Tag Archives: learning

Swords in the Water, and Subjective Flying

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We were off at 7:30 a.m., wheels lifting from the runway at Plainview. The wheels keep spinning after one leaves the runway after the wheels are retracted.  If if bothers, press the brake handle.

We turned west, though air like brushed satin.  Let go the controls, our airplanes flew themselves, north and west toward the high country.

At first the land beneath us was intensively cared for, no sign of wilderness so far as one could see:

Gliding on that silk, though, the country slid under us like a great earthen wedge, lifting both airplanes higher, butterflies in sunlight.  Within the hour it was just the opposite, we flew over wilderness, one horizon to the other,

as though humans had never existed.

I felt the chill in the air as we climbed.  At six thousand feet, it was pretty cold, I thought.  At seven thousand, it was very pretty cold.  Yet by that time, descending back to six thousand would have put us several hundred feet underground.  Cold I preferred.

Puff was setting new personal altitude records every few minutes.  She would nearly quadruple her record by the time we landed, but she was learning to wear experience lightly, an invisible cloak, tossed casual over her wings.  Some days we set records, she said, some days we don’t.

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Quiet Day in Louisiana

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“It’s the Corps of Engineers against the combined Red and Mississippi rivers,” Dan had told me yesterday.  ”The Corps is holding its own right now, but sooner or later in the next thousand years there’s going to be a wall of water forty feet high coming down the Atchafalaya River, and the place we’re standing is going to be the bottom of the new Mississippi.”

Naturally I didn’t believe a word, it’s silly geology-talk.  Geology major, math minor, law degree, combined Master’s with geology and coastal and oceanographic engineering.  Rock-hounds, what do you expect?  Idly curious, however, I checked the Internet.

We had decided to stay one more day at the hotel in Morgan City, Louisiana, and all of a sudden I wished we hadn’t, don’t care how tired, how bad the weather this afternoon, don’t care tornadoes on course, let’s get Jennifer’s engine running and we’re outta here!

He calmed me down.  ”This is not likely to happen before we leave tomorrow,” he said.  I stepped down from the top of the hotel-room desk.  After all, I reasoned, Dan is staying tonight at this very hotel, himself.

So I got to rest in the middle of the day.  Dan picked up the carburetor floats as I slept, installed them.  Jennifer’s engine is now running perfectly.  Trouble is, can I sleep tonight, thinking of what happens with the diverting of “the combined flow of the Mississippi and Red Rivers to the Atchafalaya River, which will lead to flooding along its banks in places like Morgan City, La.”  More than ten feet deep flooding, after that first 40 feet has whistled through.

Not likely to happen before tomorrow.  Just in case, though, I’ll add 30 feet to Puff’s tiedown ropes and ask for a room four floors up.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

I’m glad Dan’s other degree isn’t nuclear engineering.

Way Quiet Today,

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ALTHOUGH THE WIND WASN’T.  Puff came out of Kermit’s Aero Club a little dazed, I felt it at once.  We taxied over to the end of the parking area, engine perking over as the oil temperature came up to minimum for flying, and she had naught to say about her time with the warplanes.  I sensed her silence was out of courtesy: If You Don’t Have Anything Good to Say, Say Nothing.

The only other civilian airplane in the hangar was the replica of the 1911 Curtiss Pusher, who was as buried by war stories as was Puff.  Seems that warplanes get their own kind of post traumatic stress syndrome, either from their service in battle or from missing the battles they were built to engage.  Imagine living through a 2 a.m. thunder-and-lightning storm with a bunch of PSTD’d warplanes and you’ll understand my little SeaRey didn’t get much sleep, even with her engine shut down and cold.

Puff, who doesn’t know what war is, or why, went silent amid the combat tales, and stayed silent even when we were ready for takeoff from the grass runway.

The wind was straight down the centerline, and before I had the throttle pushed full open, Puff was flying.  An awkward two-minute flight to our home lake, a water landing close in to protected shores while a strange wind whisked the deeper parts of the lake into dark swirls of lion’s-paw wavelets.  A stiff breeze, yet not a whitecap in sight.

Up on her beach and tied down, she was instantly asleep, nothing to say.

