Flying
Flying and aircraft have held a fascination for me since I can remember. So when I can, I get out and do some flying - and whenever I get the opportunity I'll fly something interesting/unusual/adventurous (although, with a "danger level" filter!)
I've flown many types of single-engine airplanes, gliders and hang gliders. I originally got my pilot's license in Ireland in 1988, but have had my US certificate since 1991. My certificate says I am a Private Pilot (with Instrument Rating) in the Airplane and Glider categories, with the class of airplane specified as Single Engine, Land. My log book includes endorsements for high-performance, complex, and tailwheel airplanes; and for aerotow and self-launching gliders. In addition, I have a Remote Pilot ("drone pilot") certificate.
In addition to my FAA ratings, I also have an Advanced hang glider rating from the US Hang Gliding/Paragliding Association, and flew hang gliders regularly for 10 years - I highly recommend hang gliding to anyone who wants to experience flight in its purest form!
I have owned a number of aircraft at various times, including two hang gliders; an ultralight sailplane called a Swift; a high-performance single-seat sailplane (Glaser-Dirks DG-202); and a touring motorglider (Valentin Taifun 17E). At present I own a modern, two-seat airplane (Sting S3).
I've flown many types of single-engine airplanes, gliders and hang gliders. I originally got my pilot's license in Ireland in 1988, but have had my US certificate since 1991. My certificate says I am a Private Pilot (with Instrument Rating) in the Airplane and Glider categories, with the class of airplane specified as Single Engine, Land. My log book includes endorsements for high-performance, complex, and tailwheel airplanes; and for aerotow and self-launching gliders. In addition, I have a Remote Pilot ("drone pilot") certificate.
In addition to my FAA ratings, I also have an Advanced hang glider rating from the US Hang Gliding/Paragliding Association, and flew hang gliders regularly for 10 years - I highly recommend hang gliding to anyone who wants to experience flight in its purest form!
I have owned a number of aircraft at various times, including two hang gliders; an ultralight sailplane called a Swift; a high-performance single-seat sailplane (Glaser-Dirks DG-202); and a touring motorglider (Valentin Taifun 17E). At present I own a modern, two-seat airplane (Sting S3).
Airplanes
Somewhat more than half of my total flight time has been in single-engine airplanes. By now I've flown quite a few different types. Click here to visit my airplane flying section and read brief reviews of the airplanes I've checked out in (no paid endorsements here!).
By the way, this curvy little machine is my Sting S3. It's a two-seat airplane in the Light Sport class. Ever since I owned my first sailplane I have loved the sleek, smooth look of composite structures, and this plane is all carbon fiber. It also has a whole-plane parachute, available in the event of dire emergency. It's not an especially fast airplane, but it's a great sightseeing machine, fun to fly, and relatively inexpensive to operate.
By the way, this curvy little machine is my Sting S3. It's a two-seat airplane in the Light Sport class. Ever since I owned my first sailplane I have loved the sleek, smooth look of composite structures, and this plane is all carbon fiber. It also has a whole-plane parachute, available in the event of dire emergency. It's not an especially fast airplane, but it's a great sightseeing machine, fun to fly, and relatively inexpensive to operate.
Gliders
To me, the most fun flying is gliding. Unfortunately, it's not always the most convenient form of flying: it doesn't mix well with large cities like New York!
When I lived in San Diego I owned a gorgeous aircraft. N202PW is a Glaser-Dirks DG-202, built in Germany in 1982. It has 15m wings (about 49 ft) and a glide ratio of about 41:1. It's a pretty sophisticated aircraft, with interlinked flaps and ailerons, retractable landing gear, and a cockpit that sports a gps-driven moving-map display. I no longer own "2PW;" when I moved to New York I sold it.
Click here to read more about my gliding experiences.
When I lived in San Diego I owned a gorgeous aircraft. N202PW is a Glaser-Dirks DG-202, built in Germany in 1982. It has 15m wings (about 49 ft) and a glide ratio of about 41:1. It's a pretty sophisticated aircraft, with interlinked flaps and ailerons, retractable landing gear, and a cockpit that sports a gps-driven moving-map display. I no longer own "2PW;" when I moved to New York I sold it.
Click here to read more about my gliding experiences.
Hang gliders
I took up hang gliding in graduate school. I hadn't intended to, really, but one day I had a chance to skim down a sand dune, and was instantly smitten! Hang gliding is what dreams of flying are about. Head down, Superman-style, flying actually becomes the most natural thing in the world. You can - and on many occasions I did - literally soar with the birds, which is quite a magical experience. The wing is invisible, above you and therefore behind you, so you almost forget it's there. Oddly enough, while it lacks the apparent security of being inside a structure, many people - myself included - find this actually makes the experience less scary. What you can't see, you don't worry will break, I guess. I learned more about flying from hang gliding than from any other flying I've done (and I mean that in a good way).
I eventually hung up my hang gliding wings because the logistics of hang gliding are fairly onerous. Also, I wanted to try some other kinds of flying. Maybe I'll come back to hang gliding some day; it's really an experience you can't match.
While I was in grad school, and hang gliding, I wrote a book on some of the aeronautical engineering aspects of these wonderful light aircraft. The Hang Glider's Technical Notebook was born - and it's available, in Kindle format, from Amazon.com (where it spent some time as the best-selling hang gliding title in the Kindle store).
This photograph was taken in Missoula, MT, when I was about to land on the golf course there (we had permission), after spending the afternoon flying above Mt. Sentinel, where we had launched.
In addition to the "classic" flex-wing hang glider shown here, I also owned a Bright Star Swift. When I first bought the Swift, I took it to El Mirage dry lake in Southern California, where there was lots of room to practice landing. Since there was no suitable hill to launch from, my friend Leo Bynum developed a towing system we could operate with his truck. I have found a video of our flights, so here's a link to one showing one of my flights, and here's a link to one of Leo's. We both subsequently had a lot of fun flying the Swift, and I once flew from the foothills above Cal State San Bernardino, up over the San Bernardino mountains and north into the desert, landing between Hesperia and Apple Valley after reaching 10,000' en route. Ultimately, I sold the Swift back to Brian Robbins, who had built it.
I eventually hung up my hang gliding wings because the logistics of hang gliding are fairly onerous. Also, I wanted to try some other kinds of flying. Maybe I'll come back to hang gliding some day; it's really an experience you can't match.
While I was in grad school, and hang gliding, I wrote a book on some of the aeronautical engineering aspects of these wonderful light aircraft. The Hang Glider's Technical Notebook was born - and it's available, in Kindle format, from Amazon.com (where it spent some time as the best-selling hang gliding title in the Kindle store).
This photograph was taken in Missoula, MT, when I was about to land on the golf course there (we had permission), after spending the afternoon flying above Mt. Sentinel, where we had launched.
In addition to the "classic" flex-wing hang glider shown here, I also owned a Bright Star Swift. When I first bought the Swift, I took it to El Mirage dry lake in Southern California, where there was lots of room to practice landing. Since there was no suitable hill to launch from, my friend Leo Bynum developed a towing system we could operate with his truck. I have found a video of our flights, so here's a link to one showing one of my flights, and here's a link to one of Leo's. We both subsequently had a lot of fun flying the Swift, and I once flew from the foothills above Cal State San Bernardino, up over the San Bernardino mountains and north into the desert, landing between Hesperia and Apple Valley after reaching 10,000' en route. Ultimately, I sold the Swift back to Brian Robbins, who had built it.
Coast to Coast by Light Sport Aircraft
or, Getting to Know 70L
or, Getting to Know 70L
Marion County, FL to Santa Monica, CA: 1,997 nm, 24.1 h
Paula looking very happy in a Sting S3 in Florida
Prelude - 1990
On top of Kagel Mountain, I felt distinctly uneasy. Standing on a sloped wooden ramp that led to a sudden drop-off, with nothing beyond that but the town of Sylmar, a northern suburb of Los Angeles 3,000 feet below, I could not fully quiet my nerves. It didn’t help that I was standing with my back to the drop, which I was doing because I had been asked to hold onto the nose of a hang glider to keep it from flying away prematurely. My roommate was being briefed by her instructor, Leo, on the flight they were about to take together. The ramp was not steep enough that I might slip down it; but it was steep enough that I couldn’t quite shake the thought. It was windy, and cool, and I was shivering a little, which didn’t help. I wanted to be out of there; I hoped they would be under way soon.
The unease was unexpected. I had volunteered quite enthusiastically to watch their adventure.
I grew up fascinated by things that fly: birds, and then airplanes, and eventually gliders, which doubled down on the magic by not only defying gravity but doing it without an engine. I even thought bats were a little cool - although bats were also a bit creepy.
As I got older – twelve or so – I started to ride my bicycle the three miles to the local airport at weekends. It was a grass strip with a hanger and a clubhouse. The flying club had two airplanes and two gliders. In those days, airports didn’t have security fences and I could just lock my bike to a drainpipe and hang out around the airplanes and the gliders. As the pilots began to recognize me I was occasionally – rarely – invited to occupy an empty seat in one of the planes and even allowed to talk on the airport radio as a “controller.” The airport did not have an official control tower, so I was just providing radio practice for the trainee pilots, but I took it seriously and studied the phonetic alphabet – alpha, bravo, charlie, delta – to do a good job.
When I got my first real job, my next order of business was to start pilot training.
So, four years later in 1989, age twenty-five, I was more than a little surprised to be so uneasy on that hang glider launch. Who thinks a pilot would have a fear of heights?
A few minutes later the two ran down the ramp and off the “cliff” and I could hear their shouts in the distance.
You Only Live Twice (or so they say)
A whole lifetime later, 2018 found me in my 50s, living in Manhattan, not having done much flying in a long time. Manhattan is not an ideal place for pilots: the little-airplane airports are outside the city; public transportation doesn’t go to them; and as a Manhattan resident I couldn’t afford to keep a car (it costs $500/month or more just to park one). If I rented a car to go out and practice takeoffs and landings, just the round trip to the airport would take three to four hours – before actually doing any flying – and it was hard to make that work.
Still, as the years rolled on, I realized that You Only Live Twice is just the name of a Bond movie; reality only gives you one time. If flying was something I wanted to do, it was time to get on with it and make it work. So, after doing lots of research, in that year I found the airplane I wanted to buy. Indeed, speaking of James Bond, something about this particular airplane spoke to me: the registration, N770L, which had a kind of inverted Bond reference to it: double seven oh. Who could resist?
The airplane was manufactured by a company in eastern Europe with the not-wholly-reassuring name of TL Ultralight, although it appeared to be a respectable outfit. The model name was Sting S3: there had been a Sting, but for some reason no Sting S2. By the time I bought the S3, there was also an S4. One of the features that attracted me to the Sting family was the fact that it had a whole-airframe parachute: in the event of Something Really Bad happening, I could shut off the engine, pull a red handle and descend under parachute, still strapped inside the aircraft. Really, at that point the only thing remaining would be to emerge in a tuxedo after the landing, to go find a badly-needed vodka martini.
As a matter of fact, I had encountered this type of airplane in the past. Back when an airplane purchase was more of a dream than a plan, I had attended an air show in Sebring, Florida with my girlfriend, Paula. We had seen a Sting S3 there, and had sat in it. I had been impressed by it - and I remembered that Paula had been very taken with the Sting, with a huge smile on her face when she “tried it on for size!”
Because the airplane I was buying was ten years old, the parachute was due for an overhaul, which could only be done by the original importer, SportAir, in Little Rock, Arkansas. Meanwhile, the airplane was currently having a pre-delivery inspection done at Marion County Airport in northern Florida.
Thus the idea was born: I would fly the plane 610 nautical miles from Florida to Little Rock and leave it there. In Little Rock, the parachute would be removed and a new one installed. With that work completed, I would return to Little Rock and fly the aircraft another 960 nautical miles – 1,100 miles – to a new home somewhere near New York city.
I had not flown a long distance in a small airplane in more than a decade, so I asked my old friend Leo – the same hang gliding instructor from that late afternoon on Kagel mountain – if he would like to join me on the adventure. I didn't have to ask twice. Leo lives in Albuquerque now and flies his Piper Dakota all over the western states. Since that day on Kagel mountain, we had flown hang gliders and airplanes together all over the western US, but with him moving to Albuquerque and me to New York we’d not done a long flight together in many years. It would be fun to do one again.
I’ve not spent much time in Florida. Indeed, most of my flying has been in the west. Naively, I had pictured Florida as a warm, sunny place, a good place to fly small airplanes.
Northern Florida, it turns out, is not like that at all. In summer, the humidity leads to low clouds and fog in the mornings. As the temperature rises the fog begins to clear, and for a short hour or so there may be a window of nice flying weather. But then the heat and the humidity kick in, and for the rest of the day there are thunderstorms, which don't die down until about 3-4 am the next morning.
Not only is this true of Florida, but the thunderstorms stretch right across the Gulf states, all day, every day, with the storms dying down only in the early morning hours.
As summer begins to turn to fall, however, the storms become less severe, and the periods of good flying weather grow longer. The mechanic in Florida completed the annual, and on a Friday afternoon in September I got on a Southwest flight to Tampa and met Leo there that night. We spent the night in Dunellon, not far from Marion County Airport, where the airplane awaited.
Sting S3, N770L, as we first met
After a hotel breakfast flavored with a hint of nervous anticipation, I found myself standing in a hangar at Marion County Airport, with the airplane I had bought.
The Sting S3 is small, but it attracts attention. It is a modern airplane, made with carbon fiber, which enables it to have compound curves and a smooth, rivet-free surface. Its appearance is organic, even sensuous. At the same time, there's something frankly cartoonish about it: the shape is dominated by a large, tinted canopy; the front end, with the engine inside, is more a cute button nose than the long cowling one associates with powerful airplanes. It looks more like a scaled-up Fisher-Price toy than, say, a Spitfire. And that's appropriate: the engine inside barely makes 100hp; the Merlin engine installed in a World War II Spitfire or Mustang fighter would deliver more than ten times as much power and propel the airplane more than three times as fast. The Sting S3 does not convey raw power; it is a curvaceous, organic thing.
I think it's one of the most beautiful airplanes I've ever seen.
Dave, the mechanic (and also a flight instructor) walked me through everything he thought I needed to know about it, while I tried to ignore the butterflies. Leo had a lot of cross country time but neither of us has ever flown this airplane. I had flown many similar-sized planes, but never this one or even the same model. And the weather was by no means certain.
Leo had gone to drop off our rental car and now returned in a taxi. We talked weather and route and preferred airports. Then we added fuel, pushed our kit into the storage space behind the seats, climbed in, fastened the seat belts, and began the process of organizing the cockpit.
Organizing an airplane cockpit is a little bit about making sure you have the appropriate checklists ready for use; but mostly it's about making sure you don't get lost. This is something many non-fliers don't think about, and it's actually a bit counterintuitive. After all, from the air you can see for miles, see the layout of entire towns at a glance. How, then, is it possible that a pilot would worry about getting lost?
Indeed, from the air you really can see for miles. It's not that you can't see; it's that you can see so much! It can be difficult to pick out particular landmarks - rather like looking for a face in a crowd. And, doing the reverse - looking at some hill or lake or road intersection or village in an effort to identify it on a map - is problematic also: you are moving more than a mile every thirty seconds. Pretty soon, while still trying to figure out where you are, you're not there anymore.
The first problem, of course, is that if you are lost, it's very hard to get to where you want to go. The second problem is that there are only a few places where an airplane can pull over to take a break and let the pilot get their bearings. These places are called airports. Small-airplane airports are essentially short roads, two lanes wide and less than a mile long - and almost impossible to spot from the air unless you know exactly where to look! So, if you're lost, there's nowhere to pull over unless you can find an airport, and it's almost impossible to find an airport unless you know where you are. Oh - and you must get to an airport before you run out of fuel.
And there’s another worry. While lost, you may stumble into someplace you're not supposed to be. The sky does not have “Keep Out!” signs; you have to stay out of trouble by knowing where you are. For example, it’s particularly important to be aware of the large swathes of airspace, near large cities, that are heavily used by airliners. Flight into these areas is allowed, but you must coordinate with air traffic control before doing so. Blunder into one unintentionally and you may find yourself spending significant amounts of time and money on lawyers. Fortunately, as a practical matter, it's most unlikely you could collide with an airliner even if you tried: there are radars and traffic alert systems that would warn the airline pilots about you. Still, wandering into their general path could be quite disruptive. People would not be pleased.
Then there is the military, which likes to practice things like flying crazy-fast jets, launching missiles, and firing artillery. The places where you might run into all this military hardware in the sky are clearly marked on the aviation maps (which, like sailors, pilots call "charts") as Restricted Areas. There are also Prohibited Areas over some sensitive infrastructure and places associated with current and former Presidents, such as Camp David, the White House, and so forth.
Since 9/11 there has been a large Special Flight Rules Area - where the rules are sufficiently complex, and the penalties for violations so severe, that essentially only local pilots and the airlines dare to operate there - over the entire Baltimore-Washington DC metropolitan area.
Then, there are Temporary Flight Restrictions (TFRs) that are put in place as needed near wildfires, natural disasters, or major accidents, to keep press and looky-loo ghouls from hampering the airborne first responders. The TFR concept was also greatly expanded after 9/11, so now there are no-fly zones that follow the President and Vice President around and there are Game TFRs over certain large sports arenas when games are in progress. These areas appear and disappear, and are not marked on the charts; you have to know not only where you are and where the TFRs are, but also when they will be there.
So, between wondering if you will find an airport somewhere near where you wanted to go, before you run out of fuel, and whether you might commit an airspace violation in the process, it's no fun getting lost.
To avoid getting lost, before even moving the airplane out of its parking place, pilots prepare a detailed plan for navigating to their destination, identifying the "waypoints" that will mark their route of flight, laying out the headings between them, calculating the times it will take to go from one to the next. And, they carry charts and follow their progress over the ground to make sure they are where they are supposed to be.
When I first learned to fly, organizing the cockpit involved making sure we had the right map, which we would mark up with our intended route. We would carefully measure compass headings, mark distances every 10 miles along each leg, and estimate heading and timing corrections to account for wind. These calculations would be made with an ingenious circular slide rule, which went by the rather technical-sounding name of "E-6B", but which was often referred to as a "whizz wheel". You also needed a notebook and a pen, so you could write down information received over the radio. And, you wanted to tie the pen to the notebook, because pens had an amazing ability to slip between the seats, out of reach, at the most inopportune moments.
Today, nobody seems to do this. Many pilots launch into the wide blue yonder without as much as a paper chart in their possession. This is because of GPS, and iPads.
Pilots still make detailed flight plans, but they make them on iPads. The iPad makes all the calculations, heading and timing adjustments based on current reported weather conditions along the route of flight, and lays it all out in a convenient table. It then transfers this plan to a GPS via Bluetooth, and the GPS marks the airplane's position, overlaid on the intended route of flight and an up-to-date map, at all times. Of course, old-timers abhor this newfangled digital planning, complaining that today's pilots don't know what they are doing and would be lost without their digital crutches, and asserting that Real Pilots can navigate while walking uphill, blindfold, with no shoes, in the snow... Technically, to use GPS as a primary navigation reference, a pilot must use an FAA-certified GPS, which is vastly more expensive than an uncertified, consumer unit. This has the strange result that when you look into the cockpit of many a 1970s-era antique airplane, you'll see a GPS in the instrument panel, bearing a sticker that clearly reads "Not For Navigation," leaving the casual onlooker to wonder what, if not navigation, a GPS would be for!
You might imagine that all this automation would greatly simplify, or even almost eliminate the task of "preparing the cockpit" for flight. Or, at least, you might if you’ve never set up a home network or at least programmed the clock on a microwave.
Sure, you may not have a paper chart, but you must go into the Settings on the iPad and make sure it is communicating with the GPS and with the ADS-B receiver. You must do this on both iPads, because iPads are consumer electronic devices that can overheat and shut down, or can lock up without warning, so you need a second one. Then you must confirm that the navigation, airspace and obstacle databases in both iPads and the GPS are up to date. You must confirm that the operating software is current. And, you must transfer your flight plan from the iPad to the GPS, if you have not already done so. Finally, on my airplane at least, you must synchronize the altimeter in the autopilot with the altimeter in the instrument panel (and, in fact, I have two of those).
In all honesty, on this particular morning I did not yet know about the need to synchronize the autopilot altimeter.
Coming, as I do, from the Old Times, I also carry a paper chart - although I no longer mark it up - and this must be folded in the special accordion folds I was taught to use, and then stowed in an easy-to-reach side pocket.
I still carry the pen and paper, too.
And that's just the "paperwork". After that, I check to make sure nothing in the cabin is likely to interfere with the free movement of the flight controls, and fasten my seat belt.
Actually, it's not strictly true that nobody uses "whizz wheels" anymore. Many flight instructors like to teach Old School methods, and many student pilots still buy E-6Bs and learn the art of using them. Some "aviator watches" even have a simplified version of the circular slide rule part built in, as the rotating watch bezel - I have one myself. And so it is that the form of slide rule (or, very likely, mechanical calculator of any kind) that is in by far the most widespread use today in America is Navy Lt. Philip Dalton's clever invention, the E-6B.
As soon as we closed the canopy, it would start to get hot inside; it would be time to move. The airplane felt a little small, suddenly - too small for the distance to Little Rock. I was conscious it was time to get going. I was conscious of the butterflies.
Flying has always made me a little nervous. I love it, yes, but there's always a little voice that says "Are you sure this is a good idea? Maybe you don't really know what you're doing, let's just go home." Sometimes that voice wins, and I make excuses to not go flying, observing that the weather isn't perfect or that I'm not fully rested. The voice sometimes makes good points, but the voice says these things whether it's right or not. There I was, sitting in a suddenly tiny airplane in the sun, on an unfamiliar airport in Florida, with no cross-country experience under my belt in at least a decade and a plan for the day that involved getting to Little Rock, and the voice was saying "Dude, seriously, what are you doing?"
I heard the voice. I had no intention of listening to it, but still it was unsettling.
My friend, sitting patiently next to me, said "good to go?"
It was a gentle nudge. He would not pressure. I could tell him there was something I wasn't happy with and he would take a commercial flight home and still be there if I wanted to try again another time. But still, it was a nudge. I knew what I was doing. He knew I knew what I was doing. He was simply sitting there, calm, waiting to get going. He was here, not only because I would enjoy his company on the trip, and because he actually did have a lot of cross country flying experience, but also because one voice that could banish the inner doubter was my friend’s.
I flipped the master switch up. The panel lit up, processors going through their own internal checklists, resolving their own doubts one at a time.
I looked across at Leo. Everything was still. Like Prufrock, I had 'forced the moment to its crisis.' Prufrock was a revelation to my once-teenage-self's understanding of poetry, but Prufrock was no pilot.
"Think so," I said. Then, more loudly, "CLEAR PROP!"
With the breeze coming from the east, we back-taxied the length of Runway 10. The airport is essentially a huge grassy field with runways on it, and taxiing across it, with the canopy propped open a little to control the temperature inside, did nothing to alleviate my sense that the airplane was inappropriately small. Leo was fiddling with his iPad - entering our flight plan, I gathered. When we reached the wider space created by the intersection with Runway 05, I turned the airplane around to face into the wind. Not seeing anyplace else to do a run-up, I pulled forward out of the intersection and did one there. The GPS, which had failed to boot properly, which I had recycled several times, was still stuck on the startup page. We discussed the situation and agreed it was not a problem: we had two iPads getting GPS data from the ADS-B system, plus my phone with its own internal GPS. Nav would be fine, and Leo would take responsibility for not getting us lost, while I would focus on operating the airplane.
