Flyboys

I remember my first solo flight. This was back in the early 80's. I had about 15 hours of training recorded in my flight book and I landed the plane with my instructor on board at the Stone Mountain Airport after finishing another lesson. He looked at me and said, "Ok, I think you're ready." I said, "Ready for what?" He said,"Your solo." I said, "Let's not rush into this, I think I would be happy if you just keep flying with me." But he wasn't listening, he was just walking back to the hanger. I taxied back out on the runway and gave it full-throttle. I had never been in a plane alone and it handled differently. It accelerated faster and when I got up speed and pulled back on the yoke, it seemed to jump off the runway. It made a lot of difference not having the extra weight of another person in the plane with me.

After that, I decided to buy a plane and then I was flying back and forth to South Carolina from Atlanta to visit the family. After I had enough hours of flying, I went for my license. I flew up to Conway and picked up the Flight Examiner. We started going through the maneuvers and I was winging it (no pun intended). I had not been trained for half the things he wanted me to do. I managed to get through the part where I was flying under-the-hood, which is when you put this contraption on your head that looks like a welding mask and only allows you to see the instruments. Then he killed the engine and told me to land the plane. I was pretty sure he knew what he was doing because I knew I didn't. So the idea is to fly the plane back to the runway with no power and land, which is to simulate this same sort of thing if you have an engine failure. Well, I was to close to the runway and too high. I had never even been trained to do an engine out landing. So I didn't know how to zig-zag to bleed off some airspeed and altitude. When I got to the runway, I was about 200 feet above it and there was no way that I could get it down to make the landing. By the time I got it down to the ground, I would be past the end of the runway and in the trees. At this point I had not touched the throttle. Doing so in my mind would be telling the Examiner I couldn't make the landing, which I couldn't. So rather than allowing the two of us to end up in the trees, the Examiner leaned over and gave it full throttle. I was thinking to myself, you blinked. Because I would have argued that I could have landed it if he had not given it power. So we made another circle of the airport and I landed. He told me I needed to practice the engine out drill and he gave me my license.

Since then, I have had a few more scary moments in a plane. I am licensed for Visual Flight Rules (VFR), which means I can fly when I can see far enough ahead to land. So I've never received any training in backing a plane up. On one of my trips back to Atlanta from SC, I ran into a rain storm. I turned around and went back to an airport I had just passed and landed the plane. I waited for awhile, but the rain just got worst. I called my cousin Dan who lived in Conyers at the time and he came and took me home. Thanks again, Dan.

On that same trip before I got to the storm, my engine just quit running. I fiddled with the throttle and it finally started again. Now fiddling with anything implies you don't know what you're doing and you end up fixing it just out of blind luck. So that correctly describes what happened. I don't know why the engine stopped and I don't know why it started.

On another occasion, I landed my plane at the Walterboro Airport and applied the brakes. When the brakes don't work, it seems like either the car or the plane, whichever you're in, begins to go faster. I don't know if it actually sped up, but I started doing everything you would if that happens in a car. I turned the engine off and looked for a gearshift because panic had set in. By the time I realized none of that would help, I was at the end of the runway. Fortunately, at Walterboro, there is a lot of room at the end of the runway. As I ran off the runway and hit the grass, the plane slowed down enough so that I could make a big u-turn.

On yet another occasion, I was in my brother Ron's plane. He was flying, which is a much safer thing than flying with me. He is Instrument Flight Rules (IFR) rated, which means he doesn't have to turn around when he comes to a storm. Besides that, he's a much better pilot than me. Anyhow, we were headed for the John's Island Airport when the door next to me popped open. When you're in an airplane flying over a 100 mph and the door within inches of you pops open, your life flashes in front of you. Being the cool dude my brother is, he tells me to close it. Well it turns out that it's impossible to close the door when the plane is flying so I pull it as close to being closed as I can get it. Ron slows the plane down to where it only sounds like a hurricane rather than the tornado it sounded like before. While I'm struggling to keep the door from being ripped off, Ron is grinning and asking me if I'm having fun. I'm sure Ron has a lot more stories of near death experiences than I do.