I had hoped to do some flying, but felt as oddly uncomfortable with the wind as Puff had felt with her military companions.  Technically there was no reason not to fly…perhaps a little, as the wind was gusting to 20 knots.  That much wind I can work with on land, and I feel Puff’s confidence there, too, but our limits are closer on the water and nobody’s comfortable on the edge of limits.  A seaplane pilot once told me early on, “Landplane pilots have their worries, but sinking is not one of them.”

Most of all though, was this eerieness about the wind, about these hours, as well.  Puff and I didn’t connect today, for some reason she was no more speaking to me than she was to the warbirds in the Aero Club.  I’m grateful to Kermit Weeks for giving her shelter, even if my airplane can’t at the moment acknowledge the same.

The rest of the day I tinkered with little things — tailwheel didn’t need new bearings, just some air in the tire; fixed the headrest; practiced loading most everything that’ll be going with us on the trip.  Maybe it’s just been too long, three days now with just a few minutes in the air.

Has she suddenly realized that I was a military pilot, once, and now all of a sudden I’m a stranger?  Must this friendship with her go through every analog to a human relationship, including odd estrangements, communication shutdowns?

I’m glad for the miasma.  This happens almost never, and now that it has, it’ll be the last miasmafication for the next several years…over, done, moving ahead.

Come on, tomorrow.

 

Powers of Truth

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ON THE PRIVATE website for SeaRey builders and flyers, there was a post last night which was a warning, too.  The warning was be careful when the engine fails, since from an altitude of a thousand feet, the post-writer’s airplane was unable to make one complete circle before it was on the ground.

He didn’t go into much detail, so I assumed his airplane was heavier than Puff, his turn may have been different than I would fly.  It didn’t feel to me as if Puff would be that unforgiving.  An F-84F or a Boeing 737, I’d agree, but Puff?  It was hard to sleep, thinking she might be keeping a secret from me.

This morning, preflight inspection complete, I started her engine and she came awake, splashing carefree into the lake while her oil temperature warmed.

In a few seconds, she slowed.  ”Something wrong?” she asked, her voice in my mind.

“Oh, thinking about the comment…”

Of course she knew which comment, as her spirit’s linked with mine when she’s awake.  ”Not you and me, about that can’t-turn business,” she said lightly.  ”Not true for us.”  As if that were the end of the story, case closed where shall we be flying today.

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Technical matters.

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IT DOES.  One needs to know what one’s airplane will do and what she won’t.  That means becoming one’s own test pilot, when what one needs to know isn’t printed.

Can Puff, for instance, make a skeg turn the long way round?  That is, if she’s beached at an angle of 30 degrees, I know she can turn that 30 degrees (let’s say to the left) back to the water and be floating again.  But when she has her bow on the sand, can she turn to the right, the long way, 150 degrees back to the water, or will she drive herself more firmly ashore?

Answer to follow.

After that exercise, can she taxi through a sea of lily pads and take off again?

I went straight to the source, and asked her.  ”Lily pads a problem, Puff?”

“Let’s don’t do the lily pads,” she replied, her gentle thought-voice.

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Friends Are Sometimes People You Wish You’d Never Met,

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A THOUGHT WHICH has not occurred to me until today.  Another windy day it was, so no flying, and therefore I was free to change Puff’s engine oil, practice connecting the cell phone to the aircraft headset, do some maintenance chores whIch I much enjoy doing.

Unfortunately I was set free as well to have lunch with my friend Kermit Weeks.  (May I commend to you the Fantasy Salad at the Compass Rose restaurant at his Fantasy of Flight attraction?)  A fine lunch indeed, and then I watched him talk to visitors there, take off in his Fiesler Storch, to show us how slow it will fly.

After he had returned, talked and signed a few photos and books, he began walking to a new section of his property that wasn’t the parking lot so he could drive me home.  He was walking to his Ropes Course, a structure of steel I-beams and ladders and tightropes and wobbly wooden steps towering nearly 50 feet over a shallow pond.

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This is Part of Flying, Too

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As you already know.

It isn’t that Puff can’t fly in high winds, since of course her Normal is wrapped in winds of 40- to 110 mph.  She could start, taxi into the water and directly across the lake, coming up on the opposite beach.  What she couldn’t do on the water in this wind is turn.

Perhaps with a huge blast of power I could get her turned sideways for a moment, long enough for the wind to get beneath one wing and roll her upside-down.