And then I was at the end of the checklist and the canopy was fastened and there didn't seem to be anything else to do. Looking across at Leo, who was right there beside me, I asked, "Anything else I should do, that you can think of?
I noticed he looked a little unsettled.
"I'm just thinking," he said, "you've really never flown this airplane?"
So much for my confident copilot! I smiled, finding myself suddenly excited to get going.
"It's a simple airplane," I blurted out, suddenly full of myself. "It'll be fine."
The Sting S3 is small, but it attracts attention. It is a modern airplane, made with carbon fiber, which enables it to have compound curves and a smooth, rivet-free surface. Its appearance is organic, even sensuous. At the same time, there's something frankly cartoonish about it: the shape is dominated by a large, tinted canopy; the front end, with the engine inside, is more a cute button nose than the long cowling one associates with powerful airplanes. It looks more like a scaled-up Fisher-Price toy than, say, a Spitfire. And that's appropriate: the engine inside barely makes 100hp; the Merlin engine installed in a World War II Spitfire or Mustang fighter would deliver more than ten times as much power and propel the airplane more than three times as fast. The Sting S3 does not convey raw power; it is a curvaceous, organic thing.
I think it's one of the most beautiful airplanes I've ever seen.
Dave, the mechanic (and also a flight instructor) walked me through everything he thought I needed to know about it, while I tried to ignore the butterflies. Leo had a lot of cross country time but neither of us has ever flown this airplane. I had flown many similar-sized planes, but never this one or even the same model. And the weather was by no means certain.
Leo had gone to drop off our rental car and now returned in a taxi. We talked weather and route and preferred airports. Then we added fuel, pushed our kit into the storage space behind the seats, climbed in, fastened the seat belts, and began the process of organizing the cockpit.
Organizing an airplane cockpit is a little bit about making sure you have the appropriate checklists ready for use; but mostly it's about making sure you don't get lost. This is something many non-fliers don't think about, and it's actually a bit counterintuitive. After all, from the air you can see for miles, see the layout of entire towns at a glance. How, then, is it possible that a pilot would worry about getting lost?
Indeed, from the air you really can see for miles. It's not that you can't see; it's that you can see so much! It can be difficult to pick out particular landmarks - rather like looking for a face in a crowd. And, doing the reverse - looking at some hill or lake or road intersection or village in an effort to identify it on a map - is problematic also: you are moving more than a mile every thirty seconds. Pretty soon, while still trying to figure out where you are, you're not there anymore.
The first problem, of course, is that if you are lost, it's very hard to get to where you want to go. The second problem is that there are only a few places where an airplane can pull over to take a break and let the pilot get their bearings. These places are called airports. Small-airplane airports are essentially short roads, two lanes wide and less than a mile long - and almost impossible to spot from the air unless you know exactly where to look! So, if you're lost, there's nowhere to pull over unless you can find an airport, and it's almost impossible to find an airport unless you know where you are. Oh - and you must get to an airport before you run out of fuel.
And there’s another worry. While lost, you may stumble into someplace you're not supposed to be. The sky does not have “Keep Out!” signs; you have to stay out of trouble by knowing where you are. For example, it’s particularly important to be aware of the large swathes of airspace, near large cities, that are heavily used by airliners. Flight into these areas is allowed, but you must coordinate with air traffic control before doing so. Blunder into one unintentionally and you may find yourself spending significant amounts of time and money on lawyers. Fortunately, as a practical matter, it's most unlikely you could collide with an airliner even if you tried: there are radars and traffic alert systems that would warn the airline pilots about you. Still, wandering into their general path could be quite disruptive. People would not be pleased.
Then there is the military, which likes to practice things like flying crazy-fast jets, launching missiles, and firing artillery. The places where you might run into all this military hardware in the sky are clearly marked on the aviation maps (which, like sailors, pilots call "charts") as Restricted Areas. There are also Prohibited Areas over some sensitive infrastructure and places associated with current and former Presidents, such as Camp David, the White House, and so forth.
Since 9/11 there has been a large Special Flight Rules Area - where the rules are sufficiently complex, and the penalties for violations so severe, that essentially only local pilots and the airlines dare to operate there - over the entire Baltimore-Washington DC metropolitan area.
Then, there are Temporary Flight Restrictions (TFRs) that are put in place as needed near wildfires, natural disasters, or major accidents, to keep press and looky-loo ghouls from hampering the airborne first responders. The TFR concept was also greatly expanded after 9/11, so now there are no-fly zones that follow the President and Vice President around and there are Game TFRs over certain large sports arenas when games are in progress. These areas appear and disappear, and are not marked on the charts; you have to know not only where you are and where the TFRs are, but also when they will be there.
So, between wondering if you will find an airport somewhere near where you wanted to go, before you run out of fuel, and whether you might commit an airspace violation in the process, it's no fun getting lost.
To avoid getting lost, before even moving the airplane out of its parking place, pilots prepare a detailed plan for navigating to their destination, identifying the "waypoints" that will mark their route of flight, laying out the headings between them, calculating the times it will take to go from one to the next. And, they carry charts and follow their progress over the ground to make sure they are where they are supposed to be.
When I first learned to fly, organizing the cockpit involved making sure we had the right map, which we would mark up with our intended route. We would carefully measure compass headings, mark distances every 10 miles along each leg, and estimate heading and timing corrections to account for wind. These calculations would be made with an ingenious circular slide rule, which went by the rather technical-sounding name of "E-6B", but which was often referred to as a "whizz wheel". You also needed a notebook and a pen, so you could write down information received over the radio. And, you wanted to tie the pen to the notebook, because pens had an amazing ability to slip between the seats, out of reach, at the most inopportune moments.
Today, nobody seems to do this. Many pilots launch into the wide blue yonder without as much as a paper chart in their possession. This is because of GPS, and iPads.
Pilots still make detailed flight plans, but they make them on iPads. The iPad makes all the calculations, heading and timing adjustments based on current reported weather conditions along the route of flight, and lays it all out in a convenient table. It then transfers this plan to a GPS via Bluetooth, and the GPS marks the airplane's position, overlaid on the intended route of flight and an up-to-date map, at all times. Of course, old-timers abhor this newfangled digital planning, complaining that today's pilots don't know what they are doing and would be lost without their digital crutches, and asserting that Real Pilots can navigate while walking uphill, blindfold, with no shoes, in the snow... Technically, to use GPS as a primary navigation reference, a pilot must use an FAA-certified GPS, which is vastly more expensive than an uncertified, consumer unit. This has the strange result that when you look into the cockpit of many a 1970s-era antique airplane, you'll see a GPS in the instrument panel, bearing a sticker that clearly reads "Not For Navigation," leaving the casual onlooker to wonder what, if not navigation, a GPS would be for!
You might imagine that all this automation would greatly simplify, or even almost eliminate the task of "preparing the cockpit" for flight. Or, at least, you might if you’ve never set up a home network or at least programmed the clock on a microwave.
Sure, you may not have a paper chart, but you must go into the Settings on the iPad and make sure it is communicating with the GPS and with the ADS-B receiver. You must do this on both iPads, because iPads are consumer electronic devices that can overheat and shut down, or can lock up without warning, so you need a second one. Then you must confirm that the navigation, airspace and obstacle databases in both iPads and the GPS are up to date. You must confirm that the operating software is current. And, you must transfer your flight plan from the iPad to the GPS, if you have not already done so. Finally, on my airplane at least, you must synchronize the altimeter in the autopilot with the altimeter in the instrument panel (and, in fact, I have two of those).
In all honesty, on this particular morning I did not yet know about the need to synchronize the autopilot altimeter.
Coming, as I do, from the Old Times, I also carry a paper chart - although I no longer mark it up - and this must be folded in the special accordion folds I was taught to use, and then stowed in an easy-to-reach side pocket.
I still carry the pen and paper, too.
And that's just the "paperwork". After that, I check to make sure nothing in the cabin is likely to interfere with the free movement of the flight controls, and fasten my seat belt.
Actually, it's not strictly true that nobody uses "whizz wheels" anymore. Many flight instructors like to teach Old School methods, and many student pilots still buy E-6Bs and learn the art of using them. Some "aviator watches" even have a simplified version of the circular slide rule part built in, as the rotating watch bezel - I have one myself. And so it is that the form of slide rule (or, very likely, mechanical calculator of any kind) that is in by far the most widespread use today in America is Navy Lt. Philip Dalton's clever invention, the E-6B.
As soon as we closed the canopy, it would start to get hot inside; it would be time to move. The airplane felt a little small, suddenly - too small for the distance to Little Rock. I was conscious it was time to get going. I was conscious of the butterflies.
Flying has always made me a little nervous. I love it, yes, but there's always a little voice that says "Are you sure this is a good idea? Maybe you don't really know what you're doing, let's just go home." Sometimes that voice wins, and I make excuses to not go flying, observing that the weather isn't perfect or that I'm not fully rested. The voice sometimes makes good points, but the voice says these things whether it's right or not. There I was, sitting in a suddenly tiny airplane in the sun, on an unfamiliar airport in Florida, with no cross-country experience under my belt in at least a decade and a plan for the day that involved getting to Little Rock, and the voice was saying "Dude, seriously, what are you doing?"
I heard the voice. I had no intention of listening to it, but still it was unsettling.
My friend, sitting patiently next to me, said "good to go?"
It was a gentle nudge. He would not pressure. I could tell him there was something I wasn't happy with and he would take a commercial flight home and still be there if I wanted to try again another time. But still, it was a nudge. I knew what I was doing. He knew I knew what I was doing. He was simply sitting there, calm, waiting to get going. He was here, not only because I would enjoy his company on the trip, and because he actually did have a lot of cross country flying experience, but also because one voice that could banish the inner doubter was my friend’s.
I flipped the master switch up. The panel lit up, processors going through their own internal checklists, resolving their own doubts one at a time.
I looked across at Leo. Everything was still. Like Prufrock, I had 'forced the moment to its crisis.' Prufrock was a revelation to my once-teenage-self's understanding of poetry, but Prufrock was no pilot.
"Think so," I said. Then, more loudly, "CLEAR PROP!"
With the breeze coming from the east, we back-taxied the length of Runway 10. The airport is essentially a huge grassy field with runways on it, and taxiing across it, with the canopy propped open a little to control the temperature inside, did nothing to alleviate my sense that the airplane was inappropriately small. Leo was fiddling with his iPad - entering our flight plan, I gathered. When we reached the wider space created by the intersection with Runway 05, I turned the airplane around to face into the wind. Not seeing anyplace else to do a run-up, I pulled forward out of the intersection and did one there. The GPS, which had failed to boot properly, which I had recycled several times, was still stuck on the startup page. We discussed the situation and agreed it was not a problem: we had two iPads getting GPS data from the ADS-B system, plus my phone with its own internal GPS. Nav would be fine, and Leo would take responsibility for not getting us lost, while I would focus on operating the airplane.
And then I was at the end of the checklist and the canopy was fastened and there didn't seem to be anything else to do. Looking across at Leo, who was right there beside me, I asked, "Anything else I should do, that you can think of?
I noticed he looked a little unsettled.
"I'm just thinking," he said, "you've really never flown this airplane?"
So much for my confident copilot! I smiled, finding myself suddenly excited to get going.
"It's a simple airplane," I blurted out, suddenly full of myself. "It'll be fine."
Marion County Airport, Florida (X35) to Eufala, Alabama (KEUF) - 224 nm, 2.5 h
The takeoff run was short but inelegant. Long before I was ready for it, the airplane was off the ground, flying before I thought it should. Tricky moment: with a grand total of two seconds' flight experience in the airplane, I had to drop the nose just a touch so we could accelerate, but not so much as to sink back onto the runway. That actually worked. From there, we waited: it took a surprisingly long time to get from thirty-something knots to my planned climb speed of 65: probably three quarters of the "takeoff run", in time and certainly in distance, happened with the wheels already off the ground!
"Yikes", I said. "Sorry about that. Think I've got it now."
On the ground, Dave snapped a shot of the departing airplane with his phone. I would later find it in my text messages, with a hearty message of Bon Voyage.
"Yikes", I said. "Sorry about that. Think I've got it now."
On the ground, Dave snapped a shot of the departing airplane with his phone. I would later find it in my text messages, with a hearty message of Bon Voyage.
Departing from Marion County Airport ---
Photo: Dave Patrick
As we reached the treeline off the end of the runway, already 1,000 ft up, the first sign of a problem.
"Um..." Leo said, "we don't have nav".
His iPad was refusing to play nice. For some reason, the navigation software was hanging on the startup page. What was it with GPS startup pages this morning?
We were hardly lost, just yet: we were looking down at Marion County Airport. I had a paper chart on my knee: sometimes there's something to be said for the Old School! I turned to head approximately on course.
Five minutes later, Leo had the iPad working, route laid in, and we were cruising.
For the first hour or so, we had to stay low, just about 1,000’ above sea level, to keep the required clearance below the scattered clumps of fog above. After a few minutes, we remembered that flying low over flat country like this we should probably keep the chart handy to watch for antenna towers - and, indeed, there were a few around. This was also how we established that my new-to-me airplane had a sense of self preservation, as messages would appear on the primary flight display: OBSTACLE. I was grateful to have that: I like it when my aircraft has a sense of self preservation, all things considered.
We were heading out over wetlands, seeing a part of Florida not many people visit, the watery landscape naturally dappled, and now doubly so because of the clouds not far above us, which broke up the bright light from the sky above. The net effect was beautiful, but also a little odd, as I found it difficult to tell what I was looking at. If anything, I realized, it was the clouds - pretending to be cumulus, they were really dissipating fog, ragged and thin, floating past above us - that were familiar, while the ground appeared alien. To a large extent, the sky is the same everywhere.
Forty-five minutes into the flight, paging through the engine instruments, we made an unpleasant discovery: the fuel pressure was fluctuating, and not just a little. Flipping on the electric pump fixed it at once. When we turned it off again, the pressure stayed high. That was interesting... We changed route at once, heading toward Suwannee airport as we tried to diagnose the issue. Everything was fine again, but now we were alert for further signs of trouble: in airplanes, as in life, trouble rarely just goes away.
In fact, we later learned that this kind of fuel pressure fluctuation is a known mystery of Rotax 912 engines, a ghost in the machines. At least one aircraft manufacturer has addressed the problem by simply wiring the electric fuel pump so that it runs all the time. In any case, in my research later I was unable to find any reports from anyone who had ever had an engine fail, or even hesitate, during one of these fluctuations. In airplanes, as in life, trouble sometimes does just go away!
We had decided our first stop would be at Eufala, a city of 13,000 people on the Alabama side of the Chattahoochee River. Named after a Creek tribe that once occupied the area, the town has a couple of interesting historical notes. In 1827, at the request of the same Creek tribe, the federal government sent troops to the area to remove white settlers who had moved onto the lands illegally – and how often do you hear about something like that? Nevertheless, the Creeks ultimately sold most of the land to settlers. By 1857, when the town acquired its present name, it was a major port, trading with New York and even Liverpool, England. Shortly after that, Eufala may well have been the site of the last battle fought during the Civil War - the Battle of Hobdy's Bridge.
None of this historical drama was apparent to us: Eufala's airport, right next to the river, is a long, wide, smoothly paved runway in a sea of trees. There was a Cirrus SR22 flying in the pattern as we approached.
My little airplane would be excited to meet a Cirrus, I felt. The Cirrus, arguably the only really successful new four-seat aircraft certified by the FAA in the last 30 years, was something of a revolution in light aircraft design, for two reasons: it had a composite airframe, rather than aluminum, giving it a corrosion-resistant structure under a smooth and rivet-free surface finish; and it had an airframe parachute, which in an emergency would bring the whole aircraft down safely, with the occupants still strapped inside. And, my little S3 also has a composite, corrosion-free, rivet-free structure, and also has an airframe parachute - although it has only two seats and is rather less speedy. It had crossed my mind that the S3 was like a "mini-Cirrus”, with half the seats, two thirds as quick, and one tenth the cost. All of which was true - and I particularly appreciated the part about the cost.
In any case, as it turned out, the Cirrus didn't land, and the S3 didn't get to meet her big cousin, for today at least.
Eufala airport was inviting: gas pumps, tiedowns, and an attractive little terminal building. I found a snack machine in the lobby and took a couple of photos of my first visit to Alabama.
"Um..." Leo said, "we don't have nav".
His iPad was refusing to play nice. For some reason, the navigation software was hanging on the startup page. What was it with GPS startup pages this morning?
We were hardly lost, just yet: we were looking down at Marion County Airport. I had a paper chart on my knee: sometimes there's something to be said for the Old School! I turned to head approximately on course.
Five minutes later, Leo had the iPad working, route laid in, and we were cruising.
For the first hour or so, we had to stay low, just about 1,000’ above sea level, to keep the required clearance below the scattered clumps of fog above. After a few minutes, we remembered that flying low over flat country like this we should probably keep the chart handy to watch for antenna towers - and, indeed, there were a few around. This was also how we established that my new-to-me airplane had a sense of self preservation, as messages would appear on the primary flight display: OBSTACLE. I was grateful to have that: I like it when my aircraft has a sense of self preservation, all things considered.
We were heading out over wetlands, seeing a part of Florida not many people visit, the watery landscape naturally dappled, and now doubly so because of the clouds not far above us, which broke up the bright light from the sky above. The net effect was beautiful, but also a little odd, as I found it difficult to tell what I was looking at. If anything, I realized, it was the clouds - pretending to be cumulus, they were really dissipating fog, ragged and thin, floating past above us - that were familiar, while the ground appeared alien. To a large extent, the sky is the same everywhere.
Forty-five minutes into the flight, paging through the engine instruments, we made an unpleasant discovery: the fuel pressure was fluctuating, and not just a little. Flipping on the electric pump fixed it at once. When we turned it off again, the pressure stayed high. That was interesting... We changed route at once, heading toward Suwannee airport as we tried to diagnose the issue. Everything was fine again, but now we were alert for further signs of trouble: in airplanes, as in life, trouble rarely just goes away.
In fact, we later learned that this kind of fuel pressure fluctuation is a known mystery of Rotax 912 engines, a ghost in the machines. At least one aircraft manufacturer has addressed the problem by simply wiring the electric fuel pump so that it runs all the time. In any case, in my research later I was unable to find any reports from anyone who had ever had an engine fail, or even hesitate, during one of these fluctuations. In airplanes, as in life, trouble sometimes does just go away!
We had decided our first stop would be at Eufala, a city of 13,000 people on the Alabama side of the Chattahoochee River. Named after a Creek tribe that once occupied the area, the town has a couple of interesting historical notes. In 1827, at the request of the same Creek tribe, the federal government sent troops to the area to remove white settlers who had moved onto the lands illegally – and how often do you hear about something like that? Nevertheless, the Creeks ultimately sold most of the land to settlers. By 1857, when the town acquired its present name, it was a major port, trading with New York and even Liverpool, England. Shortly after that, Eufala may well have been the site of the last battle fought during the Civil War - the Battle of Hobdy's Bridge.
None of this historical drama was apparent to us: Eufala's airport, right next to the river, is a long, wide, smoothly paved runway in a sea of trees. There was a Cirrus SR22 flying in the pattern as we approached.
My little airplane would be excited to meet a Cirrus, I felt. The Cirrus, arguably the only really successful new four-seat aircraft certified by the FAA in the last 30 years, was something of a revolution in light aircraft design, for two reasons: it had a composite airframe, rather than aluminum, giving it a corrosion-resistant structure under a smooth and rivet-free surface finish; and it had an airframe parachute, which in an emergency would bring the whole aircraft down safely, with the occupants still strapped inside. And, my little S3 also has a composite, corrosion-free, rivet-free structure, and also has an airframe parachute - although it has only two seats and is rather less speedy. It had crossed my mind that the S3 was like a "mini-Cirrus”, with half the seats, two thirds as quick, and one tenth the cost. All of which was true - and I particularly appreciated the part about the cost.
In any case, as it turned out, the Cirrus didn't land, and the S3 didn't get to meet her big cousin, for today at least.
Eufala airport was inviting: gas pumps, tiedowns, and an attractive little terminal building. I found a snack machine in the lobby and took a couple of photos of my first visit to Alabama.
Eufala airport. Note the actively building clouds in the background!
We couldn't stay, though. We were concerned, remember, about thunderstorms - and we could see some cumulus beginning to tower a few miles to the north. On our electronic devices, the weather picture was still clear to the west. We needed to go, to the west, and soon.
Eufala to Grenada MS (GNF) - 261 nm, 2.8 h
Eufala to Grenada MS (GNF) - 261 nm, 2.8 h
We hated to fuel and run, but that's what we did. Fire up the motor – CLEAR PROP! – check for approaching air traffic, back out onto the runway - such a big runway! Leo, flying his first takeoff in the airplane, broke ground in a more controlled fashion than I had and we were off again.
Actually, we weren't altogether sure it was goodbye to Eufala, just yet. The plan was to end-run the towering cumulus by going west, then take a look out to the north. If it didn't look good out that way, we'd return to the airport before the weather reached it, and hunker down there.
The ADS-B picture, available once we were back in flight, looked promising: no sign of trouble to the north. No sign, except for that one towering cloud right in our path.
We ran to the west, the white tower with its darkening base on our right. I did not want to get close to that thing: the Sting is a composite airplane with no metal mesh in the skin, and a lightning strike would be the end of us. It's absolutely a "no convective weather" aircraft. After ten or fifteen minutes we rounded the end of the cloud and headed out into skies dotted with cumulus clouds that were well developed, but not towering. It looked good out there. We’d continue. Farewell, Eufala!
As we passed that one towering, darkening cloud, a few miles to the west of it we encountered a meteorological wonder: rain.
Now, I know you just thought something like "Pah! Rain? What's so wonderful about rain?"
And I'll tell you what was so wonderful about it. This rain had no cloud. Kid you not. It was virga, that type of rain that evaporates before it reaches the ground. You can see it in the air, a kind of streaky milky-ness out there. You almost always - indeed, in my prior experience, always - see virga under a cloud. Under a raincloud, in fact. But this virga wasn't like that: it not only ended in mid-air at the bottom, it actually appeared in mid-air, at the top.
I've truly never seen anything like it, except this once.
In any case, it was there, and we flew through it and there were raindrops on the windshield with no cloud anywhere around, and then we were through it and it was behind us and I don't know who else saw the wonder. For a few moments two people saw it; maybe no-one else did. The airplane made no comment on the situation.
We pressed on. The cloud bases were not high, and we were limited to about 2,500 ft above sea level. This left us too low to reach Flight Watch, but our ADS-B weather was still working on both iPads, and I had weather on my phone as well, so I felt we were well-informed. The airplane didn't seem perturbed.
However, I was less sanguine about what was below us: forest, to the horizon. Trees everywhere. There was nowhere out here where we could land in a pinch. The knowledge that there was a ballistic parachute in the back was somewhat comforting; still, I prefer to have the parachute as Plan C.
And we discovered a new hazard: soaring birds. All these cumulus clouds were marking the tops of thermals. From hang gliding, both Leo and I know that it's more efficient to fly along a cloud street if you can, using the lift in lieu of engine power to maintain speed. The thing is, soaring birds know this too. And, these fellow soaring pilots had a lesson to teach us, not about soaring but about the illusions of midair encounters. We saw them at a distance, saw them circling lazily, moving slowly, no risk of collision at all. I eased the stick, banked a few degrees to begin to steer around them while they were still far away. And then they were looming at us, growing rapidly. Suddenly I was pulling - not real hard, but harder than expected - to avoid the creatures, who were now swerving in panic ahead, as I wondered how they had ever come so close.
