point upwind when the jumper is ready to let go so. Timing is crucial so that if they have some kind of problem the wind will push them back to the drop-zone center which is a safety thing [and a Federal Aviation Regulation that must be adhered to]. Additionally, there is a person called a jump-master that makes sure the jumper is ready and with good form, is at a safe location, etc. So the jump-master was telling this guy who had climbed out of the plane and was hanging from the wing strut to let go and he was white-knuckling it and NOT letting go... and not letting go and not letting go. I knew what was coming since we were getting dangerously close to being too far from the drop-zone.... I turned to look at the jump-master and he gave me 'the nod'. So I did a quick little 'aileron shuffle' with my controls and he was gone off the wing... ;-)

I basically had pulled the wing up quick with a jerk and pulled the plane right out of his hands. Two seconds later, I heard the jump-master saying "Canopy opening... he's looking good"… another successful and safe rookie jump. Later on the ground, that guy was thanking me for my part in his great adventure and he was all smiles. He had no idea that I had pulled the plane out of his hands for his safety. He kept saying how very "cool" the jump was and how exciting everything had been. I slyly smiled to myself... he was right, it was very cool.

-bk

World's Largest Trivia Home Page

Trivia Home Page

Midway through 2005's contest:
Terrapin Station - Turtle Trivai
was 162nd place as of 6 hours ago.
Highlight high pointer was hour 2 and Kristie's 'Think inside the box' Hormel Stagg Chili -- get this -- from the Internet for 115 points. Wow.