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E Wein, fair weather PPL
I haven't been flying since the beginning of December, and Tayside Aviation won't let you rent planes without a check flight, and I am such a wimp anyway, that I thought I'd get someone to take me up and make me do all the things I hate most: stalls and steep turns and the dread Practiced Forced Landing (or PFL, for short--basically, you cut the power, pretend you've had an engine failure, and land in a field. Well, you don't *really* land in a field, but you come within about thirty feet of it). Simon Barr, who was my very first instructor, went with me. He has been through a number of job changes in the last couple of years (he is no longer half my age), and I have not been flying with him since 13 December 2002--a week before I did my first solo navigation. How strange that is, somehow.
Anyway, Simon and Fiona (my friend at the front desk) had plotted between them that they were going to turn this flight into my Biennial Review, a fine thing, since if I'd known ahead of time I would have probably not been able to eat breakfast.
Here's the funny thing: It was easy. It was quite windy, and cloudy (a bit bumpy), and I haven't been flying for two months, and I certainly haven't done stalls any time recently. But suddenly--when did this happen?--suddenly I *really am* capable of landing a plane in a field. Suddenly I *really can* sideslip, and shed height without gaining airspeed, and land straight in a crosswind. I still clutch the controls in a deathgrip, which is not characteristic of a natural-born pilot (finger and thumb only). But I feel so much more confident about my ability to cope in an emergency.
Flying is always so much more mundane, and I mean that literally, than I expect it to be; a little anti-climactic in its mundanity. What could be more fabulous than flying a small plane in Scotland? And yet in reality it's a morning spent poring through charts, the plasticky smell of the upholstery, the gritty, worn feel of the taped-up radio buttons and the stopped clocks and the crazed plexiglass, and the hunt for a cushion that makes me tall enough to see over the nose. It's all so, pardon the expression, *down to earth.*
I look at the robins and sparrows and chaffinches flitting about the bird feeder outside the kitchen window; and the crows and seagulls soaring in the 40 mph wind, easy; and I think, they do it *naturally.* They do it without thinking, they do it without checklists or fuel or PFLs or radio calls or harnesses or books or circular slide rules or radar or check flights or runways. HOW? I have been boggled by this ever since I started flying. I had to stop, early on, and just STARE at a pigeon flaring for its landing in the Perth High Street. They just *do* it. It is part of their body, of their being. It *is* their being.
Whereas for me, flying is not a bondless escape into the blue; it is consistently earthbound. Everything you are taught relates to earth, not sky. From beginning to end of flight your chief concern is making it safely back to earth. You find your way only because of the earth's magnetic field. You carry your chart with you so you know where you are above the earth; you talk to someone who is sitting on the ground plotting your track over the earth, following your progress; you monitor your distance from the earth in height; and all the while you are caged in this bubble of metal and Perspex and webbing, suspended in this fragile tiny protective space in the sky, where in reality you have no reasonable, earthly business being.
Still. Still, there was that astonishing day of my first solo navigation, two years ago, when the whole landscape was covered with hoarfrost. Everything was softened, as though it had snowed, but clearly visible at the same time. High cloud, no sun, only grey light. And in the river valleys, in the pools and hollows, in the folds of hills, pillows of fog like great heaps of cotton wool among the rimed trees and roofs and fields; and on the mountaintops to the north, shining fields of rose and gold where the oblique midwinter sun caught the snow.
I keep thinking about that, and I want to go flying again, stalls and Biennial Reviews and the smell of plastic notwithstanding.
Anyway, Simon and Fiona (my friend at the front desk) had plotted between them that they were going to turn this flight into my Biennial Review, a fine thing, since if I'd known ahead of time I would have probably not been able to eat breakfast.
Here's the funny thing: It was easy. It was quite windy, and cloudy (a bit bumpy), and I haven't been flying for two months, and I certainly haven't done stalls any time recently. But suddenly--when did this happen?--suddenly I *really am* capable of landing a plane in a field. Suddenly I *really can* sideslip, and shed height without gaining airspeed, and land straight in a crosswind. I still clutch the controls in a deathgrip, which is not characteristic of a natural-born pilot (finger and thumb only). But I feel so much more confident about my ability to cope in an emergency.
Flying is always so much more mundane, and I mean that literally, than I expect it to be; a little anti-climactic in its mundanity. What could be more fabulous than flying a small plane in Scotland? And yet in reality it's a morning spent poring through charts, the plasticky smell of the upholstery, the gritty, worn feel of the taped-up radio buttons and the stopped clocks and the crazed plexiglass, and the hunt for a cushion that makes me tall enough to see over the nose. It's all so, pardon the expression, *down to earth.*
I look at the robins and sparrows and chaffinches flitting about the bird feeder outside the kitchen window; and the crows and seagulls soaring in the 40 mph wind, easy; and I think, they do it *naturally.* They do it without thinking, they do it without checklists or fuel or PFLs or radio calls or harnesses or books or circular slide rules or radar or check flights or runways. HOW? I have been boggled by this ever since I started flying. I had to stop, early on, and just STARE at a pigeon flaring for its landing in the Perth High Street. They just *do* it. It is part of their body, of their being. It *is* their being.
Whereas for me, flying is not a bondless escape into the blue; it is consistently earthbound. Everything you are taught relates to earth, not sky. From beginning to end of flight your chief concern is making it safely back to earth. You find your way only because of the earth's magnetic field. You carry your chart with you so you know where you are above the earth; you talk to someone who is sitting on the ground plotting your track over the earth, following your progress; you monitor your distance from the earth in height; and all the while you are caged in this bubble of metal and Perspex and webbing, suspended in this fragile tiny protective space in the sky, where in reality you have no reasonable, earthly business being.
Still. Still, there was that astonishing day of my first solo navigation, two years ago, when the whole landscape was covered with hoarfrost. Everything was softened, as though it had snowed, but clearly visible at the same time. High cloud, no sun, only grey light. And in the river valleys, in the pools and hollows, in the folds of hills, pillows of fog like great heaps of cotton wool among the rimed trees and roofs and fields; and on the mountaintops to the north, shining fields of rose and gold where the oblique midwinter sun caught the snow.
I keep thinking about that, and I want to go flying again, stalls and Biennial Reviews and the smell of plastic notwithstanding.
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