And the lesson they were inadvertently teaching was this: when you see a bird in the distance, it's not really in the distance. Even at 107 knots, when you see a bird, it's CLOSE.
After a couple of encounters with flocks wheeling under the cumulus clouds, we learned to make those small course changes, not to avoid the birds directly, but early enough to avoid flying under the clouds that marked the lift, long before we could even see the birds. And, in that way, we minimized the risk that a hawk might come through the windshield and ruin everyone's day.
Many pilots report having hit birds in flight; I never have. I have, though, been quite close to birds in flight, sometimes for long periods of time: it was a fairly common experience when I was flying hang gliders. Hang gliders, as it happens, have roughly the same flying speed as red-tailed hawks; and both sink through the air at about the same rate, when gliding. Although the hawks can fly by flapping their wings, they prefer to find rising air where they can climb without having to work at it; and hang gliders look for this rising air, which they call "lift", because they really don't flap well to begin with. Knowing this, if a hang glider pilot sees a hawk gliding in circles, she can guess that the hawk is circling in rising air - and if the air is rising fast enough to support the hawk, it will support the hang glider. And - and this is the really fun part - if the hawk should see the hang glider flying in circles, the hawk can make a similar deduction and will fly over to join the hang glider, who can later brag about having shown a hawk “how it’s done!” Thus, hang gliders and hawks often fly together, circling in rising air. It's a curious experience, sharing rising air with one or more birds, knowing that they know what we hang gliders are doing there, and vice versa, watching each other to pick up tips on where the best air is. Despite having similar flying speed and sinking rate, the hawks have one big advantage over hang gliders: maneuverability. They can adjust their flight path to stay in the best air, and do it quickly; hang gliders cannot, and thus, over the course of several minutes, the hawks always win.
The S3 is not a soaring aircraft, but its composite structure makes it a cousin of the elegant sailplanes that are. I wondered what she might make of the soaring birds. Once again, she didn't say.
At Union Springs, or so, forest gave way to farmland. We continued gently dodging the clouds, accepting the fuel penalty of constantly flying in sinking air (for the air that goes up under the clouds, comes down in the blue spaces between them). After Montgomery we again found ourselves between clouds and forest, forest, forest - although, in fairness, the tree canopy was more broken to the south and there were paddocks where we might be able to land.
Approaching Columbus, we had to do a little airspace avoidance. We were still at just 2,500', so we turned west to stay south of the Class D for Golden Triangle Regional (GTR) and the local sports stadium, where the game due to start in an hour would result in a TFR to protect the stadium from attack by our cute little oversized Fisher-Price airplane.
Grenada MS, like Eufala, is situated by a body of water - Grenada lake. We crossed the lake, not far from the southern shore, planning to fly over the field to check the wind as there was no response on the radio. We heard a commuter aircraft departing and figured the airport would be a good place to refuel quickly: from there we could just make our final destination for the day, KORK, in one more leg.
Actually, we weren't altogether sure it was goodbye to Eufala, just yet. The plan was to end-run the towering cumulus by going west, then take a look out to the north. If it didn't look good out that way, we'd return to the airport before the weather reached it, and hunker down there.
The ADS-B picture, available once we were back in flight, looked promising: no sign of trouble to the north. No sign, except for that one towering cloud right in our path.
We ran to the west, the white tower with its darkening base on our right. I did not want to get close to that thing: the Sting is a composite airplane with no metal mesh in the skin, and a lightning strike would be the end of us. It's absolutely a "no convective weather" aircraft. After ten or fifteen minutes we rounded the end of the cloud and headed out into skies dotted with cumulus clouds that were well developed, but not towering. It looked good out there. We’d continue. Farewell, Eufala!
As we passed that one towering, darkening cloud, a few miles to the west of it we encountered a meteorological wonder: rain.
Now, I know you just thought something like "Pah! Rain? What's so wonderful about rain?"
And I'll tell you what was so wonderful about it. This rain had no cloud. Kid you not. It was virga, that type of rain that evaporates before it reaches the ground. You can see it in the air, a kind of streaky milky-ness out there. You almost always - indeed, in my prior experience, always - see virga under a cloud. Under a raincloud, in fact. But this virga wasn't like that: it not only ended in mid-air at the bottom, it actually appeared in mid-air, at the top.
I've truly never seen anything like it, except this once.
In any case, it was there, and we flew through it and there were raindrops on the windshield with no cloud anywhere around, and then we were through it and it was behind us and I don't know who else saw the wonder. For a few moments two people saw it; maybe no-one else did. The airplane made no comment on the situation.
We pressed on. The cloud bases were not high, and we were limited to about 2,500 ft above sea level. This left us too low to reach Flight Watch, but our ADS-B weather was still working on both iPads, and I had weather on my phone as well, so I felt we were well-informed. The airplane didn't seem perturbed.
However, I was less sanguine about what was below us: forest, to the horizon. Trees everywhere. There was nowhere out here where we could land in a pinch. The knowledge that there was a ballistic parachute in the back was somewhat comforting; still, I prefer to have the parachute as Plan C.
And we discovered a new hazard: soaring birds. All these cumulus clouds were marking the tops of thermals. From hang gliding, both Leo and I know that it's more efficient to fly along a cloud street if you can, using the lift in lieu of engine power to maintain speed. The thing is, soaring birds know this too. And, these fellow soaring pilots had a lesson to teach us, not about soaring but about the illusions of midair encounters. We saw them at a distance, saw them circling lazily, moving slowly, no risk of collision at all. I eased the stick, banked a few degrees to begin to steer around them while they were still far away. And then they were looming at us, growing rapidly. Suddenly I was pulling - not real hard, but harder than expected - to avoid the creatures, who were now swerving in panic ahead, as I wondered how they had ever come so close.
And the lesson they were inadvertently teaching was this: when you see a bird in the distance, it's not really in the distance. Even at 107 knots, when you see a bird, it's CLOSE.
After a couple of encounters with flocks wheeling under the cumulus clouds, we learned to make those small course changes, not to avoid the birds directly, but early enough to avoid flying under the clouds that marked the lift, long before we could even see the birds. And, in that way, we minimized the risk that a hawk might come through the windshield and ruin everyone's day.
Many pilots report having hit birds in flight; I never have. I have, though, been quite close to birds in flight, sometimes for long periods of time: it was a fairly common experience when I was flying hang gliders. Hang gliders, as it happens, have roughly the same flying speed as red-tailed hawks; and both sink through the air at about the same rate, when gliding. Although the hawks can fly by flapping their wings, they prefer to find rising air where they can climb without having to work at it; and hang gliders look for this rising air, which they call "lift", because they really don't flap well to begin with. Knowing this, if a hang glider pilot sees a hawk gliding in circles, she can guess that the hawk is circling in rising air - and if the air is rising fast enough to support the hawk, it will support the hang glider. And - and this is the really fun part - if the hawk should see the hang glider flying in circles, the hawk can make a similar deduction and will fly over to join the hang glider, who can later brag about having shown a hawk “how it’s done!” Thus, hang gliders and hawks often fly together, circling in rising air. It's a curious experience, sharing rising air with one or more birds, knowing that they know what we hang gliders are doing there, and vice versa, watching each other to pick up tips on where the best air is. Despite having similar flying speed and sinking rate, the hawks have one big advantage over hang gliders: maneuverability. They can adjust their flight path to stay in the best air, and do it quickly; hang gliders cannot, and thus, over the course of several minutes, the hawks always win.
The S3 is not a soaring aircraft, but its composite structure makes it a cousin of the elegant sailplanes that are. I wondered what she might make of the soaring birds. Once again, she didn't say.
At Union Springs, or so, forest gave way to farmland. We continued gently dodging the clouds, accepting the fuel penalty of constantly flying in sinking air (for the air that goes up under the clouds, comes down in the blue spaces between them). After Montgomery we again found ourselves between clouds and forest, forest, forest - although, in fairness, the tree canopy was more broken to the south and there were paddocks where we might be able to land.
Approaching Columbus, we had to do a little airspace avoidance. We were still at just 2,500', so we turned west to stay south of the Class D for Golden Triangle Regional (GTR) and the local sports stadium, where the game due to start in an hour would result in a TFR to protect the stadium from attack by our cute little oversized Fisher-Price airplane.
Grenada MS, like Eufala, is situated by a body of water - Grenada lake. We crossed the lake, not far from the southern shore, planning to fly over the field to check the wind as there was no response on the radio. We heard a commuter aircraft departing and figured the airport would be a good place to refuel quickly: from there we could just make our final destination for the day, KORK, in one more leg.
We entered the field overhead, made left traffic, and Leo flew the landing. On his first approach he felt he was too high and too fast, and went around to try again. He nailed it on the next approach, giving the S3 a little more time to slow down. That slippery composite airframe does not slow down quickly.
In fact, it was not such a good place to stop. It's a large airport, with a substantial paved runway and the grassy remains of two others. Clearly, it gets used. But, at that time the only people on the field were auto racers doing around-the-cones races on the ramp in their cars. We walked around looking for self-serve fuel but found only a tanker truck of 100LL - with no-one there to operate it.
Google eventually came to the rescue: we tracked down a number for the airport operator, and that number was answered, and in due course an unfortunate airport employee drove 20 minutes each way to dispense all of fifteen gallons of Avgas. He didn’t seem bothered by it.
While we waited, a teenage auto racer floated over to the airplane on his hoverboard, to talk. He had his own car, but it was in need of minor repairs now. He was fascinated by the S3, kept hovering around it to see it from all angles. At our request, he took a photo of us sitting, smiling, waiting in the cockpit, with Leo’s phone.
In fact, it was not such a good place to stop. It's a large airport, with a substantial paved runway and the grassy remains of two others. Clearly, it gets used. But, at that time the only people on the field were auto racers doing around-the-cones races on the ramp in their cars. We walked around looking for self-serve fuel but found only a tanker truck of 100LL - with no-one there to operate it.
Google eventually came to the rescue: we tracked down a number for the airport operator, and that number was answered, and in due course an unfortunate airport employee drove 20 minutes each way to dispense all of fifteen gallons of Avgas. He didn’t seem bothered by it.
While we waited, a teenage auto racer floated over to the airplane on his hoverboard, to talk. He had his own car, but it was in need of minor repairs now. He was fascinated by the S3, kept hovering around it to see it from all angles. At our request, he took a photo of us sitting, smiling, waiting in the cockpit, with Leo’s phone.
Waiting for fuel in Grenada, MS
Fuel loaded after the 90-minute stop, we were ready to rock again. Waving farewell to our young friend (who knows, maybe he'll be inspired and get his license!) I gave the pilots' farewell – CLEAR PROP! – and taxied out to take off, ending my first visit to the State of Mississippi – my second “first state” of the trip (there would be another).
Grenada to Little Rock, Arkansas (KORK), 136 nm, 1.5h
Grenada to Little Rock, Arkansas (KORK), 136 nm, 1.5h
During the last half hour into Grenada, and while we had been on the ground, new weather conditions had been appearing to the west and northwest. The big cumulus were dying, because a high cirrus layer was moving in above, cutting off the direct sunlight that is food for cumulus. So, as we climbed out from Grenada, we were able to climb, and keep climbing, to the highest altitude of the trip so far, more than a mile above sea level at 6,500 ft. By now we were starting to explore the airplane's systems, and invited George, the autopilot, to take the controls. And, being higher up, we were able to raise Memphis Center for flight following.
Flight Following is a curious thing. It is basically a courtesy offered to little airplanes by the air traffic controllers who keep big airplanes from getting within a couple of miles of each other. If they're not too busy, they'll alert little airplanes to other little airplanes - and occasionally big ones - in the area. It's a nice thing, although it's usually not really necessary because the sky is a really big place and at 6,500 ft there isn't very much in it. And, besides, our ADS-B system tells us at once if there's another airplane within miles, anyway. And yet, it's comforting to have that voice on the radio. It's comforting to know that, if you push the transmit switch - a little button on top of the control stick that children often guess operates the machine guns - you can talk to someone on the ground, who is probably sitting in a comfortable chair having coffee and a sandwich. Of course, I've no idea what they're doing, other than talking to airplanes and looking at what must be a mind-numbing radar screen in a darkened room. But I like to imagine the coffee and the sandwich. So, if anything should go wrong in the air, in a moment you can be talking to a person on the ground who can help.
It's a bit of an illusion, the "who can help" part. Not a total illusion: in the days before GPS and its "nearest" function, the controller was the fastest way to find out what the nearest airport might be. And, if you're too busy dealing with, say, a passenger having a heart attack, or a failing engine, to figure out the sequence of button pushes on the GPS to locate that nearest airport, the controller may still be the fastest way to find it. Still, there's only so much a controller can do for you; the controller can't do the one thing that is your primary and ultimate responsibility - fly the plane.
I remember, as a young man and flight student, learning the proper way to announce an in-flight emergency. Just like in the movies, I would say "Mayday, Mayday, Mayday!" Ideally, I would say it with a calm, in-command air, although I could never quite figure out what calm and in command would sound like when you’re asking for help. Maybe I’d aim for the tone Jack Swigert used when he announced, “OK Houston, we’ve had a problem here.”
In any case the controller, hearing my calm, in-command announcement, would lift an eyelid ever so slightly, and pause, coffee cup half way to her lips.
I would then provide additional information on the situation.
"This is November One Two Three Four Fife, a SuperAircraft, two fife miles west of Back of Beyond, six tousand fife hundred feet," (because pilots have a funny way of saying numbers, allegedly to improve clarity over the radio), "squawking seven seven zero zero," (meaning I had set my radar beacon to signal an emergency), "two on board, engine failure, trying to make Edge of Nowhere airport, request emergency services at the airport and search and rescue if we come up short."
And then, because the instructions were very clear about this, I was to add (in case anyone hadn't gotten the picture yet),
"Mayday, Mayday, Mayday."
The controller would frown, ever so slightly. The kid on the radio was in trouble. Settling her coffee carefully on the desk - because spilling coffee on a radar system is frowned upon, and good coffee is a thing of beauty - she would listen for another moment to make sure the young man had finished, and would give the answer prescribed by the policy book - for there is a policy for everything an air traffic controller might say. With a scared young pilot in trouble, the air traffic controller's response must be short, clear, and comforting.
And this is what she would say:
"Roger, Mayday. Out."
I remember being somewhat stunned, on first reading that this is what she should say. Where were the words of assurance? Where the "don't worry about it, kid, I've got you"?
But, you see, the controller is there to help, yet she cannot fly the plane. The pilot must fly the plane, as the saying goes, until the noises stop. That's the job. That's the responsibility you take on, when you commit aviation. The controller's response says it all. "Roger, Mayday" - I hear and I understand your Mayday call. "Out" - I am getting off the frequency now, so that if you have any other information or request, you have the frequency clear to tell me.
What else can a controller do?
Saying "Mayday" on the air has another rather empowering effect, in fact. Once you say that word, everyone else on the frequency shuts up. It's not just the controller who is leaving the frequency clear so the pilot can talk: everyone does. Those words, "Roger Mayday. Out," hand you control of the entire channel.
Okay, it's not that big a deal. Depending where you are, there are between 760 and 2,280 frequencies used for aviation, so having control of one of them is maybe not so huge. Still, it's all yours.
And, in fact, there is a lot the controller can do. The controller, having carefully moved the sandwich to the side, will have alerted her colleagues. One of them will be calling the tower (if there is one) at Edge of Nowhere airport, to tell them to clear the runways and break out the fire truck (if there is one); and if there is no tower, the colleague will call the nearby town's fire service to alert them to the possibility of an emergency at the airport. The controller will be getting the locations of all the local airports - there may be a closer one - and will get weather information - wind, cloud ceilings, visibility - at each of them. If there is a closer airport, the controller will get on the frequency and tell the pilot where it is, giving a compass heading and distance to it.
And, truth to tell, transcripts show that controllers never actually just say “Roger, Mayday. Out.” They ask questions and try to prompt the panicky pilot – I think, if you have to say the word “Mayday” in anger, you’re going to be panicky – for information. And, once things calm down a little bit, controllers have even been known to say, "Don't worry, we've got you."
But, in our case, Flight Following's role was not nearly so dramatic. George had the controls, and we looked out at the scenery east of the Mississippi, and Memphis Center didn't have much of anything to say.
Crossing the Mississippi – far and away north America’s most famous river – felt like a landmark. It didn't sneak up on us, or anything. The river's famous meandering course was visible in the distance as the sun, now starting its descent toward the horizon ahead of us, reflected in the water.
Growing up in Ireland, we read The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn at school. It was difficult for us to relate to: it described a culture in many ways less familiar to us than what we read about in Shakespeare's plays. The Mississippi featured prominently in it, of course; and of course we learned that the author’s pen name – Mark Twain – was the call-out that indicated a depth of two fathoms, or twelve feet, a sufficient depth for a Mississippi riverboat. No doubt, in a slow-moving, meandering river, water depth was a constant concern.
Honestly, I expected the Mississippi would be wider.
Flight Following is a curious thing. It is basically a courtesy offered to little airplanes by the air traffic controllers who keep big airplanes from getting within a couple of miles of each other. If they're not too busy, they'll alert little airplanes to other little airplanes - and occasionally big ones - in the area. It's a nice thing, although it's usually not really necessary because the sky is a really big place and at 6,500 ft there isn't very much in it. And, besides, our ADS-B system tells us at once if there's another airplane within miles, anyway. And yet, it's comforting to have that voice on the radio. It's comforting to know that, if you push the transmit switch - a little button on top of the control stick that children often guess operates the machine guns - you can talk to someone on the ground, who is probably sitting in a comfortable chair having coffee and a sandwich. Of course, I've no idea what they're doing, other than talking to airplanes and looking at what must be a mind-numbing radar screen in a darkened room. But I like to imagine the coffee and the sandwich. So, if anything should go wrong in the air, in a moment you can be talking to a person on the ground who can help.
It's a bit of an illusion, the "who can help" part. Not a total illusion: in the days before GPS and its "nearest" function, the controller was the fastest way to find out what the nearest airport might be. And, if you're too busy dealing with, say, a passenger having a heart attack, or a failing engine, to figure out the sequence of button pushes on the GPS to locate that nearest airport, the controller may still be the fastest way to find it. Still, there's only so much a controller can do for you; the controller can't do the one thing that is your primary and ultimate responsibility - fly the plane.
I remember, as a young man and flight student, learning the proper way to announce an in-flight emergency. Just like in the movies, I would say "Mayday, Mayday, Mayday!" Ideally, I would say it with a calm, in-command air, although I could never quite figure out what calm and in command would sound like when you’re asking for help. Maybe I’d aim for the tone Jack Swigert used when he announced, “OK Houston, we’ve had a problem here.”
In any case the controller, hearing my calm, in-command announcement, would lift an eyelid ever so slightly, and pause, coffee cup half way to her lips.
I would then provide additional information on the situation.
"This is November One Two Three Four Fife, a SuperAircraft, two fife miles west of Back of Beyond, six tousand fife hundred feet," (because pilots have a funny way of saying numbers, allegedly to improve clarity over the radio), "squawking seven seven zero zero," (meaning I had set my radar beacon to signal an emergency), "two on board, engine failure, trying to make Edge of Nowhere airport, request emergency services at the airport and search and rescue if we come up short."
And then, because the instructions were very clear about this, I was to add (in case anyone hadn't gotten the picture yet),
"Mayday, Mayday, Mayday."
The controller would frown, ever so slightly. The kid on the radio was in trouble. Settling her coffee carefully on the desk - because spilling coffee on a radar system is frowned upon, and good coffee is a thing of beauty - she would listen for another moment to make sure the young man had finished, and would give the answer prescribed by the policy book - for there is a policy for everything an air traffic controller might say. With a scared young pilot in trouble, the air traffic controller's response must be short, clear, and comforting.
And this is what she would say:
"Roger, Mayday. Out."
I remember being somewhat stunned, on first reading that this is what she should say. Where were the words of assurance? Where the "don't worry about it, kid, I've got you"?
But, you see, the controller is there to help, yet she cannot fly the plane. The pilot must fly the plane, as the saying goes, until the noises stop. That's the job. That's the responsibility you take on, when you commit aviation. The controller's response says it all. "Roger, Mayday" - I hear and I understand your Mayday call. "Out" - I am getting off the frequency now, so that if you have any other information or request, you have the frequency clear to tell me.
What else can a controller do?
Saying "Mayday" on the air has another rather empowering effect, in fact. Once you say that word, everyone else on the frequency shuts up. It's not just the controller who is leaving the frequency clear so the pilot can talk: everyone does. Those words, "Roger Mayday. Out," hand you control of the entire channel.
Okay, it's not that big a deal. Depending where you are, there are between 760 and 2,280 frequencies used for aviation, so having control of one of them is maybe not so huge. Still, it's all yours.
And, in fact, there is a lot the controller can do. The controller, having carefully moved the sandwich to the side, will have alerted her colleagues. One of them will be calling the tower (if there is one) at Edge of Nowhere airport, to tell them to clear the runways and break out the fire truck (if there is one); and if there is no tower, the colleague will call the nearby town's fire service to alert them to the possibility of an emergency at the airport. The controller will be getting the locations of all the local airports - there may be a closer one - and will get weather information - wind, cloud ceilings, visibility - at each of them. If there is a closer airport, the controller will get on the frequency and tell the pilot where it is, giving a compass heading and distance to it.
And, truth to tell, transcripts show that controllers never actually just say “Roger, Mayday. Out.” They ask questions and try to prompt the panicky pilot – I think, if you have to say the word “Mayday” in anger, you’re going to be panicky – for information. And, once things calm down a little bit, controllers have even been known to say, "Don't worry, we've got you."
But, in our case, Flight Following's role was not nearly so dramatic. George had the controls, and we looked out at the scenery east of the Mississippi, and Memphis Center didn't have much of anything to say.
Crossing the Mississippi – far and away north America’s most famous river – felt like a landmark. It didn't sneak up on us, or anything. The river's famous meandering course was visible in the distance as the sun, now starting its descent toward the horizon ahead of us, reflected in the water.
Growing up in Ireland, we read The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn at school. It was difficult for us to relate to: it described a culture in many ways less familiar to us than what we read about in Shakespeare's plays. The Mississippi featured prominently in it, of course; and of course we learned that the author’s pen name – Mark Twain – was the call-out that indicated a depth of two fathoms, or twelve feet, a sufficient depth for a Mississippi riverboat. No doubt, in a slow-moving, meandering river, water depth was a constant concern.
Honestly, I expected the Mississippi would be wider.
Approaching the Mississippi
Safely parked in Little Rock
We got a handoff to Little Rock Approach, and that controller did have more to say to us. We were headed for North Little Rock airport, sandwiched between the Class C airspace for the Bill & Hillary Clinton National airport – which provides airline service to Little Rock – to the south, Little Rock Air Force Base to the north, and Robinson (Army and National Guard) to the west. The controller at Little Rock approach steered us right through the Bill & Hillary airspace, affording us a view straight down the parallel Bill & Hillary runways, before steering us toward North Little Rock and bidding us good evening, at which point we thanked George, gave him the rest of the day off, and hand-flew the rest of the approach. We got ourselves a bit contrary, joining the left downwind for Runway 23, before realizing that the wind favored Runway 05. With apologies to anyone we might have confused - although there appeared to be no-one but us in the air - we swung across midfield to join the left downwind for Runway 05, and touched down for the third and final time for the day. By the time the airplane was tied down in front of Barrett Aviation, with our few bags out on the tarmac, the sun was going down.