The overcast sky means no ground heating, no thermals, no soaring.  The wind means look out.

Given that the three of us who will be flying SeaReys across the continent agree that sometimes it’s too windy to fly, there’s a chance we may be grounded for days in Marfa, Texas as some system howls round the clock.  That’s why I’ll be bringing along those yellow tiedown straps you see holding Puff steady on the ground, and stakes for anchors if we’re caught on the edge of Noplace when the wind comes up.

I learned from my dropping-the-cell-phone-the-water incident that it’s possible to have computer, iPad and iPhone all out of service at the same time, so don’t wonder if my posts go silent for a week or so along the way.

Isn’t that just like the world of appearances, playfully to derail our plans, checking to see what we’ll do, what we’ll learn from the event.

What I’m learning right now is that there are others things to do besides fly.  Why, one can work on one’s airplane, instead!

When we were in Sebring the other day, while Dan and I were having lunch, in walks a sky-gypsy and his friend, they find a place at the next table to us.  He figured we had nothing better to discuss, so regaled us with tales of his travels by light aircraft all over the country, adventures he’s had flying his Drifter.

At a short break between stories I asked him, “What’s the most important thing a pilot needs to know about flying?”

As though he had been waiting for me to ask: “You gotta love your airplane!”

I must have shown my startlement, this tender word in the midst of his rough-and-tumble tales.  ”If you don’t love your airplane,” he said, “you’re not caring for it, not looking after it every day, you’re not going to notice little things it’s telling you, something’s wearing out, something’s not quite right.  You miss those little things, they turn into big ones and they’re gonna bite you, my friend, they’re gonna bite!”

Not just airplanes, of course.  What he said is true about lifetimes, too.  Far as I can tell, the gypsy’s right: love’s the only thing keeps us from gettin’ bit.

 

Sebring Encore

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I COULD HAVE PICKED UP the special oil that Puff’s engine likes when I flew to Sebring with Dan the other day, but didn’t think of it.  So my task today was to fly the 60 miles down there alone with her, and for a change, way up at altitude.  At one time in my life “at altitude” meant 38,000 feet with a cruise climb to 42,000, the sky all dark above, helmet visor down against the sun and the sound of oxygen hissing in my mask.

With Puff a few hours ago, “at altitude” was clear up to 1,500 feet on a hot hazy Florida afternoon, she liking the view from so high but not much caring for the turbulent up- and down-drafts, for she was traveling and not seeking lift.  Soon as I turned on the camera to show you the power of warm air rising, everything smoothed out.  If you want to see 30 seconds of smooth air, I have it here.

It was on the way back from Sebring, over the town of Frostproof, that I saw something I hadn’t noticed in decades, something which struck my biplane passengers at once: “The farm, the town, they’re _toys!_”

Perhaps we were at the perfect altitude, but Frostproof was laid out on kitchen-table Earth below us, all in miniature and astonishing detail.  The grand homes, the trailer parks, the churches, even little cars rolling on streets you’d swear were real.

All the drama, I thought, in every one of those houses below, in the bank and the church, there were dramas in progress, folks joyful and frightened, fatigued and inspired.  Some crying this moment, some whistling.  All the actors in place on their stage, each one living the script, speaking it perfectly without thinking what words could come next.

For someone a thousand feet higher, there was even a little SeaRey flying above, with a tiny pilot looking down from his windy open cockpit, a-wonder at so many scenes being played all at once.  Their scenes, my scenes, everyone with a part that needs be played.

Flying will do that, from time to time, blind-side you with its literal perspective that pushes you into knowing none of it’s real.  Beyond each one of those chess-piece players, a different self hovers who lives beyond the set and the script and the drama, who cares only for the expressing of love — will my actor take the chance onstage to do that in this play, this lifetime?

Then Frostproof faded in the haze behind us, it was back to airspeed and altitude and fuel remaining but not quite.  The feeling, the connection with those lives, flickered in and out after the town disappeared.  I couldn’t shake it out of my mind: in every single one of those toy houses, drama in progress, lessons being learned.

North of Lake Wales, Puff tugged me down, she wanted to land on the water and be still for a minute after being banged about in the sky.  Which we did, choosing a lake as round and silver as a dollar in the sun.  I reached my hand to the water gone silver to blue, cooler thicker wetter an arms-length from the cockpit than the air had been, a thousand feet up.

