Flew twice yesterday, called in by the owners out of critical need on a day I had hoped to use more productively. A pair of families visiting from out of town, the first from Santa Barbara and the second all the way from Oklahoma – there would have been no realistic chance of rescheduling for better pilot availability. It’d have meant a lost opportunity for the company, two cost centers sitting there on the ramp generating no revenue.
It was a quiet day at the aerodrome. All of this recession talk and AVGAS still topping out at better than $5 to the gallon having taken some of the wind out of the general aviation sail. The folks from Santa Barbara were a young couple, mid-twenties. She had bought the ride for him as a gift – so many of our customers are flying with us out of someone else’s generosity – but the back seat was empty in the other machine. Would she like to come along? The company would sponsor her flight at half price.
She was game, but hesitant. They were the parents of a four month old child, she had qualms about leaving him an orphan should some untoward thing arise.
No, no, it was insisted: She’d be safe as houses and have great fun to boot. And I silently agreed, knowing that the odds were very much in her favor. While yet conceding in my heart of hearts that the lady had a point. We tend to take things for granted, like the trust a loved one places in our hands. It matters little that I have done greater things and successfully faced far larger dangers than ferrying paying passengers around the Southern California coast in a piston engine single. All that I can be certain of now is that my end, when it comes, will not be at the helm of an FA-18.
Apart from that, who knows?
Things all worked out for the best of course, or else you’d be reading elsewhere. The lady had a marvelous time, and – like so many of her gender – proved something of a tigress when removed from society’s constraints. It could only be hoped that her young man enjoyed the view looking over his shoulder to his six o’clock, because that is where he spent the balance of his time.
But there are at least two kinds of folks who buy dogfighting flights for their loved ones: There are those who seek to fulfill a hidden wish in the person they are sponsoring. And there are those who are doing so for themselves. The second flight was like that.
A father of about my age, and a daughter of the Biscuit’s age. He had once been the proud owner/operator of a Cessna 210 – a (relatively) complex, (relatively) high performance, and (non-trivially) expensive piston single.
She never seemed to evince much enthusiasm during the brief, and my well-worn laugh lines were trotted out fruitlessly, before being retired to the barn. Happy enough once airborne it seemed, and even sightseeing up the La Jolla/Del Mar/Solana Beach coast, at least until I handed her the controls.
All well and good for straight and level flying, and even for some gentle turns – see? Now you’re a pilot! But the greater bank angles that are required for any kind of success in the dogfighting arena left her clutching at the side rails. Never to fret, my dear, you cannot possibly fall out, strapped down as you are at four points and with all that plexiglas above us. But giving thanks, she’d have none. A passenger ever after.
I flew the first engagement against her father, who after all had paid for the experience, but who hadn’t paid to win. My guest found no joy in the maneuvering required to place him in our gunsight however, and a brief respite of straight and level banter was required to even contemplate a second engagement, far less the customary third. These I let him win as convincingly as possible, which was harder than it seemed: He either wanted her to claim top honors or his Cessna 210 time had ill-equipped him for the rigors of maneuvering flight.
Quiet heading home, and the flight controls could have been made of egg shells, I flew that smoothly – and that’s saying something for a single seat fighter pilot. She kept her lunch, and was grateful to return to terra firma. A couple of family photos by the machines and they were on their merry, your correspondent left to wonder how someone could be exposed to something so rare and even – dare I say it – beautiful, and yet experience nothing but a feeling very close to dread.
I have done this thing I do on weekends often enough for the novelty of it to wear off – and God knows it’s not for the money – but I do get a deep pleasure out of seeing the light in someone’s eye when they first discover the joy of Icarus, omitting, for the sake of repeatability, all of that flying too close to the sun business. But just as some people find the Buddha in art, or music, or dance, while others can take it or leave it, another class entirely is immune. There’s no explaining it, I don’t think.
It’s something innate.
The Blue Angels being here, I’m reminded to send you a link.
Nice story and good pics.
“I flew that smoothly–and that’s saying something for a single seat fighter pilot”
LOL. How true, how so very true…..
Amazing but true. Folks either laugh and say “let’s do it again” or you find the white knuckle passenger scrambling to kiss the ground upon return to earth. It seems there is no ambivalence among first time flyers. These responses are within the context of straight and level and no parts left on the runway after touchdown. (I’m sure a neophyte would be ill prepared for a spin). Funny how that works.
There is nothing prosaic about your prose. Well written as usual.
Yak, I see there’s another addition to the Northeast Florida Chapter of Lex
Joan, dare we call you a Lex babe?
Great airshow – I took over 700 pix and the best will be on the web tomorrow! URL to be available then.
And – yay Joan!
I was very thrilled to see that the first jet with my name on it was BUNO 160607, also known as THE LAST VIKING BUILT was in attendance. Then I remembered said name was applied under its right rear window in the fall of 1978. No way in hell am I that old.
It was here in NASA colors – now spending its pasture days doing SATCOMM and engine inlet icing tests out of Cleveland Hopkins Airport.
I come for the phenom writing,
and I stay for the jets!
I grew up around the Blue Angels, although my dad was a mere radio tech on the P3s. But I always have an eye to the sky and could name all the different Navy birds as they buzzed the house.
I now live near a Grummond facility. They have a thing for AWACs, apparently.
Here’s a fav from the news yesterday.
Just heard that son-in-law was on duty there this weekend, making sure his squadrons hangar was sat, and none of his sailors were doing anything to embarass the squadron. And I also got another Mauler T-shirt, the one with the skill crunching down on a Red Boat
It’s something innate.
It’s something I married.
I am reminded of my own time in Pensacola. I was a “mustang”; 7 years and 2500 flight hours in P-3 Orions, who went to college and to Pensacola to become an NFO. I’m a private pilot myself, so I did fine in ground school, and excelled in cross-country navigation – but when the time came for our ACM hop in the T-2 Buckeye and the ground was up instead of down, I spent the rest of the flight in the barf bag. My pilot said that he _should_ have washed me out for airsickness, but he figured I’d be fine back in P-3s again. So I made it through, got my (second pair of) wings, and spent another 10 years and 2500 hours in P-3s again. And never again did more than a 60 degree angle of bank.
“I now live near a Grummond facility. ”
It’s good you can name the birds, Joan, but you need to work on the company names a bit, kiddo.
I work for Boink, by the way.
I need to lay off the rum, more to the pint… er, point.
Grumman? I pass the farookin’ sign every day.
Hammond is the church organ I played. You can see my confusion…
Just took my better half to Gaston’s resort (three-Mike-zero on your Kansas City sectional). Bouncy, challenging, never-been-there landing pattern with a bluff right in your face on the left base (had I owned a 396/496, I’m certain I would have heard the “lady” in the box hysterically saying, “Terrain, terrain; pull up, pull up!”). Slip down between two trees on very short final. Start breathing once the masters/mags are off. But the “innate” zen of it all when it’s done… Ah.
Yeah I unnerstand Cap’n Lex–at least I think I do.
Byron,
I went to the VS-32 decom but the ARO didn’t have the geedunk out to buy. Can your son-in-law score a t-shirt or two for a former Mauler?
Chunk
Chunk, shoot your email to Cap’n Lex, and ask him to pass it to me (I’d put it here, but too many Kos Kids who don’t like me). I’ll ask Doug (he would have been that ugly as sin ADC that looked more Marine that Chief) if he can score another. What size? L? XL?
Hey, Joan, is that Grumman facility just north of St. Augustine ?
Chunk, daughter just emailed me, all shirts are gone, but there are patches. Interested?
Uno mas, before I head home: and a command coin. Upping the ante, the son-in-law is..