The good people at Barrett loaned us a car and recommended a hotel in town.
The airport car is one of the things about flying small airplanes that tends to surprise people. Most airports have a small aviation business that sells fuel, does some repair work, maybe runs a small flight training operation - for some reason these businesses are called Fixed Base Operators, or FBOs. At many of these airports, if you arrive in a small airplane, this business will simply hand you the keys to a car and ask you to put it back when you're done. It's not a rental; it's a loaner. And, this was what happened at the Barrett FBO, where the trusting man at the desk handed us the keys to a luxury car, maroon 1980s-model Buick Loadmaster. We practically floated to our hotel in soft-sprung comfort.
The good people at Barrett loaned us a car and recommended a hotel in town.
The airport car is one of the things about flying small airplanes that tends to surprise people. Most airports have a small aviation business that sells fuel, does some repair work, maybe runs a small flight training operation - for some reason these businesses are called Fixed Base Operators, or FBOs. At many of these airports, if you arrive in a small airplane, this business will simply hand you the keys to a car and ask you to put it back when you're done. It's not a rental; it's a loaner. And, this was what happened at the Barrett FBO, where the trusting man at the desk handed us the keys to a luxury car, maroon 1980s-model Buick Loadmaster. We practically floated to our hotel in soft-sprung comfort.
With the courtesy car in Little Rock
SportAir, which was taking charge of the airplane to overhaul the parachute, was closed. They knew we were coming and would look for it at Barrett when they opened shop on Monday morning.
Early on Sunday morning, Leo caught a Southwest flight back to Albuquerque. My own flight would not depart until late afternoon, and this was my first visit to Little Rock – indeed, my first time in Arkansas (and so, my third “first State visit” of the trip). The Roadmaster allowed me to enjoy a pleasant stroll along Clinton Avenue and the Arkansas River Trail, followed by a delightful lunch and a trip to the Clinton Presidential Library. There, I was photographed (unfortunately inappropriately attired in a tee-shirt) at the Resolute Desk in the Oval Office, and visited the Cabinet Room, before beginning the trip home.
The plan was to come back in about 3-4 months, after the parachute would have been overhauled, and do another long cross-country flight, from Little Rock to New York.
A year passed before I saw my airplane again.
SportAir encountered some personnel problems that created a workload backup, and the parachute - which was actually replaced with a new one - was slow to return from Europe. Even so, the airplane was ready to be picked up by spring. By then, however, I was not ready to pick it up. My life had changed radically in the meantime: I had accepted a job in California; my girlfriend Paula and I had gotten married; and we were temporarily bicoastal while she finished out her work commitment in New York and I lived in an old (and very good!) friend's apartment in Los Angeles. The airplane was safe in a hangar in Little Rock, and the logistics of our life changes meant it was well into late summer before I could even think about planning to retrieve it.
As the internet was again quick to point out, summer is thunderstorm season across the southern US. Once again, Leo and I would study the outlook and book Southwest flights. Southwest has a very useful feature for adventures such as this: if you book your flight two weeks ahead, you not only get very low fares, but you can reschedule without penalty if the weather outlook calls for it. We relied on this feature. And, that’s it for the product placement.
In any case, we watched, and we waited. And between weather and work and personal schedules, it was October before I found myself once again on a commercial flight to Little Rock. I flew in on a Thursday, so that I could go to SportAir on Friday and go over the airplane's condition with the team there, before heading out on the flight west on Saturday morning. What had begun as a rather roundabout flight from Florida to New York, would now be a coast-to-coast flight.
The SportAir team was very gracious with time and support on Friday. I spent much of the day sitting in the airplane, which was hooked up to 12V external power, familiarizing myself with the rather extensive capabilities of its modern instrument panel. I also conducted some conference calls for work while sitting in it, so I guess I can claim it’s a “business aircraft” now!
Early on Sunday morning, Leo caught a Southwest flight back to Albuquerque. My own flight would not depart until late afternoon, and this was my first visit to Little Rock – indeed, my first time in Arkansas (and so, my third “first State visit” of the trip). The Roadmaster allowed me to enjoy a pleasant stroll along Clinton Avenue and the Arkansas River Trail, followed by a delightful lunch and a trip to the Clinton Presidential Library. There, I was photographed (unfortunately inappropriately attired in a tee-shirt) at the Resolute Desk in the Oval Office, and visited the Cabinet Room, before beginning the trip home.
The plan was to come back in about 3-4 months, after the parachute would have been overhauled, and do another long cross-country flight, from Little Rock to New York.
A year passed before I saw my airplane again.
SportAir encountered some personnel problems that created a workload backup, and the parachute - which was actually replaced with a new one - was slow to return from Europe. Even so, the airplane was ready to be picked up by spring. By then, however, I was not ready to pick it up. My life had changed radically in the meantime: I had accepted a job in California; my girlfriend Paula and I had gotten married; and we were temporarily bicoastal while she finished out her work commitment in New York and I lived in an old (and very good!) friend's apartment in Los Angeles. The airplane was safe in a hangar in Little Rock, and the logistics of our life changes meant it was well into late summer before I could even think about planning to retrieve it.
As the internet was again quick to point out, summer is thunderstorm season across the southern US. Once again, Leo and I would study the outlook and book Southwest flights. Southwest has a very useful feature for adventures such as this: if you book your flight two weeks ahead, you not only get very low fares, but you can reschedule without penalty if the weather outlook calls for it. We relied on this feature. And, that’s it for the product placement.
In any case, we watched, and we waited. And between weather and work and personal schedules, it was October before I found myself once again on a commercial flight to Little Rock. I flew in on a Thursday, so that I could go to SportAir on Friday and go over the airplane's condition with the team there, before heading out on the flight west on Saturday morning. What had begun as a rather roundabout flight from Florida to New York, would now be a coast-to-coast flight.
The SportAir team was very gracious with time and support on Friday. I spent much of the day sitting in the airplane, which was hooked up to 12V external power, familiarizing myself with the rather extensive capabilities of its modern instrument panel. I also conducted some conference calls for work while sitting in it, so I guess I can claim it’s a “business aircraft” now!
New parachute installed, fresh annual inspection at the SportAir facility, and ready to head for California
Leo arrived on the Friday evening, and Saturday morning dawned, as forecast, with clear skies. By 9am Saturday we were lifting off from Little Rock.
Little Rock AR to McAlester OK (KMLC) – 171 nm, 2.3 h
Little Rock AR to McAlester OK (KMLC) – 171 nm, 2.3 h
West of the front, the undercast breaks up
Leaving North Little Rock airport is a slightly tricky thing: we needed to slip under the Bill & Hillary airspace and around the side of Robinson military helicopter base. Takeoff, into glorious blue skies with scattered cumulus, was straightforward enough, and rather more dignified than my first takeoff a year before. The S3 climbs briskly; by the time we reached the end of the runway we were closing in on 1,000' above ground level, and I turned left to head out on course.
To be honest, I found the experience of once again sitting in the airplane, under that panoramic canopy, a little distracting. The canopy is so all-surrounding, and the airplane’s sides are so low, that one is not so much sitting in it, as on it. And, sitting on a tiny airplane, more than a thousand feet above the green grass and toy-like airport buildings, beneath a clear blue sky, proved to be a bit attention-grabbing for a few moments. It’s a lot to take in.
After that few moments, I refocused on the job of flying and navigating, and away from the experience of too-much-world-outside. I confirmed that the engine temperatures were normal, fuel pressure was good, fuel pump was off, nav was taking us to the right destination, and I had Departure frequency on standby on the radio. Sometimes being awed by the experience of being One With The Universe is just what you need; sometimes, you need to get with the program.
As we passed Robinson, a Black Hawk helicopter slid in next to us, perhaps a mile away and a little below, and gradually pulled away in front. Helicopters have many wonderful capabilities, but speed isn’t one of them, and as a fixed wing pilot it's a little embarrassing to be outrun by a helicopter. I reminded myself that the Black Hawk, a military helicopter built in Connecticut by Sikorsky – I had visited the factory more than once for my previous job – is a fairly fast machine, but it still hurt a little. We kept an eye on the Black Hawk to make sure it didn't do anything unexpected – like, say make a climbing left turn into our path – until we got out from under the Little Rock airspace; then we climbed away and – as it seemed to plan to stay near the ground – left the helicopter below. (I prefer saying that to the alternative, which is that it left us behind.)
While I was taking care of the small tasks involved in launching our adventure in the right direction, Leo was poring over his iPad, studying the first challenge of the day, which he now shared with me. Ahead of us, over western Arkansas, was a large weather system, a cold front. We could try to go around it to the south, but if we wanted to stay well clear of it we would need to go a long way south. This presented us with a bigger-picture decision about strategy.
Between us and our destination in Santa Monica, lay a well-known set of jagged granite peaks that juts into the sky almost as high as 70L could fly. Among those peaks it is common to find winds whose vertical movement could easily overwhelm the airplane’s ability to climb. We needed a plan for getting past the Rockies.
I leaned toward the southerly route, essentially going around the end of the mountains, just north of the Mexico border. It would take us some distance out of our way, but we would be able to fly – for the most part – over low ground with roads and towns and little airports. Leo proposed a more northerly route, going from north Texas up into the high but much less jagged terrain of central New Mexico, where we could stop for the night in Albuquerque.
What concerned me about that route was what would come after Albuquerque: from there, in turn, there were two paths we could follow, one northerly route following Hwy 40, and one southerly route across remote, mountainous, largely uninhabited territory – much of it forest – to get to Phoenix, from where we could follow Hwy 10. The problem with the first route was that it followed high ground for so long that we would not be able to cross it in a single flight: we would have to stop and refuel, and the timing would mean we would be doing it close to midday. This would be an issue because it would combine high temperatures with high altitude. Both high altitude and high temperature make the air thin, which makes it more difficult for airplanes to fly. We would be taking off, fully loaded with fuel and people (all two of us!), into (literally) thin air – and we had no real idea how well the airplane would handle that. The other route was attractive because we could get to Phoenix from Albuquerque in a single leg, and Phoenix is a low-elevation city; but, if we had a problem – an engine failure, for example – in the middle of the leg, we would go down in a massive, mountainous forest with very little likelihood of both surviving the crash and being found. Bluntly, we would be betting our lives that our Rotax engine would keep running for a three-hour period over the wilderness. It would not be an unreasonable bet - modern small airplane engines are extremely reliable - but the consequences of losing that bet would be dire, and I wasn’t altogether comfortable with it. On the other hand, we could overnight at Leo’s house, and he was very familiar with the routes to the coast from there, and I didn’t want to discount that.
And what did all of that have to do with the weather front ahead of us? It was this: if we diverted far enough south to go around the front, we would essentially be committing to the southern route. We had planned to go to McAlester OK as our first stop: it would keep both options open.
We decided to keep going toward McAlester but change course about 15 degrees to the south so that we would encounter the front where it appeared thinner; perhaps we could punch through it. If not, we would turn directly south and run along the edge of the front, in clear weather, until we could get past it.
Growing up in Ireland, I learned all about weather fronts. Irish weather is remarkably predictable. There is a common pattern, which starts with a pleasant, generally sunny, warm day. Gradually, high clouds appear, forming a continuous sheet overhead, and over a period of about 24 hours that sheet becomes lower until it is almost down on the ground. The cloud sheet is thick, so much so that cars may even use their headlights in the middle of the day; and as it lowers and thickens it begins to rain. The rain is gentle and steady, often little more than heavy drizzle although it can come down quite heavily, too. The rain continues, more or less unbroken, for perhaps six to twelve hours, then gradually eases off and stops. By now, it will have been around 36 hours since the first sheet of clouds moved in. Behind the rain, over the next six hours or so, the clouds clear, and behind them the weather is pleasant enough although it can be humid, muggy even. This lasts for another twelve to 24 hours, and then quite quickly the sky turns clear blue, the temperature drops, the wind becomes brisk and gusty, and tall – often towering – generally separated cumulus clouds dot the sky. Some of these clouds can be extensive, with dark undersides that dump heavy but short-lived showers and sometimes even lightning. This lively weather will last about a day, and then the clear skies will remain while the clouds get smaller and farther between. For a day or so there will be pleasant, generally sunny, warm conditions. Then, gradually, high clouds will appear, and the whole pattern will begin again.
I was a teenage sailor, and sailors – like aviators – pay attention to the weather. In my sailing classes I learned that the continuous drizzle was the weather behind a warm front, a place where two different air masses met each other in the skies above. The warmer air, moving east a little faster than the colder air, would – being warmer – begin to ride up over the cold air ahead of it. Warm air is able to carry a lot of water vapor, but as the warm air rode up over the cold air ahead, it would itself become cooler. Cool air cannot carry as much water vapor, so the water vapor in the increasingly less-warm air would condense out to form clouds and rain.
The other cloudy day, the one with the isolated clouds and the short, often violent showers, was the result of a cold front. Here, the faster-moving air was the cold air, and it would drive in beneath the relatively warm, humid air ahead of it. As the cold air drove in beneath, the warm humid air would be pushed upward, again producing clouds and rain.
While I learned these things from books, and could certainly see the clouds and the rain, I struggled to think of these weather phenomena as three-dimensional things. From the ground, looking up, I essentially saw them from directly below.
From the cockpit of 70L, I saw a warm front from the air, for the first time. Even though we were only a few thousand feet off the ground, it provided a completely different perspective. As we approached the front, with the layer of high clouds beginning to close off the blue sky above, we could see the descending layers of clouds ahead, with each lower, thicker layer forming a visible shadow that ran as far as the eye could see across our path. Seen from over seven thousand feet, the front was no longer merely bad weather; we were looking at a huge, dynamic system whose scale was stupendous, a structure that could dwarf the Grand Canyon.
As we sat in our seats, behind an engine no bigger than you can find on a large motorcycle, we watched this thing get bigger and bigger in the windshield. And bigger. And then bigger some more. It did not look in any way threatening. It was not a frightening experience. Nothing was happening quickly. I felt somewhat awed, and it took me a little while to get my thoughts in order. We were aiming for a gap in the line of clouds, and behind it we could see clear air to the horizon, but with a layer of clouds below that obscured all sight of the ground. But, even in the gap, there was a certain streaky quality to the air, a sign that meant rain.
“What do you think the temperature is up here?” I asked Leo.
Air temperature is an important consideration, in a small airplane in the rain. If the temperature is below freezing, then the outer surface of the airplane will be below the freezing temperature of water. Rain is water, falling. If that rain lands on an airplane whose surface is below freezing, the water will freeze on the surface of the plane. This is bad for two main reasons. First, ice is quite heavy. Second, and worse, an ice buildup can change the patterns of air flowing over the airplane, as it changes the airplane’s shape. The shape of an airplane is really quite important: change it, and it may not be an airplane anymore.
So, I really didn’t want to fly through the rain if it was freezing outside.
There is an outside air temperature gauge on the instrument panel. It read “21”.
“Do you suppose,” I asked, “that’s Fahrenheit, or Celsius?”
That might seem like a silly question: we were flying in America, so it would be in Fahrenheit. But the airplane was manufactured in eastern Europe, so maybe it would be Celsius.
There was time to discuss it. We were sitting in our chairs, sheltered by the cabin, moving at 125 mph toward a structure bigger than the Grand Canyon, but when something is that big you feel close to it for a long time before you actually get to it. So, we had time.
We decided to try descending, to see how much the temperature reading would increase as we descended. This was very clever, we thought. You see, air tends to be warmer as you move lower; the temperature usually rises about 5.5 Fahrenheit, or 3 Celsius, per thousand feet. So, if we descended, say, two thousand feet, then if the reading went from 21 to 33 we would be looking at Fahrenheit; whereas if the reading went from 21 to 27 we would be looking at Celsius. And – bonus – in either case the outside temperature would be above freezing!
This proved both unnecessary, and unhelpful. Unhelpful because the reading didn’t change at all, which suggested that the probe wasn’t working. Unnecessary, because Leo, ever practical, opened the air vent and stuck several fingers out through it.
“There’s no way it’s freezing out there,” he announced.
I tried it for myself. Score one for simplicity!
Two minutes later, raindrops began to spot the windshield – and run off.
By this point, we were about to cross the line of the front, from colder air into warmer air. From here, we could look north and south and actually see the layered structure, clouds getting lower and more continuous to the west, higher and more broken to the east, with a part along the front itself where the clouds were very tall, perhaps 20,000 ft deep with an ill-defined, grey, foggy quality to them. Sitting under the goldfish-bowl canopy, supported by wings no bigger than two dining tables end-to-end on each side (and looking a lot smaller than that), a mile off the ground, we were getting an awe-inspiring, unforgettable lesson in meteorology.
And then we were through.
The high structures and the rain were behind us; ahead was a carpet of snow.
Not snow, in fact, but a layer of clouds, far below – who knew how far off the ground – which, lit from above, looked very much like snow. I was uncool enough – no Jack Swigert here – to bring up a concern that occurred to me now.
“If we have a problem above that, we’ll have a problem.”
Leo had been studying his live weather charts for the past 20 minutes at least, since long before we had crossed the front. He was confident.
“We’ll be over this stuff for about forty minutes,” he declared, “and then we’ll be past it. We’re good. We have fuel for another couple of hours.”
“And if the engine quits for some other reason…”
He chuckled. “I guess we can test that parachute you just had installed!”
He was kidding. The weather reports said the clouds below us were thousands of feet above the ground, Leo was instrument-rated, and the airplane was equipped for instrument flying. We would glide down through the clouds and still have plenty of altitude to find a field to land in and glide to it.
In any case, I decided this was a good time to have faith. Let’s just assume those diligent people at Rotax did a good job, and the fuel in Little Rock was beautifully clean, and that the engine will keep turning. We’ll worry about it only if something unexpected happens.
And, it didn’t.
McAlester, OK, is just under 200 miles from Little Rock, as the crow flies. Although we were moving through the air at 125 mph, we were flying into the headwind that was pushing the frontal weather to the east (in fact, we flew west southwest into the front, and west northwest out of it, which any meteorologist would recognize as the exact choice of headings to maximize the headwind), so our ground speed was a hair under 100 mph. Two hours and eighteen minutes after releasing the brakes in Little Rock, we pulled into Visitor Parking in McAlester. It was my first visit to Oklahoma, and my fourth – and final – “first State visit” of the cross-country trip.
By curious coincidence, McAlester, our first stop of our second day of the cross-country voyage, is about 20 miles south of Eufala, OK. Of course, Eufala, AL, was our first stop on the first day. Try as I might, I couldn’t really come up with any significance to that. Sometimes, I guess, there are coincidences. But I remembered Richard Bach and his blue feather; perhaps, in the future, I would constantly encounter Eufala.
At McAlester, the weather was beautiful, and the air still, if a little humid – after all, we were now behind the warm front. Temporarily setting aside the discussion of the route choice ahead of us – west to Albuquerque, or south to the Mexico border – we climbed out of the plane to go in search of fuel and a restroom. Stopping to take a quick photo of the awning at the entrance to the airport terminal building, we made our way inside, where we found an instructor giving a ground lesson to a pre-solo student at a large table in the middle of the floor; and we also found someone to come out and top up our tanks.
To be honest, I found the experience of once again sitting in the airplane, under that panoramic canopy, a little distracting. The canopy is so all-surrounding, and the airplane’s sides are so low, that one is not so much sitting in it, as on it. And, sitting on a tiny airplane, more than a thousand feet above the green grass and toy-like airport buildings, beneath a clear blue sky, proved to be a bit attention-grabbing for a few moments. It’s a lot to take in.
After that few moments, I refocused on the job of flying and navigating, and away from the experience of too-much-world-outside. I confirmed that the engine temperatures were normal, fuel pressure was good, fuel pump was off, nav was taking us to the right destination, and I had Departure frequency on standby on the radio. Sometimes being awed by the experience of being One With The Universe is just what you need; sometimes, you need to get with the program.
As we passed Robinson, a Black Hawk helicopter slid in next to us, perhaps a mile away and a little below, and gradually pulled away in front. Helicopters have many wonderful capabilities, but speed isn’t one of them, and as a fixed wing pilot it's a little embarrassing to be outrun by a helicopter. I reminded myself that the Black Hawk, a military helicopter built in Connecticut by Sikorsky – I had visited the factory more than once for my previous job – is a fairly fast machine, but it still hurt a little. We kept an eye on the Black Hawk to make sure it didn't do anything unexpected – like, say make a climbing left turn into our path – until we got out from under the Little Rock airspace; then we climbed away and – as it seemed to plan to stay near the ground – left the helicopter below. (I prefer saying that to the alternative, which is that it left us behind.)
While I was taking care of the small tasks involved in launching our adventure in the right direction, Leo was poring over his iPad, studying the first challenge of the day, which he now shared with me. Ahead of us, over western Arkansas, was a large weather system, a cold front. We could try to go around it to the south, but if we wanted to stay well clear of it we would need to go a long way south. This presented us with a bigger-picture decision about strategy.
Between us and our destination in Santa Monica, lay a well-known set of jagged granite peaks that juts into the sky almost as high as 70L could fly. Among those peaks it is common to find winds whose vertical movement could easily overwhelm the airplane’s ability to climb. We needed a plan for getting past the Rockies.
I leaned toward the southerly route, essentially going around the end of the mountains, just north of the Mexico border. It would take us some distance out of our way, but we would be able to fly – for the most part – over low ground with roads and towns and little airports. Leo proposed a more northerly route, going from north Texas up into the high but much less jagged terrain of central New Mexico, where we could stop for the night in Albuquerque.
What concerned me about that route was what would come after Albuquerque: from there, in turn, there were two paths we could follow, one northerly route following Hwy 40, and one southerly route across remote, mountainous, largely uninhabited territory – much of it forest – to get to Phoenix, from where we could follow Hwy 10. The problem with the first route was that it followed high ground for so long that we would not be able to cross it in a single flight: we would have to stop and refuel, and the timing would mean we would be doing it close to midday. This would be an issue because it would combine high temperatures with high altitude. Both high altitude and high temperature make the air thin, which makes it more difficult for airplanes to fly. We would be taking off, fully loaded with fuel and people (all two of us!), into (literally) thin air – and we had no real idea how well the airplane would handle that. The other route was attractive because we could get to Phoenix from Albuquerque in a single leg, and Phoenix is a low-elevation city; but, if we had a problem – an engine failure, for example – in the middle of the leg, we would go down in a massive, mountainous forest with very little likelihood of both surviving the crash and being found. Bluntly, we would be betting our lives that our Rotax engine would keep running for a three-hour period over the wilderness. It would not be an unreasonable bet - modern small airplane engines are extremely reliable - but the consequences of losing that bet would be dire, and I wasn’t altogether comfortable with it. On the other hand, we could overnight at Leo’s house, and he was very familiar with the routes to the coast from there, and I didn’t want to discount that.
And what did all of that have to do with the weather front ahead of us? It was this: if we diverted far enough south to go around the front, we would essentially be committing to the southern route. We had planned to go to McAlester OK as our first stop: it would keep both options open.
We decided to keep going toward McAlester but change course about 15 degrees to the south so that we would encounter the front where it appeared thinner; perhaps we could punch through it. If not, we would turn directly south and run along the edge of the front, in clear weather, until we could get past it.