Then we were off again and before long home: sixty miles in sixty minutes.  A flight in which Puff was passed on the road below not only automobiles, but by an 18-wheeler hauling an open trailer of oranges.

When she miffed at that, I reminded her that the truck likely did not take time to cool off in any lake it wished.

 

 

Puff and the Shore

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IF I LOG TODAY’S FLIGHTS as “Training…” oh! does that miss what happened today!

First flight we practiced anchoring, and found that Don Maxwell’s system works perfectly.  SeaReys are a little difficult to anchor properly so that they streamline into the wind, since one can’t reach the anchor line ring which is at the very nose/bow of the airplane/boat, when one is in the cockpit.  So Don devised a way in which we run a line from…

It gets way complicated in words.  We tried it this morning and it works fine.  Thank you Don.  I doubt I could have figured that system out my myself.

In the air again, we practiced quite a few more shallow-water landings, hugging the shore as we touched the water.  That’s Dan Nickens’ answer to the fairly dangerous glassy-water landing.  Those, one has to do everything right, it’s the equivalent of flying an instrument landing all the way to touchdown (as Stormy Ferret had to land one time, in the _Ferret Chronicles_).  Make a malor error and there’s a big splash in the water and all of a sudden you’re swimming, so we practiced the alternative some more today.

Puff had mentioned to me, spirit to spirit, that she was not quite comfortable with beaching.  Ramps were fine (except La Rampa del Diablo, which the factory has now shut down for rebuilding), but beaching…well it had its unknowns.  How does one get turned around, she wanted to know, if one puts one’s nose on a beach?  Does one’s pilot have to get out and turn his seaplane around?  And doesn’t he get wet, and then get water and sand in the cockpit when he gets back in?

“Skeg turns,” I told her.  Dan had talked over lunch one day that the little seaplane can run a little way up a beach, then turn full about, pivoting on the deepest part of her keel.  Having not flown any seaplane that could do that, I filed it away till she asked.

The video that follows is the record of that part of that flight today, where Puff learns about skeg turns.  Notice the caution on her first try…approaching at an angle, ready to turn away if things go to pieces.  Second try she’s bolder, and gets stuck.  Then she thinks about it, decides more power and rudder will work, and it does!  Third time she’s cocky, drives straight up on the beach, knowing how she’s going to make the little spin-turn that Dan had mentioned.

That worked perfectly, so skeg turns are part of her skill-set now.  I found I was re-running the video, watching the process that is her learning curve and enjoying it.

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FRS Air Quals!

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WHAT A GRAND DAY FOR PUFF!

She faced her big test today.  She passed it and so did I, but mostly it was her.

Ever since she learned of the Ferret Rescue Service and I told her the story about Lt. Bethany Ferret and her crew in _Rescue Ferrets at Sea,_ Puff has been working to qualify as the first seaplane of the newly commissioned FRS Air Group One.

There’s a list of requirements as long as your wing, and she’s been checking them off: she logged a minimum of 100 water landings; completed courses and tests in open water operations, river operations, close-quarter tests, shallow-water work, rough- and glassy-water landings, high-wind operations, wilderness skills, small mammal distress recognition and rescue techniques, search pattern flying, communications and coordination with Ferret Rescue Boats, tests on the Courtesies…it went on and on.

Today was her final FRS Air Qualification checkride.  As I think I mentioned yesterday or the day before, a skilled seaplane/pilot team must be able to demonstrate engine failure performance, shutdown and restart in flight.

That test seems simple: We had to shut down her engine, glide propeller-stopped for exactly ten seconds during which she had to fly at least a 30-degree gliding turn through a cardinal direction and restart her engine…quite a bit to perform in a few seconds.

Remember that normally Puff falls asleep when her engine is shut down, today she had to maintain awareness throughout the test.  She was allowed one practice glide of no more than one minute prior to the graded flight.  Two FRB boats documented the run from the surface.  They are barely visible in the video.

The sequence which follows cuts in with the sound of the wind, just as Puff is finishing her practice glide and engine restart.  Her engine runs for a few seconds and then the qualification begins.  You can feel the little shudder when the propeller stops and when it starts again.  It took us two tries to get the engine turning again, which was within limits.

Here’s how it went:

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