Growing up in Ireland, I learned all about weather fronts. Irish weather is remarkably predictable. There is a common pattern, which starts with a pleasant, generally sunny, warm day. Gradually, high clouds appear, forming a continuous sheet overhead, and over a period of about 24 hours that sheet becomes lower until it is almost down on the ground. The cloud sheet is thick, so much so that cars may even use their headlights in the middle of the day; and as it lowers and thickens it begins to rain. The rain is gentle and steady, often little more than heavy drizzle although it can come down quite heavily, too. The rain continues, more or less unbroken, for perhaps six to twelve hours, then gradually eases off and stops. By now, it will have been around 36 hours since the first sheet of clouds moved in. Behind the rain, over the next six hours or so, the clouds clear, and behind them the weather is pleasant enough although it can be humid, muggy even. This lasts for another twelve to 24 hours, and then quite quickly the sky turns clear blue, the temperature drops, the wind becomes brisk and gusty, and tall – often towering – generally separated cumulus clouds dot the sky. Some of these clouds can be extensive, with dark undersides that dump heavy but short-lived showers and sometimes even lightning. This lively weather will last about a day, and then the clear skies will remain while the clouds get smaller and farther between. For a day or so there will be pleasant, generally sunny, warm conditions. Then, gradually, high clouds will appear, and the whole pattern will begin again.
I was a teenage sailor, and sailors – like aviators – pay attention to the weather. In my sailing classes I learned that the continuous drizzle was the weather behind a warm front, a place where two different air masses met each other in the skies above. The warmer air, moving east a little faster than the colder air, would – being warmer – begin to ride up over the cold air ahead of it. Warm air is able to carry a lot of water vapor, but as the warm air rode up over the cold air ahead, it would itself become cooler. Cool air cannot carry as much water vapor, so the water vapor in the increasingly less-warm air would condense out to form clouds and rain.
The other cloudy day, the one with the isolated clouds and the short, often violent showers, was the result of a cold front. Here, the faster-moving air was the cold air, and it would drive in beneath the relatively warm, humid air ahead of it. As the cold air drove in beneath, the warm humid air would be pushed upward, again producing clouds and rain.
While I learned these things from books, and could certainly see the clouds and the rain, I struggled to think of these weather phenomena as three-dimensional things. From the ground, looking up, I essentially saw them from directly below.
From the cockpit of 70L, I saw a warm front from the air, for the first time. Even though we were only a few thousand feet off the ground, it provided a completely different perspective. As we approached the front, with the layer of high clouds beginning to close off the blue sky above, we could see the descending layers of clouds ahead, with each lower, thicker layer forming a visible shadow that ran as far as the eye could see across our path. Seen from over seven thousand feet, the front was no longer merely bad weather; we were looking at a huge, dynamic system whose scale was stupendous, a structure that could dwarf the Grand Canyon.
As we sat in our seats, behind an engine no bigger than you can find on a large motorcycle, we watched this thing get bigger and bigger in the windshield. And bigger. And then bigger some more. It did not look in any way threatening. It was not a frightening experience. Nothing was happening quickly. I felt somewhat awed, and it took me a little while to get my thoughts in order. We were aiming for a gap in the line of clouds, and behind it we could see clear air to the horizon, but with a layer of clouds below that obscured all sight of the ground. But, even in the gap, there was a certain streaky quality to the air, a sign that meant rain.
“What do you think the temperature is up here?” I asked Leo.
Air temperature is an important consideration, in a small airplane in the rain. If the temperature is below freezing, then the outer surface of the airplane will be below the freezing temperature of water. Rain is water, falling. If that rain lands on an airplane whose surface is below freezing, the water will freeze on the surface of the plane. This is bad for two main reasons. First, ice is quite heavy. Second, and worse, an ice buildup can change the patterns of air flowing over the airplane, as it changes the airplane’s shape. The shape of an airplane is really quite important: change it, and it may not be an airplane anymore.
So, I really didn’t want to fly through the rain if it was freezing outside.
There is an outside air temperature gauge on the instrument panel. It read “21”.
“Do you suppose,” I asked, “that’s Fahrenheit, or Celsius?”
That might seem like a silly question: we were flying in America, so it would be in Fahrenheit. But the airplane was manufactured in eastern Europe, so maybe it would be Celsius.
There was time to discuss it. We were sitting in our chairs, sheltered by the cabin, moving at 125 mph toward a structure bigger than the Grand Canyon, but when something is that big you feel close to it for a long time before you actually get to it. So, we had time.
We decided to try descending, to see how much the temperature reading would increase as we descended. This was very clever, we thought. You see, air tends to be warmer as you move lower; the temperature usually rises about 5.5 Fahrenheit, or 3 Celsius, per thousand feet. So, if we descended, say, two thousand feet, then if the reading went from 21 to 33 we would be looking at Fahrenheit; whereas if the reading went from 21 to 27 we would be looking at Celsius. And – bonus – in either case the outside temperature would be above freezing!
This proved both unnecessary, and unhelpful. Unhelpful because the reading didn’t change at all, which suggested that the probe wasn’t working. Unnecessary, because Leo, ever practical, opened the air vent and stuck several fingers out through it.
“There’s no way it’s freezing out there,” he announced.
I tried it for myself. Score one for simplicity!
Two minutes later, raindrops began to spot the windshield – and run off.
By this point, we were about to cross the line of the front, from colder air into warmer air. From here, we could look north and south and actually see the layered structure, clouds getting lower and more continuous to the west, higher and more broken to the east, with a part along the front itself where the clouds were very tall, perhaps 20,000 ft deep with an ill-defined, grey, foggy quality to them. Sitting under the goldfish-bowl canopy, supported by wings no bigger than two dining tables end-to-end on each side (and looking a lot smaller than that), a mile off the ground, we were getting an awe-inspiring, unforgettable lesson in meteorology.
And then we were through.
The high structures and the rain were behind us; ahead was a carpet of snow.
Not snow, in fact, but a layer of clouds, far below – who knew how far off the ground – which, lit from above, looked very much like snow. I was uncool enough – no Jack Swigert here – to bring up a concern that occurred to me now.
“If we have a problem above that, we’ll have a problem.”
Leo had been studying his live weather charts for the past 20 minutes at least, since long before we had crossed the front. He was confident.
“We’ll be over this stuff for about forty minutes,” he declared, “and then we’ll be past it. We’re good. We have fuel for another couple of hours.”
“And if the engine quits for some other reason…”
He chuckled. “I guess we can test that parachute you just had installed!”
He was kidding. The weather reports said the clouds below us were thousands of feet above the ground, Leo was instrument-rated, and the airplane was equipped for instrument flying. We would glide down through the clouds and still have plenty of altitude to find a field to land in and glide to it.
In any case, I decided this was a good time to have faith. Let’s just assume those diligent people at Rotax did a good job, and the fuel in Little Rock was beautifully clean, and that the engine will keep turning. We’ll worry about it only if something unexpected happens.
And, it didn’t.
McAlester, OK, is just under 200 miles from Little Rock, as the crow flies. Although we were moving through the air at 125 mph, we were flying into the headwind that was pushing the frontal weather to the east (in fact, we flew west southwest into the front, and west northwest out of it, which any meteorologist would recognize as the exact choice of headings to maximize the headwind), so our ground speed was a hair under 100 mph. Two hours and eighteen minutes after releasing the brakes in Little Rock, we pulled into Visitor Parking in McAlester. It was my first visit to Oklahoma, and my fourth – and final – “first State visit” of the cross-country trip.
By curious coincidence, McAlester, our first stop of our second day of the cross-country voyage, is about 20 miles south of Eufala, OK. Of course, Eufala, AL, was our first stop on the first day. Try as I might, I couldn’t really come up with any significance to that. Sometimes, I guess, there are coincidences. But I remembered Richard Bach and his blue feather; perhaps, in the future, I would constantly encounter Eufala.
At McAlester, the weather was beautiful, and the air still, if a little humid – after all, we were now behind the warm front. Temporarily setting aside the discussion of the route choice ahead of us – west to Albuquerque, or south to the Mexico border – we climbed out of the plane to go in search of fuel and a restroom. Stopping to take a quick photo of the awning at the entrance to the airport terminal building, we made our way inside, where we found an instructor giving a ground lesson to a pre-solo student at a large table in the middle of the floor; and we also found someone to come out and top up our tanks.
McAlester Airport terminal building, OK
In due course the fuel truck pulled up in front of 70L. Climing out, the driver asked what kind of airplane it was, and on noticing the EXPERIMENTAL sticker on the canopy, asked if it was a homebuilt airplane (it is not). He explained that he himself had built or rebuilt several airplanes. Pausing, he added that if we’d like to buy any of them, he’d be happy to entertain offers: he was starting to feel he was too old to fly any of them.
Delighted to meet someone who could appreciate the positives of Experimental aircraft, but not wanting to stop too long, we conversed for a few more minutes and I went back into the terminal to pay our bill, while Leo studied the weather.
When I got back, we reviewed the route options.
Stay north, converge on Hwy 40 and follow it across Texas, over Amarillo, and into Albuquerque NM, then stay with Hwy 40 out across the high desert or, alternatively, from Albuquerque go southwest across the mountains to Phoenix, then west across the low desert from there along Hwy 10. Or, go south now, across Texas and New Mexico, rounding the southern tip of the Rockies near El Paso, just north of the Mexico border, and follow Hwy 10 from there.
Either way would be an adventure: we’d cross big wild spaces in a little plastic shell.
The forecast winds were stronger – and headwinds – to the north. But if the weather deteriorated I could leave the plane in Albuquerque – where Leo lives – and fly home on Southwest, and we could complete the trip another time. If we went south it would be more logistically complicated to leave the plane parked somewhere and come back another time.
Being decisive, we split the difference and picked Quanah, TX, as our next stop. With a wave of farewell to our airplane-rebuilding new friend – CLEAR PROP – we were off: I taxied while Leo completed the route planning. It would take just about two hours to get there, he decided. According to Google Maps, the trip would take four to five hours by car. This was the sort of trip where a little airplane could really show its worth.
McAlester to Quanah TX (F01), 200 nautical miles, 2.2 h
Delighted to meet someone who could appreciate the positives of Experimental aircraft, but not wanting to stop too long, we conversed for a few more minutes and I went back into the terminal to pay our bill, while Leo studied the weather.
When I got back, we reviewed the route options.
Stay north, converge on Hwy 40 and follow it across Texas, over Amarillo, and into Albuquerque NM, then stay with Hwy 40 out across the high desert or, alternatively, from Albuquerque go southwest across the mountains to Phoenix, then west across the low desert from there along Hwy 10. Or, go south now, across Texas and New Mexico, rounding the southern tip of the Rockies near El Paso, just north of the Mexico border, and follow Hwy 10 from there.
Either way would be an adventure: we’d cross big wild spaces in a little plastic shell.
The forecast winds were stronger – and headwinds – to the north. But if the weather deteriorated I could leave the plane in Albuquerque – where Leo lives – and fly home on Southwest, and we could complete the trip another time. If we went south it would be more logistically complicated to leave the plane parked somewhere and come back another time.
Being decisive, we split the difference and picked Quanah, TX, as our next stop. With a wave of farewell to our airplane-rebuilding new friend – CLEAR PROP – we were off: I taxied while Leo completed the route planning. It would take just about two hours to get there, he decided. According to Google Maps, the trip would take four to five hours by car. This was the sort of trip where a little airplane could really show its worth.
McAlester to Quanah TX (F01), 200 nautical miles, 2.2 h
South Oklahoma - easy on the eyes
Personal aviation has become drastically less popular, and more expensive, than it was in its heyday sixty years ago. The high costs are largely attributable to the fact that very few personal airplanes are manufactured anymore: really only a handful of companies – Cirrus, Cessna, Piper, Tecnam and Diamond – produce them in any quantity, and the largest of those, Cirrus, reported 384 units produced in 2019. That’s not 384 units per month for the US market: that’s 384 units for the whole year, for the whole world. At those production volumes, personal airplanes cannot meaningfully take advantage of mass production techniques: they are produced by hand by craft workers and they are expensive.
But the low production volumes are because of low demand, and this is more mysterious, as demand was once high. It not only declined over time: it imploded. It has often been suggested that the large number of pilots trained in WWII account for it: many of these men went on to use small airplanes as transportation for themselves and their families, and demand from them created the heyday of light aviation. As the Greatest Generation began to age out of flying in the 1980s, demand for small airplanes began to slide. Coincidentally, at about that time there was a general wave of product liability litigation and juries would award enormous amounts to the relatives of people killed in airplane crashes. The manufacturers suddenly faced liability insurance costs that were comparable to their manufacturing costs. Airplane prices skyrocketed, and at those prices demand collapsed entirely.
Subsequently, Congress passed legislation that limited – without eliminating – the liability. But, by then, production volumes were close to zero and prices remained astronomical. New airplanes, once easily within the reach of regular people, became something only the rich could contemplate, while regular people found themselves trying to keep used airplanes, intended to last only ten or twenty years at most, operating for decade after decade. As economist John Cochrane has remarked, small airplanes in America today are not unlike cars in Cuba: most of them are painstakingly maintained antiques, hopelessly out of date now, and still operational only because there is nothing affordable to replace them.
I think there is much to this narrative, but I would add another factor: small airplanes are not as useful as they used to be. I fly because I love it. I fly because it’s fun. But, when I go to a small-plane airport, I do not find a fun place. Small-plane airports in the US are all about utility and transportation: they have about as much appeal as rental car parking lots.
This orientation makes sense, given their background. As I’ve noted, if you want to travel from McAlester to Quanah by car, it will take you well over four hours, and 70L – no speed machine – can cut that to just over two. But, in the 1950s roads and cars were less sophisticated than they are today, and that trip might have taken closer to six or seven hours on the ground. Little airplanes were a very useful form of transportation.
Today, though, that’s really not true. Oh, sure, we were going to save a lot of time going from McAlester to Quanah, but how many people make trips like that these days? Today, unlike the 1950s, the vast majority of the US population lives in or around major cities. Little airplanes are not much use for traveling within the city, obviously. And, today we have a high-speed highway system, and fast cars. Suppose you have two people who leave home, planning to go somewhere, but one goes by car and the other plans to fly a small plane. The one going by car spends ten minutes getting to the highway, and then heads out at about 80 mph. The one going by plane drives to the local airport, which is outside town and not close to the highway, so the trip takes 30 minutes. Then, the flier must do some preflight planning (10 minutes at least), do the preflight inspection of the airplane (10 minutes), start up, complete equipment checks and taxi to the runway (10 minutes), and get under way. Once under way, the flier is going at 120 mph, 40 mph faster than the driver. But, the process of getting started has taken an hour. And, there’s more: at the destination, the flier will have to fly a landing approach (10 minutes), taxi to parking (5 minutes), secure the airplane (5 minutes), and ride a cab into town (30 minutes, assuming a cab can come in the time it takes to secure the airplane). So, the flier has a logistics overhead of 110 minutes, against 20 minutes for the driver (get from town to the highway, and get from the highway to the destination), thus a difference of 90 minutes. During that 90 minutes, the driver will have covered 120 miles on the highway. With a speed differential of 40 mph, it will take the flier three hours to make up the difference, by which time both will be 360 miles from home and both will have been traveling for four and a half hours.
This is an enormous distance. It’s the distance from Los Angeles to San Francisco. For any shorter distance, driving is faster, cheaper, more flexible, less weather dependent, and requires less training. And – let’s be honest – anyone thinking about spending four and a half hours at the wheel will think hard about getting on an airline flight instead. Drive to the airport: 40 minutes. Time at the airport (check in, security, etc.): 1 hour. Flight: 1 hour. Get through the destination airport: 20 minutes. Drive into town: 40 minutes. Total: 3 hours, 40 minutes.
So, the little airplane is slower than a car until you get to the point where airline travel would be faster than either.
For much of the US population today, small airplanes are simply not useful. Yes, if you live in Oklahoma or rural Texas or Pennsylvania, and you live near a little airport, and you want to get to another rural town a couple hundred miles away that also has a little airport, with no interstate highway joining them, then the airplane is a highly useful tool. But for big-city dwellers – most people, now – not so much.
This has actually dawned on the aviation community, which was beginning to fear extinction: with fewer pilots, airplanes would be ever more expensive and regulators increasingly more likely to continue to make life ever more painfully difficult. Looking around, personal aviation organizations noticed another form of transportation that is truly impractical – neither fast nor cost effective – but that has remained enormously successful: sailing. Sailboats, of course, have not been a practical form of transportation since the start of the 20th Century; and yet, there are large marinas near major cities, with hundreds or even thousands of much-loved sailboats moored to them, and yacht clubs that provide a social focus for aficionados. These boats are often used for transportation, or just to potter around in, not because it’s practical, but because it’s fun.
In the last ten to fifteen years, then, the aviation community has begun to use a new phrase: sport aviation. Flying clubs, emphasizing the social aspect of flying, have become more common. There has been a trend toward flying so-called bushplanes, which are often not fast at all but – with big wings and huge off-road tires – are capable of landing and taking off in very short distances on rough ground; they are used for getting into remote places for fishing and camping trips and have led to the rebirth of almost-forgotten backcountry airstrips. There has been a somewhat surprising rebirth of ultralight flying, which first emerged in the 1970s and 1980s and was often caricatured as “hang gliders with lawn mower engines.” Some of today’s ultralight aircraft are essentially 1970s designs with more reliable engines, but some are all-new creations using computer-aided design and carbon fiber parts and – in a few cases – electric motors. And, there has been an enormous surge of creativity in lightweight airplanes intended primarily for sport flying, a development that hinged on an obscure change in the FAA’s regulations.
Unlike the situation with sailboats, manufacturing and selling airplanes is highly regulated. In the United States, as in pretty much every country in the world, you cannot just decide to design an airplane, set up a factory to manufacture it, and go into business selling it. Before you can sell it, you must get the FAA to approve its sale, through a process called certification. To certify your airplane design, you must satisfy the FAA that it meets each of the FAA's requirements.
Now, the FAA's primary job is safety, and over the years, each time its experts would discover a new cause of aircraft accidents, they would commit themselves to making sure that such an accident would never happen again - and, often, would add a new requirement to the certification requirements. As a result, over the decades, the list of certification requirements had grown long - and showing compliance with all of them had become extraordinarily time-consuming and expensive.
Not only that, but as new designs began to taper off, a new generation of FAA employees faced an adverse incentive: old designs had been certificated by now-retired employees, but anyone certificating a new design was taking a risk with their career: if something went wrong, they would be blamed. And thus, the FAA gradually acquired a reputation for being averse to innovation.
By 2000, possibly much earlier, the FAA was caught in a conservatism trap: by making it so difficult to certificate new designs, it was forcing the flying public to use old designs that were probably less safe than new designs would have been – and there seemed to be no way out.
Nevertheless, in 2005 the FAA, perhaps implicitly recognizing the problem, displayed real institutional courage and tried something new. It would allow the sale of some small airplanes if they complied with consensus requirements developed by an independent body (specifically, ASTM, an international engineering standards organization). To limit the risk of disaster, this new class of airplanes could have no more than two seats, a limited maximum speed, and – fully loaded – would be limited to about half the empty weight of a Mazda Miata. Such small, slow machines were barely much bigger than some model airplanes. These airplanes would be called - appropriately enough - Light Sport Airplanes, or LSAs.
Despite the limitations, what followed the FAA’s decision was a Cambrian Explosion of small airplanes. Over the following seven years, well over a hundred LSA designs were brought to market. To put this in context, perhaps five new single-engine airplane designs had been certificated in the US in the preceding 25 years. And, despite the relative lack of regulation applied to them, for the most part these designs were sound. There were a few quality issues early on, but the new industry resolved them quite quickly.
From my point of view, these new little airplanes presented an interesting question. On the one hand, they were small, had limited carrying capacity, weren't especially fast, and came from small companies that might disappear as quickly as they had appeared (as, in fact, quite a few of them did). On the other hand, these airplanes were... new. And not just newly-built versions of 1950s designs: they were new designs, with new engine technology, and new instrumentation. And they were not just new designs; they were also newly-built, with the reliability and longevity expectations that come with being... new. Better yet, as technology advanced you could add new equipment to your airplane with only the manufacturer's approval, without needing costly FAA certification of every last transistor.
Like many - probably most - pilots, I thought always of how fast my dream "someday" airplane would be. Given my expected budget, I could buy a legendary 1950s Beechcraft Bonanza, with its distinctive V-tail, which would carry four adults and a fair amount of their baggage across long distances at 190 mph. On the other hand, the airplane would also be close to seventy years old, require expensive maintenance, burn not-inconsiderable amounts of fuel, be a little tight across the shoulders for those inside, and sport control panel instruments so Victorian, so steampunk in appearance, as to be called "steam gauges" by the aviation community. Now, for similar cost, I could buy a diminutive plane capable of carrying two people at most, with overnight bags but little more, across moderate distances at just 120 mph. But, those two people would have more elbow room, and the instrument panel - all on flat graphic displays - would have capabilities rivaling an airliner. Hourly fuel cost and annual maintenance costs would each be a third of the Bonanza's, or less. Oh, and it would be new.
I went for “new.” N770L, my Sting S3, is a Light Sport Airplane.
The scenery en route across south Oklahoma was beautiful – green countryside dotted with lakes. There were no particular landmarks that we noticed, but it was easy on the eyes.
Arriving at our destination we found windy conditions, so we used just one notch of flaps and flew the final approach a little faster, and the landing was a non-event.
Quanah is a small town, population less than 3,000, located a few miles south of the Oklahoma-Texas border in what was once Comanche country. Physically, the town itself is only about four times the size of the field that contains its airport. It is named after Quanah Parker, said to be the last Comanche chief, who died in 1911 at the age of 66. Serving as the representative of the Comanche Nation to the US legislature, he was not elected to the position but rather was appointed by the federal government. He was a successful rancher and was elected deputy Sheriff of Lawton, Oklahoma. After his death, the Comanche Nation changed the title of the senior member of its tribal council to Chairman, thus making Parker “the last chief”. Today, the Comanche Nation has some 17,000 members and has its headquarters in Lawton, which slipped past our right wingtip some forty minutes before our arrival in Quanah.
Quanah airport itself was deserted, a crazed-surface runway and many hangars and structures, albeit with no-one home in any of them. Out near the road was an arena surrounded by bleachers – I thought it might be for rodeo. A little hungry, and needing to find the “facilities”, I walked around the buildings but found only a portaloo (relief!) and nothing else. There was, however, a self-serve fuel pump. Filling up the tanks, and with nothing else to do in Quanah, we were ready to get going again. But now it was time for the final decision: northerly route, or southerly?
I concluded the forecast winds were more favorable on the southerly route. Leo raised no objection, and it was decided.
The next stop, then, would need to be less than three hours’ flying time away, and not require crossing the Rockies to get to it: Carlsbad NM looked like it fit the bill, with our flight-planning software putting the travel time at 2:30. Again, a situation where 70L could do the job much faster than a car: Google Maps estimated a driving time of 5:30.
We strapped ourselves in, and I flipped the ignition switches on. The wind rocked the airplane, so I wouldn’t exactly say the airport was quiet, but we hadn’t seen another human being since we had arrived. I felt a little silly but shouted anyway – CLEAR PROP – and pushed the starter button.
Quanah TX to Carlsbad NM (KCNM) – 249 nm, 2.8h
But the low production volumes are because of low demand, and this is more mysterious, as demand was once high. It not only declined over time: it imploded. It has often been suggested that the large number of pilots trained in WWII account for it: many of these men went on to use small airplanes as transportation for themselves and their families, and demand from them created the heyday of light aviation. As the Greatest Generation began to age out of flying in the 1980s, demand for small airplanes began to slide. Coincidentally, at about that time there was a general wave of product liability litigation and juries would award enormous amounts to the relatives of people killed in airplane crashes. The manufacturers suddenly faced liability insurance costs that were comparable to their manufacturing costs. Airplane prices skyrocketed, and at those prices demand collapsed entirely.
Subsequently, Congress passed legislation that limited – without eliminating – the liability. But, by then, production volumes were close to zero and prices remained astronomical. New airplanes, once easily within the reach of regular people, became something only the rich could contemplate, while regular people found themselves trying to keep used airplanes, intended to last only ten or twenty years at most, operating for decade after decade. As economist John Cochrane has remarked, small airplanes in America today are not unlike cars in Cuba: most of them are painstakingly maintained antiques, hopelessly out of date now, and still operational only because there is nothing affordable to replace them.
I think there is much to this narrative, but I would add another factor: small airplanes are not as useful as they used to be. I fly because I love it. I fly because it’s fun. But, when I go to a small-plane airport, I do not find a fun place. Small-plane airports in the US are all about utility and transportation: they have about as much appeal as rental car parking lots.
This orientation makes sense, given their background. As I’ve noted, if you want to travel from McAlester to Quanah by car, it will take you well over four hours, and 70L – no speed machine – can cut that to just over two. But, in the 1950s roads and cars were less sophisticated than they are today, and that trip might have taken closer to six or seven hours on the ground. Little airplanes were a very useful form of transportation.
Today, though, that’s really not true. Oh, sure, we were going to save a lot of time going from McAlester to Quanah, but how many people make trips like that these days? Today, unlike the 1950s, the vast majority of the US population lives in or around major cities. Little airplanes are not much use for traveling within the city, obviously. And, today we have a high-speed highway system, and fast cars. Suppose you have two people who leave home, planning to go somewhere, but one goes by car and the other plans to fly a small plane. The one going by car spends ten minutes getting to the highway, and then heads out at about 80 mph. The one going by plane drives to the local airport, which is outside town and not close to the highway, so the trip takes 30 minutes. Then, the flier must do some preflight planning (10 minutes at least), do the preflight inspection of the airplane (10 minutes), start up, complete equipment checks and taxi to the runway (10 minutes), and get under way. Once under way, the flier is going at 120 mph, 40 mph faster than the driver. But, the process of getting started has taken an hour. And, there’s more: at the destination, the flier will have to fly a landing approach (10 minutes), taxi to parking (5 minutes), secure the airplane (5 minutes), and ride a cab into town (30 minutes, assuming a cab can come in the time it takes to secure the airplane). So, the flier has a logistics overhead of 110 minutes, against 20 minutes for the driver (get from town to the highway, and get from the highway to the destination), thus a difference of 90 minutes. During that 90 minutes, the driver will have covered 120 miles on the highway. With a speed differential of 40 mph, it will take the flier three hours to make up the difference, by which time both will be 360 miles from home and both will have been traveling for four and a half hours.
This is an enormous distance. It’s the distance from Los Angeles to San Francisco. For any shorter distance, driving is faster, cheaper, more flexible, less weather dependent, and requires less training. And – let’s be honest – anyone thinking about spending four and a half hours at the wheel will think hard about getting on an airline flight instead. Drive to the airport: 40 minutes. Time at the airport (check in, security, etc.): 1 hour. Flight: 1 hour. Get through the destination airport: 20 minutes. Drive into town: 40 minutes. Total: 3 hours, 40 minutes.
So, the little airplane is slower than a car until you get to the point where airline travel would be faster than either.
For much of the US population today, small airplanes are simply not useful. Yes, if you live in Oklahoma or rural Texas or Pennsylvania, and you live near a little airport, and you want to get to another rural town a couple hundred miles away that also has a little airport, with no interstate highway joining them, then the airplane is a highly useful tool. But for big-city dwellers – most people, now – not so much.
This has actually dawned on the aviation community, which was beginning to fear extinction: with fewer pilots, airplanes would be ever more expensive and regulators increasingly more likely to continue to make life ever more painfully difficult. Looking around, personal aviation organizations noticed another form of transportation that is truly impractical – neither fast nor cost effective – but that has remained enormously successful: sailing. Sailboats, of course, have not been a practical form of transportation since the start of the 20th Century; and yet, there are large marinas near major cities, with hundreds or even thousands of much-loved sailboats moored to them, and yacht clubs that provide a social focus for aficionados. These boats are often used for transportation, or just to potter around in, not because it’s practical, but because it’s fun.
In the last ten to fifteen years, then, the aviation community has begun to use a new phrase: sport aviation. Flying clubs, emphasizing the social aspect of flying, have become more common. There has been a trend toward flying so-called bushplanes, which are often not fast at all but – with big wings and huge off-road tires – are capable of landing and taking off in very short distances on rough ground; they are used for getting into remote places for fishing and camping trips and have led to the rebirth of almost-forgotten backcountry airstrips. There has been a somewhat surprising rebirth of ultralight flying, which first emerged in the 1970s and 1980s and was often caricatured as “hang gliders with lawn mower engines.” Some of today’s ultralight aircraft are essentially 1970s designs with more reliable engines, but some are all-new creations using computer-aided design and carbon fiber parts and – in a few cases – electric motors. And, there has been an enormous surge of creativity in lightweight airplanes intended primarily for sport flying, a development that hinged on an obscure change in the FAA’s regulations.
Unlike the situation with sailboats, manufacturing and selling airplanes is highly regulated. In the United States, as in pretty much every country in the world, you cannot just decide to design an airplane, set up a factory to manufacture it, and go into business selling it. Before you can sell it, you must get the FAA to approve its sale, through a process called certification. To certify your airplane design, you must satisfy the FAA that it meets each of the FAA's requirements.
Now, the FAA's primary job is safety, and over the years, each time its experts would discover a new cause of aircraft accidents, they would commit themselves to making sure that such an accident would never happen again - and, often, would add a new requirement to the certification requirements. As a result, over the decades, the list of certification requirements had grown long - and showing compliance with all of them had become extraordinarily time-consuming and expensive.
Not only that, but as new designs began to taper off, a new generation of FAA employees faced an adverse incentive: old designs had been certificated by now-retired employees, but anyone certificating a new design was taking a risk with their career: if something went wrong, they would be blamed. And thus, the FAA gradually acquired a reputation for being averse to innovation.
By 2000, possibly much earlier, the FAA was caught in a conservatism trap: by making it so difficult to certificate new designs, it was forcing the flying public to use old designs that were probably less safe than new designs would have been – and there seemed to be no way out.
Nevertheless, in 2005 the FAA, perhaps implicitly recognizing the problem, displayed real institutional courage and tried something new. It would allow the sale of some small airplanes if they complied with consensus requirements developed by an independent body (specifically, ASTM, an international engineering standards organization). To limit the risk of disaster, this new class of airplanes could have no more than two seats, a limited maximum speed, and – fully loaded – would be limited to about half the empty weight of a Mazda Miata. Such small, slow machines were barely much bigger than some model airplanes. These airplanes would be called - appropriately enough - Light Sport Airplanes, or LSAs.
Despite the limitations, what followed the FAA’s decision was a Cambrian Explosion of small airplanes. Over the following seven years, well over a hundred LSA designs were brought to market. To put this in context, perhaps five new single-engine airplane designs had been certificated in the US in the preceding 25 years. And, despite the relative lack of regulation applied to them, for the most part these designs were sound. There were a few quality issues early on, but the new industry resolved them quite quickly.
From my point of view, these new little airplanes presented an interesting question. On the one hand, they were small, had limited carrying capacity, weren't especially fast, and came from small companies that might disappear as quickly as they had appeared (as, in fact, quite a few of them did). On the other hand, these airplanes were... new. And not just newly-built versions of 1950s designs: they were new designs, with new engine technology, and new instrumentation. And they were not just new designs; they were also newly-built, with the reliability and longevity expectations that come with being... new. Better yet, as technology advanced you could add new equipment to your airplane with only the manufacturer's approval, without needing costly FAA certification of every last transistor.
Like many - probably most - pilots, I thought always of how fast my dream "someday" airplane would be. Given my expected budget, I could buy a legendary 1950s Beechcraft Bonanza, with its distinctive V-tail, which would carry four adults and a fair amount of their baggage across long distances at 190 mph. On the other hand, the airplane would also be close to seventy years old, require expensive maintenance, burn not-inconsiderable amounts of fuel, be a little tight across the shoulders for those inside, and sport control panel instruments so Victorian, so steampunk in appearance, as to be called "steam gauges" by the aviation community. Now, for similar cost, I could buy a diminutive plane capable of carrying two people at most, with overnight bags but little more, across moderate distances at just 120 mph. But, those two people would have more elbow room, and the instrument panel - all on flat graphic displays - would have capabilities rivaling an airliner. Hourly fuel cost and annual maintenance costs would each be a third of the Bonanza's, or less. Oh, and it would be new.
I went for “new.” N770L, my Sting S3, is a Light Sport Airplane.
The scenery en route across south Oklahoma was beautiful – green countryside dotted with lakes. There were no particular landmarks that we noticed, but it was easy on the eyes.
Arriving at our destination we found windy conditions, so we used just one notch of flaps and flew the final approach a little faster, and the landing was a non-event.
Quanah is a small town, population less than 3,000, located a few miles south of the Oklahoma-Texas border in what was once Comanche country. Physically, the town itself is only about four times the size of the field that contains its airport. It is named after Quanah Parker, said to be the last Comanche chief, who died in 1911 at the age of 66. Serving as the representative of the Comanche Nation to the US legislature, he was not elected to the position but rather was appointed by the federal government. He was a successful rancher and was elected deputy Sheriff of Lawton, Oklahoma. After his death, the Comanche Nation changed the title of the senior member of its tribal council to Chairman, thus making Parker “the last chief”. Today, the Comanche Nation has some 17,000 members and has its headquarters in Lawton, which slipped past our right wingtip some forty minutes before our arrival in Quanah.
Quanah airport itself was deserted, a crazed-surface runway and many hangars and structures, albeit with no-one home in any of them. Out near the road was an arena surrounded by bleachers – I thought it might be for rodeo. A little hungry, and needing to find the “facilities”, I walked around the buildings but found only a portaloo (relief!) and nothing else. There was, however, a self-serve fuel pump. Filling up the tanks, and with nothing else to do in Quanah, we were ready to get going again. But now it was time for the final decision: northerly route, or southerly?
I concluded the forecast winds were more favorable on the southerly route. Leo raised no objection, and it was decided.
The next stop, then, would need to be less than three hours’ flying time away, and not require crossing the Rockies to get to it: Carlsbad NM looked like it fit the bill, with our flight-planning software putting the travel time at 2:30. Again, a situation where 70L could do the job much faster than a car: Google Maps estimated a driving time of 5:30.
We strapped ourselves in, and I flipped the ignition switches on. The wind rocked the airplane, so I wouldn’t exactly say the airport was quiet, but we hadn’t seen another human being since we had arrived. I felt a little silly but shouted anyway – CLEAR PROP – and pushed the starter button.
Quanah TX to Carlsbad NM (KCNM) – 249 nm, 2.8h
Not quite how I picture Texas
Quanah airport is 1,600’ above sea level, and it was hot there. As I’ve mentioned, air gets thinner, the higher you are above sea level – that, rather than the cold, is what makes climbing Mount Everest so especially difficult and dangerous. The air also gets thinner when it’s hot. Pilots combine these two phenomena in the concept of “density altitude.” The idea is this: you calculate the air density at your actual elevation and local temperature, and then see what elevation above sea level would have that same air density in a “standard atmosphere”. In this case, the density altitude was 5,200', which was the highest we’d experienced on the trip so far. Thin air causes engines to lose power, and while wings do still work, they need to move faster – which requires more power. As a result, we could expect much less sprightly takeoff performance from 70L. We discussed how much of the runway we might use, and what our rule of thumb might be for abandoning the takeoff and getting stopped before the end of the runway, if the high density altitude should prove to be a problem - not that this was very likely: Quanah has thousands of feet of runway.
The S3 was airborne after using less than 500 feet of pavement.
Forty seconds after that, as we reached the far end of the runway, we were 500 feet above the ground. So much for density altitude concerns! We peered down at the nearby town for a few moments, and then turned to the southwest.
We cruised relatively low, as the forecast called for stronger headwinds at altitude. Over time, however, northwest Texas became southwest Texas became New Mexico, and cars on the ground started to look larger because the earth was rising beneath us. We added a couple of thousand feet above sea level and pushed on as the green fields below began to give way to a more arid, uneven landscape.
I've mentioned some parallels between small airplanes and small boats, by now: the use of "charts" rather than maps, and their transition to recreational rather than practical use. There's another parallel: both the boating and flying communities measure distance in nautical miles, and speeds in knots (nautical miles per hour, abbreviated as kt). Thus, I've mentioned that 70L moves through the air at 107 kt, which is 123 mph. The reason for this is that the nautical mile was originally defined as one minute of latitude (one sixtieth of a degree). Nautical charts have latitude/longitude grids marked on them, so this made for a pretty handy unit of length: basically, no matter what part of the chart you were looking at, there was always a distance scale nearby. Aviation charts have the same markings on them, and pilots worldwide use nautical miles as their measure of distance, and nautical miles per hour - called knots - as their measure of speed.
Surprisingly, the nautical mile is a cousin of the kilometer. When the metric system was being devised, there was a proposal to have a right angle be 100 degrees, rather than 90 degrees. Then, each “metric degree” would be divided into 100 “metric minutes”. And if you marked a nautical chart with these metric “degrees” and “minutes”, there would be 10,000 of these “minutes” between the equator and the north pole. Each of those “minutes” would be 1 kilometer.
So, ten thousand kilometers (Pole to Equator) would equal 5,400 nautical miles (90 degrees, 60 minutes per degree), making the kilometer exactly 0.54 nautical miles. Put the other way, the nautical mile would be (1/0.54) kilometers exactly, or approximately 1.851852 kilometers.
In 1929, at the First International Extraordinary Hydrographic Conference (that was really a thing!) in Monaco, after a bit of rounding, the International Nautical Mile was declared to be 1,852 meters exactly. The US continued to define it as 6,080.2 ft and the UK as 6,080 ft, but they ultimately adopted the international definition in 1954 and 1970, respectively, thereby shortening their definition of the nautical mile by a full 4 ft, because 1,852 meters is 6,076 ft.
The nautical measure of height (water depth, for boats) is the fathom, or six feet. Airplanes do not use fathoms; I don’t think anybody uses fathoms anymore. At some point, traditions fade, I guess. Instead, in most of the world, altitude is measured in feet. This may seem peculiar, since most of the world uses the metric system. The reason is simple enough: if you divide the sky vertically into 1,000' "slices", you get about 40 slices. Of those, roughly 10 are useful as airliner cruising altitudes. Airliners operating near each other can be allocated their own altitudes, providing them with both vertical and lateral separation. On the other hand, if you were to use 1,000 meter slices, there would be only 13 of them, of which 4 would be useful for airliners. Alternatively, you could use 300m slices, which would be almost exactly 1,000', but then the numbering would be awkward. Feet won.
This trip was one of the longest periods Leo and I had spent together in two decades. Paula asked me afterwards, what did we talk about on the trip?
It’s funny, because I really don’t remember. Logistics, of course: navigation and fuel and times and headings and weather and the particulars of life in the sky. And the scenery outside, of course. Friends one or the other of us had stayed in touch with. Stories from our own lives, after years of living so far apart – although, mostly we knew what had been going on in each other’s lives.
Much of the time, I think the answer was “nothing”. We sat in the airplane, our cocoon in the sky, and we were together, friends sharing a journey. It was the being together, sharing a mission, that was the point: we talked plenty, but I don’t remember much of what we said, probably because most of the time it wasn’t very important. And I think a lot of the time, we said nothing at all.
I met Leo when I was in my mid-twenties and had joined the flying club in grad school. He was one of the other members. Once a month we held a “wash day”, when the members would wash the club airplanes, and at one of these events he showed up with what I recognized as a hang glider on the roof of his car. I had been fascinated by hang gliding since my pre-teen years: once or twice I had made my parents drive me to a mountain an hour or so from home to watch them flying, but I had never known anyone who flew them. Leo, it turned out, not only flew hang gliders, but was a certified hang gliding instructor. I had mentioned this to my adventurous roommate, Lucy, who immediately wanted to know if he would take her flying – and this had led to my uneasy moments standing on the launch ramp on Kagel mountain.
A few months after that evening, I found myself standing in much the same spot, this time facing down the ramp while Leo stood and held the nose of the hang glider. This time, I was about to launch on what would be my first high-altitude solo flight in a hang glider. The voice in my head was asking me if I really intended to do this thing, while Leo reassured me that it was going to be great. I guess the voice, and Leo, have had these roles a long time!
Leo was right: it was great. Over the next decade we spent a lot of time together either flying hang gliders or road-tripping with hang gliders strapped on top of the vehicle, throughout California and as far afield as Montana. On one memorable flight from Mt Sentinel, above Missoula, and with my mother watching from the ground, I experienced an unusual situation in which I could not get the glider to come down because everywhere I went, the air was going up – which would have been great, except for the fact that, across the valley, the sun was setting… but that’s a story for another day. In the meantime, Leo bought an airplane, and we flew it, too, mostly around southern California but on two occasions all the way to Fort Collins, Colorado – nearly half way across the country – and back.
The S3 was airborne after using less than 500 feet of pavement.
Forty seconds after that, as we reached the far end of the runway, we were 500 feet above the ground. So much for density altitude concerns! We peered down at the nearby town for a few moments, and then turned to the southwest.
We cruised relatively low, as the forecast called for stronger headwinds at altitude. Over time, however, northwest Texas became southwest Texas became New Mexico, and cars on the ground started to look larger because the earth was rising beneath us. We added a couple of thousand feet above sea level and pushed on as the green fields below began to give way to a more arid, uneven landscape.
I've mentioned some parallels between small airplanes and small boats, by now: the use of "charts" rather than maps, and their transition to recreational rather than practical use. There's another parallel: both the boating and flying communities measure distance in nautical miles, and speeds in knots (nautical miles per hour, abbreviated as kt). Thus, I've mentioned that 70L moves through the air at 107 kt, which is 123 mph. The reason for this is that the nautical mile was originally defined as one minute of latitude (one sixtieth of a degree). Nautical charts have latitude/longitude grids marked on them, so this made for a pretty handy unit of length: basically, no matter what part of the chart you were looking at, there was always a distance scale nearby. Aviation charts have the same markings on them, and pilots worldwide use nautical miles as their measure of distance, and nautical miles per hour - called knots - as their measure of speed.
Surprisingly, the nautical mile is a cousin of the kilometer. When the metric system was being devised, there was a proposal to have a right angle be 100 degrees, rather than 90 degrees. Then, each “metric degree” would be divided into 100 “metric minutes”. And if you marked a nautical chart with these metric “degrees” and “minutes”, there would be 10,000 of these “minutes” between the equator and the north pole. Each of those “minutes” would be 1 kilometer.
So, ten thousand kilometers (Pole to Equator) would equal 5,400 nautical miles (90 degrees, 60 minutes per degree), making the kilometer exactly 0.54 nautical miles. Put the other way, the nautical mile would be (1/0.54) kilometers exactly, or approximately 1.851852 kilometers.
In 1929, at the First International Extraordinary Hydrographic Conference (that was really a thing!) in Monaco, after a bit of rounding, the International Nautical Mile was declared to be 1,852 meters exactly. The US continued to define it as 6,080.2 ft and the UK as 6,080 ft, but they ultimately adopted the international definition in 1954 and 1970, respectively, thereby shortening their definition of the nautical mile by a full 4 ft, because 1,852 meters is 6,076 ft.
The nautical measure of height (water depth, for boats) is the fathom, or six feet. Airplanes do not use fathoms; I don’t think anybody uses fathoms anymore. At some point, traditions fade, I guess. Instead, in most of the world, altitude is measured in feet. This may seem peculiar, since most of the world uses the metric system. The reason is simple enough: if you divide the sky vertically into 1,000' "slices", you get about 40 slices. Of those, roughly 10 are useful as airliner cruising altitudes. Airliners operating near each other can be allocated their own altitudes, providing them with both vertical and lateral separation. On the other hand, if you were to use 1,000 meter slices, there would be only 13 of them, of which 4 would be useful for airliners. Alternatively, you could use 300m slices, which would be almost exactly 1,000', but then the numbering would be awkward. Feet won.
This trip was one of the longest periods Leo and I had spent together in two decades. Paula asked me afterwards, what did we talk about on the trip?
It’s funny, because I really don’t remember. Logistics, of course: navigation and fuel and times and headings and weather and the particulars of life in the sky. And the scenery outside, of course. Friends one or the other of us had stayed in touch with. Stories from our own lives, after years of living so far apart – although, mostly we knew what had been going on in each other’s lives.
Much of the time, I think the answer was “nothing”. We sat in the airplane, our cocoon in the sky, and we were together, friends sharing a journey. It was the being together, sharing a mission, that was the point: we talked plenty, but I don’t remember much of what we said, probably because most of the time it wasn’t very important. And I think a lot of the time, we said nothing at all.
I met Leo when I was in my mid-twenties and had joined the flying club in grad school. He was one of the other members. Once a month we held a “wash day”, when the members would wash the club airplanes, and at one of these events he showed up with what I recognized as a hang glider on the roof of his car. I had been fascinated by hang gliding since my pre-teen years: once or twice I had made my parents drive me to a mountain an hour or so from home to watch them flying, but I had never known anyone who flew them. Leo, it turned out, not only flew hang gliders, but was a certified hang gliding instructor. I had mentioned this to my adventurous roommate, Lucy, who immediately wanted to know if he would take her flying – and this had led to my uneasy moments standing on the launch ramp on Kagel mountain.
A few months after that evening, I found myself standing in much the same spot, this time facing down the ramp while Leo stood and held the nose of the hang glider. This time, I was about to launch on what would be my first high-altitude solo flight in a hang glider. The voice in my head was asking me if I really intended to do this thing, while Leo reassured me that it was going to be great. I guess the voice, and Leo, have had these roles a long time!
Leo was right: it was great. Over the next decade we spent a lot of time together either flying hang gliders or road-tripping with hang gliders strapped on top of the vehicle, throughout California and as far afield as Montana. On one memorable flight from Mt Sentinel, above Missoula, and with my mother watching from the ground, I experienced an unusual situation in which I could not get the glider to come down because everywhere I went, the air was going up – which would have been great, except for the fact that, across the valley, the sun was setting… but that’s a story for another day. In the meantime, Leo bought an airplane, and we flew it, too, mostly around southern California but on two occasions all the way to Fort Collins, Colorado – nearly half way across the country – and back.
Hang gliding on Mt Sentinel, MT in 1995
Carlsbad NM - we really should have closed that canopy!
I actually recommend that anyone with a fear of flying should try hang gliding. Oh, not the “jump off a mountain” variety – that might be too much to face – but the “run down a small sand dune” kind. It’s a simple thing: you get strapped onto an oversized hang glider that can fly remarkably slowly, and you pick it up, get it balanced, and start to walk down the side of the dune. The challenge, quite simply, is to pick up speed and run all the way to the bottom, and not let the glider fly. At some point, as you try to do this, you will feel the wing trying to lift, and you will put some weight on it to hold it down.
And the Hand Of God will lift you off the ground.
It’s not an uncertain, unreliable, shaky, unsteady thing. It’s not the “how can this thing possibly not fall down” kind of experience. It’s the exact opposite. It’s like trying to stop a tractor in low gear, like trying to hold down the hook of a crane. It is smooth, powerful, relentless. For me, at least, the experience of first being lifted by a hang glider was profound. I had been in airplanes before – I had a pilot’s license by then – but there was always an element of faith involved, always a sense of uncertainty. In an airplane, the machine flies but you have no deep, visceral confidence about it. For me, at least, being lifted off a sand dune by a hang glider I was actually trying to keep down, brought that confidence; I learned, not with my mind but with my body, that the wing would fly – could not be kept from flying. Later in my hang gliding career, as I stood on a steep slope waiting for the moment to launch, it struck me that down the hill from where I stood were jagged rocks that would tear apart anything – anyone – falling on them, but they didn’t bother me in the least. My body knew, in its bones, that I couldn’t fall on those rocks if I tried.
Somewhere between Quanah and Carlsbad, I announced that I needed to relax: either the autopilot, or Leo would have to take over the controls. He voted for the autopilot. We had found that the S3 is a “busy” aircraft to hand-fly: it is stable in smooth air but easily climbs or descends in any atmospheric movement and correcting for that leads to a need to readjust power and re-trim. While the airplane's handling is delightful, we found ourselves exercising our instrument flying skills, monitoring the numbers almost constantly: heading, airspeed, altitude, rate of climb, RPM - something would need adjusting, and then it was time to start the cycle again. This demanded quite a lot of concentration. The autopilot let us relax except for some occasional monitoring, which was a lot less work.
In due course we crossed over the city of Carlsbad, New Mexico. Population roughly 30,000, the city was founded in 1888 as the town of Eddy but changed its name to Carlsbad, after the famous Bavarian spa, in recognition of a nearby mineral spring, which drew tourists. Today its economy is based on natural resources – oil, gas and potash – and tourism, with multiple national parks within 50 miles.
Carlsbad airport is formally known as Cavern City Air Terminal, a reference to the Carlsbad Caverns, which were discovered in 1898, and are a major tourist attraction today. The airport has a very large runway complex, too: Leo flew the approach and used less than a thousand feet of one of those runways to get us on the ground and stopped.
By now, we were starting to feel hungry. We had had breakfast, and nothing since, and it was moving from mid- into late- afternoon. While Leo tried to sort out fuel for us, I went walkabout among the airport buildings, looking for a way to get food. Perhaps, I thought, there might be some fast food places near the airport – but Google Maps said no. Perhaps, I thought, there might be a restaurant or at least a sandwich machine inside the terminal building. It took me a while to find a way in, but I did – and there were no sandwich machines. However – stroke of luck! The airport manager was in, and when I told him what I was looking for he disappeared into an office and re-emerged with candy bars and peanuts! Okay, maybe an unhealthy amount of sugar and salt for men in their fifties, but we were hungry and one time surely wouldn’t hurt…
He followed me out onto the ramp, to see this “Light Sport Airplane” I was talking about, and inspected 70L carefully.
“All composite,” he noted. “Ballistic parachute.”
He beamed. “It’s a mini Cirrus!”
If the S3 could have high-fived, I think it might have.
It turned out, he had worked for Cirrus at one time, and so he stood there, looking at this unexpected first cousin of that airplane, and reminisced, his face bright with recollection. I didn’t tell him that the S3 was far more fun to fly than the Cirrus.
What now, though? It was late afternoon: we could stop here for the night, but it seemed like that would be leaving too much unused daylight; or we could press on, but to where?
Deming, NM, which is about 200 miles almost exactly west of Carlsbad, seemed like a good destination. It would take less than two hours to get there, judging by the distance, which should have us on the ground before the last of twilight. With the forecast headwind, it would take longer. Leo was current to act as pilot in command at night, and the airplane had a full set of lights. And, as I know you’re wondering, it would be another counterexample to my claim that little airplanes are not very practical, as the same trip would take well over four hours by car.
And so – CLEAR PROP! – we were off again, for the third leg of the day, and the first leg of the trip that would start and end within the same state (although we would cross back into and out of Texas en route).
Carlsbad to Deming NM (KDMN) – 179 nautical miles, 2.4h
And the Hand Of God will lift you off the ground.
It’s not an uncertain, unreliable, shaky, unsteady thing. It’s not the “how can this thing possibly not fall down” kind of experience. It’s the exact opposite. It’s like trying to stop a tractor in low gear, like trying to hold down the hook of a crane. It is smooth, powerful, relentless. For me, at least, the experience of first being lifted by a hang glider was profound. I had been in airplanes before – I had a pilot’s license by then – but there was always an element of faith involved, always a sense of uncertainty. In an airplane, the machine flies but you have no deep, visceral confidence about it. For me, at least, being lifted off a sand dune by a hang glider I was actually trying to keep down, brought that confidence; I learned, not with my mind but with my body, that the wing would fly – could not be kept from flying. Later in my hang gliding career, as I stood on a steep slope waiting for the moment to launch, it struck me that down the hill from where I stood were jagged rocks that would tear apart anything – anyone – falling on them, but they didn’t bother me in the least. My body knew, in its bones, that I couldn’t fall on those rocks if I tried.
Somewhere between Quanah and Carlsbad, I announced that I needed to relax: either the autopilot, or Leo would have to take over the controls. He voted for the autopilot. We had found that the S3 is a “busy” aircraft to hand-fly: it is stable in smooth air but easily climbs or descends in any atmospheric movement and correcting for that leads to a need to readjust power and re-trim. While the airplane's handling is delightful, we found ourselves exercising our instrument flying skills, monitoring the numbers almost constantly: heading, airspeed, altitude, rate of climb, RPM - something would need adjusting, and then it was time to start the cycle again. This demanded quite a lot of concentration. The autopilot let us relax except for some occasional monitoring, which was a lot less work.
In due course we crossed over the city of Carlsbad, New Mexico. Population roughly 30,000, the city was founded in 1888 as the town of Eddy but changed its name to Carlsbad, after the famous Bavarian spa, in recognition of a nearby mineral spring, which drew tourists. Today its economy is based on natural resources – oil, gas and potash – and tourism, with multiple national parks within 50 miles.
Carlsbad airport is formally known as Cavern City Air Terminal, a reference to the Carlsbad Caverns, which were discovered in 1898, and are a major tourist attraction today. The airport has a very large runway complex, too: Leo flew the approach and used less than a thousand feet of one of those runways to get us on the ground and stopped.
By now, we were starting to feel hungry. We had had breakfast, and nothing since, and it was moving from mid- into late- afternoon. While Leo tried to sort out fuel for us, I went walkabout among the airport buildings, looking for a way to get food. Perhaps, I thought, there might be some fast food places near the airport – but Google Maps said no. Perhaps, I thought, there might be a restaurant or at least a sandwich machine inside the terminal building. It took me a while to find a way in, but I did – and there were no sandwich machines. However – stroke of luck! The airport manager was in, and when I told him what I was looking for he disappeared into an office and re-emerged with candy bars and peanuts! Okay, maybe an unhealthy amount of sugar and salt for men in their fifties, but we were hungry and one time surely wouldn’t hurt…
He followed me out onto the ramp, to see this “Light Sport Airplane” I was talking about, and inspected 70L carefully.
“All composite,” he noted. “Ballistic parachute.”
He beamed. “It’s a mini Cirrus!”
If the S3 could have high-fived, I think it might have.
It turned out, he had worked for Cirrus at one time, and so he stood there, looking at this unexpected first cousin of that airplane, and reminisced, his face bright with recollection. I didn’t tell him that the S3 was far more fun to fly than the Cirrus.
What now, though? It was late afternoon: we could stop here for the night, but it seemed like that would be leaving too much unused daylight; or we could press on, but to where?
Deming, NM, which is about 200 miles almost exactly west of Carlsbad, seemed like a good destination. It would take less than two hours to get there, judging by the distance, which should have us on the ground before the last of twilight. With the forecast headwind, it would take longer. Leo was current to act as pilot in command at night, and the airplane had a full set of lights. And, as I know you’re wondering, it would be another counterexample to my claim that little airplanes are not very practical, as the same trip would take well over four hours by car.
And so – CLEAR PROP! – we were off again, for the third leg of the day, and the first leg of the trip that would start and end within the same state (although we would cross back into and out of Texas en route).
Carlsbad to Deming NM (KDMN) – 179 nautical miles, 2.4h
There are two options for getting from Carlsbad to Deming in a small airplane: you can go around, or you can go over. West and southwest of Carlsbad are the Guadalupe mountains, a sort of last hurrah of the southern Rockies. Carlsbad is at about 3,300’ above sea level, and on a straight line to Deming the mountains rise to 6,500’. The mountains get higher to the south, cresting at Guadalupe Peak, which is 8,750’ above sea level. But at Guadalupe Peak, the mountains simply stop; immediately to the south, the terrain is relatively flat at a level of 5,500’ above sea level. And so, there is a southerly option: go south, leave Guadalupe Peak on the right, and avoid overflying the mountain ridge proper.
We decided to go over, so we settled into a long climb to 8,500’ so as to leave some space between us and the rocks we would be crossing over. Conscious of the potential to overheat the engine in the process, I was monitoring temperatures while the autopilot handled the climb. Just a few minutes after takeoff, the Low Voltage light lit up on the panel. I adjusted the climb to be a little slower so the engine could have more RPM, and the light went out.
“Odd,” I said. “Maybe we discharged the battery a bit while we were taxiing on the ground and all the electrics on. Did you notice if that light was on, at takeoff?”
“No, but I didn’t notice it now, either, until you pointed it out.”
I thought it could hardly have been on before takeoff: we would have noticed it. It was off now, so I’d keep an eye on it. Worst case, the engine will run just fine without any electrical system; it wasn’t like we’d fall out of the sky.
The light did not come back on.
The climb continued. It was a long climb, taking the best part of 15 minutes. The engine gauges were entirely happy, the Low Voltage light was off, and I began to relax.
We reached the top of the climb a few miles before we reached the ridge in front of us. There was a road up the hill, and even a little town near the top. Crossing the ridge, we left civilization behind entirely as we crossed the valley between the Guadalupe Mountains and the Brokeoff Mountains.
It was a spectacular, awesome landscape. Somehow the valley, which narrowed and rose on the left, and widened and fell to the right, gave a sense of being enclosed in a self-contained world, even as we were completely separated from it, isolated in our bubble half a mile above. It took forever to cross the valley, and I stared the whole time, entranced.
It took a while before I focused on the fact: it took forever to cross the valley. We had a headwind – a big headwind. Our ground speed was down to around 80 mph. The first panicky thought: we’re in the middle of nowhere and we’ll run out of fuel. The calm voice in response: we already calculated that; we have more than enough fuel and even if we didn’t, we could turn around – Carlsbad is less than forty minutes behind. Deep breaths and good planning, you’ve got this.
We decided to go over, so we settled into a long climb to 8,500’ so as to leave some space between us and the rocks we would be crossing over. Conscious of the potential to overheat the engine in the process, I was monitoring temperatures while the autopilot handled the climb. Just a few minutes after takeoff, the Low Voltage light lit up on the panel. I adjusted the climb to be a little slower so the engine could have more RPM, and the light went out.
“Odd,” I said. “Maybe we discharged the battery a bit while we were taxiing on the ground and all the electrics on. Did you notice if that light was on, at takeoff?”
“No, but I didn’t notice it now, either, until you pointed it out.”
I thought it could hardly have been on before takeoff: we would have noticed it. It was off now, so I’d keep an eye on it. Worst case, the engine will run just fine without any electrical system; it wasn’t like we’d fall out of the sky.
The light did not come back on.
The climb continued. It was a long climb, taking the best part of 15 minutes. The engine gauges were entirely happy, the Low Voltage light was off, and I began to relax.
We reached the top of the climb a few miles before we reached the ridge in front of us. There was a road up the hill, and even a little town near the top. Crossing the ridge, we left civilization behind entirely as we crossed the valley between the Guadalupe Mountains and the Brokeoff Mountains.
It was a spectacular, awesome landscape. Somehow the valley, which narrowed and rose on the left, and widened and fell to the right, gave a sense of being enclosed in a self-contained world, even as we were completely separated from it, isolated in our bubble half a mile above. It took forever to cross the valley, and I stared the whole time, entranced.
It took a while before I focused on the fact: it took forever to cross the valley. We had a headwind – a big headwind. Our ground speed was down to around 80 mph. The first panicky thought: we’re in the middle of nowhere and we’ll run out of fuel. The calm voice in response: we already calculated that; we have more than enough fuel and even if we didn’t, we could turn around – Carlsbad is less than forty minutes behind. Deep breaths and good planning, you’ve got this.
It took forever to cross the valley
Sunset Over El Paso - isn't that a movie or something?
As we cleared the Brokeoff range I found I was squinting a lot, because the sun was right in my eyes. It was right in my eyes because it was not overhead, it was in front of us. Which meant it would set soon.
“Dude,” I said, “you’ll be Pilot In Command soon.”
“Roger that,” he said.
There is a regulation that a person cannot carry passengers in an aircraft unless, within the preceding 90 days, they have made at least three takeoffs and three landings (to a full stop, mind) in the same category and class of aircraft. I hadn’t flown at night in 15 years. Leo, however, met the requirement. I would be his passenger, once twilight ended.
We pulled back the overhead sunshade, which was no longer necessary, and as the sun settled we sat under the clear Plexiglas dome and took it all in. It was a classic desert sunset, all reds and blues and purples, crisp shadows on the ground, the lights of El Paso beginning to appear. It was one of those times when nobody said anything. I took a couple of photos with my phone, hoping to capture the moment.
The Rotax droned on. We descended, trying to get below the headwind, squeezing between the military-restricted airspace north of El Paso and the airspace for El Paso’s own airport. Descending didn’t help: the farther west we went, the stronger the wind got. We were doing 75 mph now, over the ground. It was going to take a full hour to get from outside El Paso to Deming.
I have to admit, that part was tedious. It was now fully dark outside. Although we were technically flying under visual flight rules, there wasn’t a lot to see: we could see the headlights on Hwy 10, and as long as we stayed near the highway we knew from the chart that there were no mountains to hit. As a practical matter, though, we were flying on instruments. Both Leo and I have instrument ratings, and Leo was actually current and proficient, so that helped. But, grinding along at 75 mph in the dark was just not terribly interesting. And the peanuts and candy had worn off. I was definitely ready to eat.
Somewhere between El Paso and Deming, our ground speed dropped into the 60s. I began to wonder if we might find ourselves going backward, before long.
In the end, the flight to Deming took just under 2:30. Despite the headwind en route, when we tied the airplane down at the airport on the deserted ramp, the air was still.
Finding a gate we could unlock from the inside, and noting the gate code so we could get back in, we walked to a local hotel and asked the young woman at the desk for a dinner recommendation. She seemed puzzled by the request and after some thought advised us that Deming is basically a retirement community. It wasn’t entirely clear how the question and the answer connected, but she did not seem altogether happy about what she was telling us. I wondered what was keeping her in Deming, but didn’t ask. On further reflection, she thought our best bet was to go to the hotel next door, which had a restaurant – which would be closing soon.
We barely made it to the restaurant before the kitchen closed, so we asked what the easiest thing for them would be – fish and chips, the waiter said. The woman at the next table struck up a conversation. She came to Deming regularly on business, she told us. She had started to like the town. She thought it might be a good place to retire.
After dinner, we walked back to the airport. The forecast called for strong winds in the morning and I wanted to make sure the plane was properly secured, in case the winds arrived at the airport before we did. And then, airplane properly secured, we walked back to the hotel. We were tired, but it was good to stretch our legs in the warm evening, after a day sitting in our seats.
And that Low Voltage light? It never came on for the rest of the trip, nor for some time afterwards. And then one afternoon, as I was about to land at Whiteman Airport near Los Angeles, I heard electronic noise in my headset and noticed that the light was on. As I was busy landing the airplane I ignored it, and finished the job. While the wheels were still rolling on the runway, the electronic noise in the headset stopped, and the entire instrument panel went black. My electrical system had failed completely!
Of course, I was on the ground, at my home airport: it could not have happened in a better place. But it was sobering to consider that it might have happened at night over the New Mexico desert, somewhere between El Paso and Deming. It would not have been a disaster, by any means. The engine would have continued to run. Our mobile phones would have provided light to see the emergency backup instruments, which do not require power. Our battery-powered iPads and the battery backup in the ship’s GPS would have provided us with navigation; and of course we could follow the road. We had two portable radios with us. We would have had no landing lights, but with a bit of care they’re not necessary. We would have had everything we needed to complete the flight; but it would certainly have been a good deal more stressful.
Then again, that didn’t happen. There are those who would say the airplane looked out for us: protected us when it was important, asked for help in the best possible place.
Sure – why not?
Back in Deming, the forecast for the morning was not the greatest. The weather would be clear, but by mid-morning, winds on the ground were forecast to be very strong, out of the west. In the early morning, however, the forecast was for calm winds. That suggested an inversion layer: early in the morning, the strong – and warm – prevailing westerly wind would float on top of a layer of cold air, chilled by overnight contact with the ground. But, as the sun warmed the ground, that layer of cold air would heat up, until it was at the same temperature as the upper layer. At that point there would be nothing for those winds to float above, and they would reach the ground.
We therefore wanted to get airborne the next morning as early as possible, although not too early because after a long, long day the day before, we needed to have had a good night’s sleep. Also, breakfast.
“Dude,” I said, “you’ll be Pilot In Command soon.”
“Roger that,” he said.
There is a regulation that a person cannot carry passengers in an aircraft unless, within the preceding 90 days, they have made at least three takeoffs and three landings (to a full stop, mind) in the same category and class of aircraft. I hadn’t flown at night in 15 years. Leo, however, met the requirement. I would be his passenger, once twilight ended.
We pulled back the overhead sunshade, which was no longer necessary, and as the sun settled we sat under the clear Plexiglas dome and took it all in. It was a classic desert sunset, all reds and blues and purples, crisp shadows on the ground, the lights of El Paso beginning to appear. It was one of those times when nobody said anything. I took a couple of photos with my phone, hoping to capture the moment.
The Rotax droned on. We descended, trying to get below the headwind, squeezing between the military-restricted airspace north of El Paso and the airspace for El Paso’s own airport. Descending didn’t help: the farther west we went, the stronger the wind got. We were doing 75 mph now, over the ground. It was going to take a full hour to get from outside El Paso to Deming.
I have to admit, that part was tedious. It was now fully dark outside. Although we were technically flying under visual flight rules, there wasn’t a lot to see: we could see the headlights on Hwy 10, and as long as we stayed near the highway we knew from the chart that there were no mountains to hit. As a practical matter, though, we were flying on instruments. Both Leo and I have instrument ratings, and Leo was actually current and proficient, so that helped. But, grinding along at 75 mph in the dark was just not terribly interesting. And the peanuts and candy had worn off. I was definitely ready to eat.
Somewhere between El Paso and Deming, our ground speed dropped into the 60s. I began to wonder if we might find ourselves going backward, before long.
In the end, the flight to Deming took just under 2:30. Despite the headwind en route, when we tied the airplane down at the airport on the deserted ramp, the air was still.
Finding a gate we could unlock from the inside, and noting the gate code so we could get back in, we walked to a local hotel and asked the young woman at the desk for a dinner recommendation. She seemed puzzled by the request and after some thought advised us that Deming is basically a retirement community. It wasn’t entirely clear how the question and the answer connected, but she did not seem altogether happy about what she was telling us. I wondered what was keeping her in Deming, but didn’t ask. On further reflection, she thought our best bet was to go to the hotel next door, which had a restaurant – which would be closing soon.
We barely made it to the restaurant before the kitchen closed, so we asked what the easiest thing for them would be – fish and chips, the waiter said. The woman at the next table struck up a conversation. She came to Deming regularly on business, she told us. She had started to like the town. She thought it might be a good place to retire.
After dinner, we walked back to the airport. The forecast called for strong winds in the morning and I wanted to make sure the plane was properly secured, in case the winds arrived at the airport before we did. And then, airplane properly secured, we walked back to the hotel. We were tired, but it was good to stretch our legs in the warm evening, after a day sitting in our seats.
And that Low Voltage light? It never came on for the rest of the trip, nor for some time afterwards. And then one afternoon, as I was about to land at Whiteman Airport near Los Angeles, I heard electronic noise in my headset and noticed that the light was on. As I was busy landing the airplane I ignored it, and finished the job. While the wheels were still rolling on the runway, the electronic noise in the headset stopped, and the entire instrument panel went black. My electrical system had failed completely!
Of course, I was on the ground, at my home airport: it could not have happened in a better place. But it was sobering to consider that it might have happened at night over the New Mexico desert, somewhere between El Paso and Deming. It would not have been a disaster, by any means. The engine would have continued to run. Our mobile phones would have provided light to see the emergency backup instruments, which do not require power. Our battery-powered iPads and the battery backup in the ship’s GPS would have provided us with navigation; and of course we could follow the road. We had two portable radios with us. We would have had no landing lights, but with a bit of care they’re not necessary. We would have had everything we needed to complete the flight; but it would certainly have been a good deal more stressful.
Then again, that didn’t happen. There are those who would say the airplane looked out for us: protected us when it was important, asked for help in the best possible place.
Sure – why not?
Back in Deming, the forecast for the morning was not the greatest. The weather would be clear, but by mid-morning, winds on the ground were forecast to be very strong, out of the west. In the early morning, however, the forecast was for calm winds. That suggested an inversion layer: early in the morning, the strong – and warm – prevailing westerly wind would float on top of a layer of cold air, chilled by overnight contact with the ground. But, as the sun warmed the ground, that layer of cold air would heat up, until it was at the same temperature as the upper layer. At that point there would be nothing for those winds to float above, and they would reach the ground.
We therefore wanted to get airborne the next morning as early as possible, although not too early because after a long, long day the day before, we needed to have had a good night’s sleep. Also, breakfast.
Departing from Deming
When we got to the airport we discovered there was no self-serve fuel pit: we would have to find someone who could operate the fuel truck. Eventually a cheerful mechanic supplied the necessary fluids but finding him added a quarter-hour delay.
Deming to Casa Grande (KCGZ) – 205 nm, 3.0 h
Deming to Casa Grande (KCGZ) – 205 nm, 3.0 h
Rocks thrusting up out of the pastel desert floor
It was 9:30 am by the time - CLEAR PROP! - we got rolling, with the breeze still light but definitely starting to pick up in the crisp, transparent desert air. Once airborne, we stayed low, hoping to benefit from that low cool layer for as long as possible. According to the forecast, the headwinds would be lighter just fifty miles ahead. So, it was a low-level dash to get there.
As we dashed, the land was rising beneath us again, and as we climbed to maintain a reasonable separation, our ground speed was not good. Looking out to the left, some of the faster-moving cars on Hwy 10 were keeping up with us. We checked the fuel again. Nothing to be done about it, and we had enough fuel to reach our next stop, Casa Grande airport in the southeastern suburbs of Phoenix.
The scenery was now completely different to what we had encountered in Arkansas and Oklahoma: wild, alien, mostly devoid of human influence. It was certainly beautiful: the monsoon rains had added greens to the desert’s pastel colors. In the early part of the flight, the desert floor rose to our right, until in the distance it was above us, with rock peaks thrusting up out of it.
There were rock peaks in front of us, too, and gradually we climbed. And then we climbed some more. Hwy 10 swept off to the south, heading for Tucson. On the way it would pass north of Tombstone – famous for the shootout at the OK Corral (no, it’s not just a 1957 film starring Burt Lancaster and Kirk Douglas). We let the highway go – there were some other, smaller roads about in case we should need one – and stayed on a direct course, leaving the impressive 10,700’ peak of Mt Graham on our right, crossing Sulphur Springs Valley and heading for a ridge line across our path, the Galiuro Mountain range. Once again 70L climbed for us, until once again we reached 8,500’ above sea level.
Crossing the ridge line, suddenly we were high – so high! The valley ahead was down at 2,500’, more than a mile below, with the mines of San Manuel visible on the hillside off to our left. Ahead was another, lower ridgeline, and behind that the quality of the air changed from crisp and clear to hazy; and in the haze lay Phoenix.
As we dashed, the land was rising beneath us again, and as we climbed to maintain a reasonable separation, our ground speed was not good. Looking out to the left, some of the faster-moving cars on Hwy 10 were keeping up with us. We checked the fuel again. Nothing to be done about it, and we had enough fuel to reach our next stop, Casa Grande airport in the southeastern suburbs of Phoenix.
The scenery was now completely different to what we had encountered in Arkansas and Oklahoma: wild, alien, mostly devoid of human influence. It was certainly beautiful: the monsoon rains had added greens to the desert’s pastel colors. In the early part of the flight, the desert floor rose to our right, until in the distance it was above us, with rock peaks thrusting up out of it.
There were rock peaks in front of us, too, and gradually we climbed. And then we climbed some more. Hwy 10 swept off to the south, heading for Tucson. On the way it would pass north of Tombstone – famous for the shootout at the OK Corral (no, it’s not just a 1957 film starring Burt Lancaster and Kirk Douglas). We let the highway go – there were some other, smaller roads about in case we should need one – and stayed on a direct course, leaving the impressive 10,700’ peak of Mt Graham on our right, crossing Sulphur Springs Valley and heading for a ridge line across our path, the Galiuro Mountain range. Once again 70L climbed for us, until once again we reached 8,500’ above sea level.
Crossing the ridge line, suddenly we were high – so high! The valley ahead was down at 2,500’, more than a mile below, with the mines of San Manuel visible on the hillside off to our left. Ahead was another, lower ridgeline, and behind that the quality of the air changed from crisp and clear to hazy; and in the haze lay Phoenix.
The mines of San Miguel
Casa Grande terminal building
We certainly didn’t need to stay at 8,500’ in the powerful headwind up there, so we began a long, gradual descent. As we did, two things happened: the headwinds eased off; and our air traffic displays began to light up! New to having displays in the cockpit, I admit I was nervous as a cat in a room full of rocking chairs: there seemed to be traffic everywhere! It took a while to grasp that the display was showing me traffic up to twenty miles away – none of it mattered.
I had to laugh at myself: it took me back to my teenage days teaching sailing, when my pre-teen students would panic whenever they saw another boat in the harbor. I used to try to talk them out of worrying about it, until one day it occurred to me to try the opposite.
“Go ahead,” I told them, “try to hit it. I won’t actually let you hit it, but give it your best shot and try to get close.”
They never got anywhere near the other boat. When you’re in a sailboat, seeing another boat in the harbor means it will take you ten or fifteen minutes to get to it – there is a lot of time to avoid a collision! In an airplane, if you can actually see another airplane, it’s close – likely less than a minute of flying time away. But when you first see one on the traffic display, it could take ten or fifteen minutes to get to where it is… I needed my inner sailing instructor to coach me!
At Casa Grande we found a cheery little terminal, with a food concession, an information booth, an historical exhibit, little paper airplanes in a mobile overhead, and waves of dry heat. We didn't delay: fueled up, water bottles refilled, CLEAR PROP!
By now, this operation was starting to feel like a well-oiled machine.
Casa Grande to Cochrane Regional/Thermal (KTRM), 226 nautical miles, 3.0 h
I had to laugh at myself: it took me back to my teenage days teaching sailing, when my pre-teen students would panic whenever they saw another boat in the harbor. I used to try to talk them out of worrying about it, until one day it occurred to me to try the opposite.
“Go ahead,” I told them, “try to hit it. I won’t actually let you hit it, but give it your best shot and try to get close.”
They never got anywhere near the other boat. When you’re in a sailboat, seeing another boat in the harbor means it will take you ten or fifteen minutes to get to it – there is a lot of time to avoid a collision! In an airplane, if you can actually see another airplane, it’s close – likely less than a minute of flying time away. But when you first see one on the traffic display, it could take ten or fifteen minutes to get to where it is… I needed my inner sailing instructor to coach me!
At Casa Grande we found a cheery little terminal, with a food concession, an information booth, an historical exhibit, little paper airplanes in a mobile overhead, and waves of dry heat. We didn't delay: fueled up, water bottles refilled, CLEAR PROP!
By now, this operation was starting to feel like a well-oiled machine.
Casa Grande to Cochrane Regional/Thermal (KTRM), 226 nautical miles, 3.0 h
Open-cast mine near Casa Grande, AZ
Leaving Casa Grande there is a deep, circular open mine, and we managed to photograph it with 70L’s wingtip in the picture. From there, with the civilization of Phoenix falling behind, we headed out into the rather intimidating Sonora and Colorado deserts. Depending on the winds, we would either aim for Blythe or press on to Thermal, near Palm Springs.
Blythe lies just west of the Colorado River, which itself separates the Sonora and Colorado deserts. I had been to Blythe just once before in my life, in a rather odd stopover visit on a small-plane flight from Hesperia – a small town just north of the Los Angeles basin – to Fort Huachuca in southeast Arizona (and, coincidentally, not far from Tombstone). Indeed, as I thought about it, that trip had been the only previous time I had flown in this part of the country. It was during my grad school years, an undergraduate friend and I were trying to get to a flying competition in Fort Huachuca. Our departure had been delayed until late in the night, and we were trying to catch up to our teammates, who had gone ahead and had called to tell us they were staying at a motel in Blythe. We arrived in Blythe airport in the small hours of the morning – or maybe the not-so-small hours – and for a time were not sure we would be able to get out of the airport, which was closed for the night and was big enough to warrant security fencing. We did, called for a taxi from a nearby truck stop (in the days before mobile phones), and wound up hot-bunking at the motel, with our teammates’ early departure happening not that long after our late arrival. By mid-morning, we were in the air again, chasing our teammates again, next stop Gila Bend. The whole adventure is dimly remembered, now, but I do recall that the airplane our teammates were traveling in belonged to Leo!
Ideally, in 70L, we wanted to get to Thermal rather than Blythe, and Thermal would be at the outer edge of our range with two people aboard. So, while we both prefer to follow roads when crossing the desert, we headed straight for Blythe, leaving the road a handful of miles to the north. As a compromise, we climbed to altitude – all the way back up to 8,500’ for the third time – so as to be able to glide to the road in the event of engine trouble.
As the safety of the road drifted off to the north, the engine sounded a little rough to my ears. In aviation circles, this phenomenon is known as “auto-rough” and it is known to happen over deserts, mountain ranges, large bodies of water, and whenever there is a nervous passenger aboard.
There was nothing wrong with the Rotax.
Looking off into the distance, on both sides, we could see what appeared to be shimmering lakes, except that no such lakes appeared on the charts. On further inspection they turned out to be solar arrays: once the power plants of the future, now often the cheapest source of electrical power - and we'll need a lot of them.
Blythe lies just west of the Colorado River, which itself separates the Sonora and Colorado deserts. I had been to Blythe just once before in my life, in a rather odd stopover visit on a small-plane flight from Hesperia – a small town just north of the Los Angeles basin – to Fort Huachuca in southeast Arizona (and, coincidentally, not far from Tombstone). Indeed, as I thought about it, that trip had been the only previous time I had flown in this part of the country. It was during my grad school years, an undergraduate friend and I were trying to get to a flying competition in Fort Huachuca. Our departure had been delayed until late in the night, and we were trying to catch up to our teammates, who had gone ahead and had called to tell us they were staying at a motel in Blythe. We arrived in Blythe airport in the small hours of the morning – or maybe the not-so-small hours – and for a time were not sure we would be able to get out of the airport, which was closed for the night and was big enough to warrant security fencing. We did, called for a taxi from a nearby truck stop (in the days before mobile phones), and wound up hot-bunking at the motel, with our teammates’ early departure happening not that long after our late arrival. By mid-morning, we were in the air again, chasing our teammates again, next stop Gila Bend. The whole adventure is dimly remembered, now, but I do recall that the airplane our teammates were traveling in belonged to Leo!
Ideally, in 70L, we wanted to get to Thermal rather than Blythe, and Thermal would be at the outer edge of our range with two people aboard. So, while we both prefer to follow roads when crossing the desert, we headed straight for Blythe, leaving the road a handful of miles to the north. As a compromise, we climbed to altitude – all the way back up to 8,500’ for the third time – so as to be able to glide to the road in the event of engine trouble.
As the safety of the road drifted off to the north, the engine sounded a little rough to my ears. In aviation circles, this phenomenon is known as “auto-rough” and it is known to happen over deserts, mountain ranges, large bodies of water, and whenever there is a nervous passenger aboard.
There was nothing wrong with the Rotax.
Looking off into the distance, on both sides, we could see what appeared to be shimmering lakes, except that no such lakes appeared on the charts. On further inspection they turned out to be solar arrays: once the power plants of the future, now often the cheapest source of electrical power - and we'll need a lot of them.
Nearly there! The Colorado River marks the California border
The headwinds slowed gradually, to only about 20 mph, which was a significant improvement and meant we didn't have to stop at Blythe, which was just as well because as we overflew that city the airport was reporting gusty surface winds that would have made for a challenging arrival.
From the air, the layout of Blythe didn’t look familiar to me at all; I couldn’t even recall which side of the city the airport should be on. Either I didn’t remember, or I had never known.
We pressed on.
The Sonora and Colorado deserts are not pretty deserts, in my opinion. The color is pale tan, with grey rocks sticking out. There is no water and little or no greenery. When I first moved to California, I thought the deserts were supremely ugly. Over time, that opinion has changed: many places in the desert are very beautiful and – weirdly, for a place that at times seems to be actively intent on killing you – the desert can be very peaceful and tranquil and calming. But, with the possible exception of the area around Joshua Tree National Park, I have really never felt much drawn to these particular deserts, nor to the more famous Mohave desert farther north. They just seem, lifeless, hostile, and dull. And so I don’t have a lot to tell you about crossing the desert in 70L, except that we sat and we waited and we monitored engine gauges and kept an eye on the highway and felt better when it curved back in below the plane. We were not alone on our route, as it happened: two planes overtook us, both quite easily, both lower down.
There are places where speed is nice to have, and this is one of them.
We pressed on.
And, gradually, the chart began to speak of lower ground ahead, and the city of Palm Springs. Beyond it, was the huge, intimidating mass of Mt. San Jacinto. It is as if the Los Angeles basin had a defensive wall to prevent an invasion by a race of giants from the east.
We began our descent. Our destination airport, Thermal – now Cochran Regional Airport, named for famed aviator Jacqueline “Jackie” Cochran – is notable for being below sea level, so from 8,500’ above sea level we had some descending to do. On our arrival, we encountered moderately gusty 10-knot winds, so flew the approach a little fast. We noticed a business jet holding short of the runway on a crossing taxiway while we approached; we passed right in front of it a moment before touchdown. Touchdown was a bit fast and as I tapped the brakes the wheels skidded: the wings were still generating enough lift that there wasn’t much weight on them, so they could skid easily. Waiting a few moments solved that problem, but it was a lesson learned. I apologized to the airplane: burned feet can’t be fun.
Col. Jackie Cochrane was a racing pilot and, in 1953, was the first woman to break the sound barrier. During WWII she had been the head of the Women Airforce Service Pilots, a group of about 1,000 civilian women who ferried warplanes from factories to port cities for military deployment. For her leadership she received the Distinguished Service Medal, then the highest non-combat award given by the US Government. In 1948 she joined the US Air Force Reserve as a Lieutenant Colonel, which apparently made her the first woman pilot in the US Air Force. She was promoted to Colonel in 1969 before her retirement in 1970, having been awarded the Distinguished Flying Cross, not just once but three times! She was the first woman to land and take off from an aircraft carrier; the first woman to fly a bomber across the North Atlantic; and the first pilot (of any gender) to make a “blind” landing on instruments only. To this day, according to her Wikipedia bio, she holds more distance and speed records than any pilot, living or dead, male or female. Oh, and by the way – in case anyone isn’t feeling sufficiently inadequate yet – she was the founder of a successful and eponymous cosmetics company and was named Woman of the Year in Business by the Associated Press in 1954 (she sold the business in 1963). Today, somewhat unfairly, her name is less widely recognized than that other famous woman pilot, Amelia Earhart – perhaps because unlike Earhart, who died in 1937 with her navigator Fred Noonan on an ill-conceived flight into the Pacific, Cochran died at home in Indio, California, in bed.
Thermal, her local airport, was renamed in her honor in 2004.
Thermal is a big airport and it took a while to find the fuel pump - three attempts, in fact. It turns out that Thermal has a "big jets side" and a "small planes side,” and at one point as we taxied toward some promising-looking hangars we found ourselves nose-to-nose with a large business jet. It brought to mind that image I’ve seen circulating on the internet, where a kitten looks in a mirror and sees a lion looking back. I hoped 70L felt that way.
The jet’s pilot inquired, by radio, where we were going. It seemed like an odd sort of question. We told him to hold still for a minute and pulled over into a taxiway to let him pass. After he did, we felt 70L would probably appreciate it if we took a few moments to let the jet blast dissipate, before moving into the taxiway the big machine had recently occupied.
Later we understood his question: we were headed to the "big planes" side - although, in fairness, there are small planes there too.
As a result of our confusion, I drove 70L all over the airport, and discovered something I hadn’t noticed before: with its stiff-legged landing gear and directly-steered nosewheel, the airplane was very sure-footed in turns, and a lot of fun to drive around on the ground.
“Handles like a go-kart!” I shouted to Leo.
“Maybe let’s not try driving it like one,” he advised dryly.
In all Jackie Cochran’s adventures, I couldn’t help wondering, with all that air racing and military flying, with all those overpowered muscle-planes - did she ever fly in here in a fun little airplane like 70L?
It was hot on the ground at Thermal. There was shade, and it was a dry heat, but it was an exhausting heat. We downed a couple of bottles of water and stayed out of the sun.
A ridiculously powerful 100LL pump – apparently the whole muscle-plane thing might be a theme at this airport – refilled 70L’s tank and once again we headed west, once again taxiing for at least a mile to get to our departure runway. We were a little concerned about the reports of strong Santa Ana winds in the Los Angeles basin, and particularly concerned about the possibility of severe turbulence in Banning Pass, a ten-mile-wide gateway through the mountains that cuts all the way down from the 10,800’ Mt San Jacinto, to sea level. Strong winds and mountain passes are often a bad combination.
Cochran Regional to Santa Monica (KSMO) - 122 nm, 1.6 h
From the air, the layout of Blythe didn’t look familiar to me at all; I couldn’t even recall which side of the city the airport should be on. Either I didn’t remember, or I had never known.
We pressed on.
The Sonora and Colorado deserts are not pretty deserts, in my opinion. The color is pale tan, with grey rocks sticking out. There is no water and little or no greenery. When I first moved to California, I thought the deserts were supremely ugly. Over time, that opinion has changed: many places in the desert are very beautiful and – weirdly, for a place that at times seems to be actively intent on killing you – the desert can be very peaceful and tranquil and calming. But, with the possible exception of the area around Joshua Tree National Park, I have really never felt much drawn to these particular deserts, nor to the more famous Mohave desert farther north. They just seem, lifeless, hostile, and dull. And so I don’t have a lot to tell you about crossing the desert in 70L, except that we sat and we waited and we monitored engine gauges and kept an eye on the highway and felt better when it curved back in below the plane. We were not alone on our route, as it happened: two planes overtook us, both quite easily, both lower down.
There are places where speed is nice to have, and this is one of them.
We pressed on.
And, gradually, the chart began to speak of lower ground ahead, and the city of Palm Springs. Beyond it, was the huge, intimidating mass of Mt. San Jacinto. It is as if the Los Angeles basin had a defensive wall to prevent an invasion by a race of giants from the east.
We began our descent. Our destination airport, Thermal – now Cochran Regional Airport, named for famed aviator Jacqueline “Jackie” Cochran – is notable for being below sea level, so from 8,500’ above sea level we had some descending to do. On our arrival, we encountered moderately gusty 10-knot winds, so flew the approach a little fast. We noticed a business jet holding short of the runway on a crossing taxiway while we approached; we passed right in front of it a moment before touchdown. Touchdown was a bit fast and as I tapped the brakes the wheels skidded: the wings were still generating enough lift that there wasn’t much weight on them, so they could skid easily. Waiting a few moments solved that problem, but it was a lesson learned. I apologized to the airplane: burned feet can’t be fun.
Col. Jackie Cochrane was a racing pilot and, in 1953, was the first woman to break the sound barrier. During WWII she had been the head of the Women Airforce Service Pilots, a group of about 1,000 civilian women who ferried warplanes from factories to port cities for military deployment. For her leadership she received the Distinguished Service Medal, then the highest non-combat award given by the US Government. In 1948 she joined the US Air Force Reserve as a Lieutenant Colonel, which apparently made her the first woman pilot in the US Air Force. She was promoted to Colonel in 1969 before her retirement in 1970, having been awarded the Distinguished Flying Cross, not just once but three times! She was the first woman to land and take off from an aircraft carrier; the first woman to fly a bomber across the North Atlantic; and the first pilot (of any gender) to make a “blind” landing on instruments only. To this day, according to her Wikipedia bio, she holds more distance and speed records than any pilot, living or dead, male or female. Oh, and by the way – in case anyone isn’t feeling sufficiently inadequate yet – she was the founder of a successful and eponymous cosmetics company and was named Woman of the Year in Business by the Associated Press in 1954 (she sold the business in 1963). Today, somewhat unfairly, her name is less widely recognized than that other famous woman pilot, Amelia Earhart – perhaps because unlike Earhart, who died in 1937 with her navigator Fred Noonan on an ill-conceived flight into the Pacific, Cochran died at home in Indio, California, in bed.
Thermal, her local airport, was renamed in her honor in 2004.
Thermal is a big airport and it took a while to find the fuel pump - three attempts, in fact. It turns out that Thermal has a "big jets side" and a "small planes side,” and at one point as we taxied toward some promising-looking hangars we found ourselves nose-to-nose with a large business jet. It brought to mind that image I’ve seen circulating on the internet, where a kitten looks in a mirror and sees a lion looking back. I hoped 70L felt that way.
The jet’s pilot inquired, by radio, where we were going. It seemed like an odd sort of question. We told him to hold still for a minute and pulled over into a taxiway to let him pass. After he did, we felt 70L would probably appreciate it if we took a few moments to let the jet blast dissipate, before moving into the taxiway the big machine had recently occupied.
Later we understood his question: we were headed to the "big planes" side - although, in fairness, there are small planes there too.
As a result of our confusion, I drove 70L all over the airport, and discovered something I hadn’t noticed before: with its stiff-legged landing gear and directly-steered nosewheel, the airplane was very sure-footed in turns, and a lot of fun to drive around on the ground.
“Handles like a go-kart!” I shouted to Leo.
“Maybe let’s not try driving it like one,” he advised dryly.
In all Jackie Cochran’s adventures, I couldn’t help wondering, with all that air racing and military flying, with all those overpowered muscle-planes - did she ever fly in here in a fun little airplane like 70L?
It was hot on the ground at Thermal. There was shade, and it was a dry heat, but it was an exhausting heat. We downed a couple of bottles of water and stayed out of the sun.
A ridiculously powerful 100LL pump – apparently the whole muscle-plane thing might be a theme at this airport – refilled 70L’s tank and once again we headed west, once again taxiing for at least a mile to get to our departure runway. We were a little concerned about the reports of strong Santa Ana winds in the Los Angeles basin, and particularly concerned about the possibility of severe turbulence in Banning Pass, a ten-mile-wide gateway through the mountains that cuts all the way down from the 10,800’ Mt San Jacinto, to sea level. Strong winds and mountain passes are often a bad combination.
Cochran Regional to Santa Monica (KSMO) - 122 nm, 1.6 h
Approaching Banning Pass - more intimidating than it looks in the photo
We would find out when we got there in the meantime - CLEAR PROP! - we were off, on the last leg of the trip – and only the second leg that would land and take off in the same State – for the relatively short hop to Santa Monica.
Banning Pass, as it turned out, presented nothing more challenging than a sense of being very tiny, as its rock walls made even its ten-mile opening feel narrow.
Once through the pass, we were practically home. The Los Angeles basin was my aviation backyard for many years, although – astonishingly, as I thought about it – I had not flown there in nearly two decades. Swinging toward the north edge of the basin, up by the San Bernardino mountains to avoid the airspaces of the numerous airports in our path, we left our old hang gliding sites, Crestline and Mt Wilson, on our right; and El Monte Airport, where I had received my US pilot certificate, and retired my original Irish license, on our left. The Santa Ana winds pushed the hazy marine layer – a mixture of humidity and smog – out to sea, giving us an unusually clear view of the city.
We were in touch with Flight Following – a near-necessity in the basin, with all the traffic and airspace restrictions to contend with there – and following their routing request we received the nearest thing to a welcome banner the city has to offer pilots, as we got to do an up-close flypast of the Hollywood sign.
Because of the offshore wind, Santa Monica tower called for right traffic to runway 3, meaning we would fly past the airport, leaving it to our right, then come back in from the sea, to land toward the east. The tower called for winds between zero and 16 knots – a range of nearly half the minimum flying speed of the airplane. Leo, at the controls for this landing, flew a "hot" approach with no flaps, maintaining safe flying speed until we were all the way down to inches above the runway, where he held it, floating just off the ground, until it had slowed enough to land. It worked, perfectly.
We parked 70L right in front of the terminal and climbed out, a little stiffly.
And, just like that, we had done it – we had flown the Light Sport Airplane all the way across the country, Florida to California: 1,841 nautical miles, 2,119 statute miles, 3,410 km. We had spent 24+ hours in the air over the course of three days and a year. I had visited four states for the first time, bringing my total to 37; and Leo had visited his 50th state (in Grenada, MS). The headwinds had been stiff at times: still, according to Google Maps, had we driven it would have taken us 39 hours of driving time to cover the distance, or 14 hours - 56% - more travel time than in the plane.
There was no band waiting. We were just two guys in an airplane, on our own adventure, catching up after too long. We shook hands: it seemed like the thing to do. We took a couple of photographs with the plane and the terminal building in the background: in the pictures we look a little wind-blown, but pretty darned pleased with ourselves.
Banning Pass, as it turned out, presented nothing more challenging than a sense of being very tiny, as its rock walls made even its ten-mile opening feel narrow.
Once through the pass, we were practically home. The Los Angeles basin was my aviation backyard for many years, although – astonishingly, as I thought about it – I had not flown there in nearly two decades. Swinging toward the north edge of the basin, up by the San Bernardino mountains to avoid the airspaces of the numerous airports in our path, we left our old hang gliding sites, Crestline and Mt Wilson, on our right; and El Monte Airport, where I had received my US pilot certificate, and retired my original Irish license, on our left. The Santa Ana winds pushed the hazy marine layer – a mixture of humidity and smog – out to sea, giving us an unusually clear view of the city.
We were in touch with Flight Following – a near-necessity in the basin, with all the traffic and airspace restrictions to contend with there – and following their routing request we received the nearest thing to a welcome banner the city has to offer pilots, as we got to do an up-close flypast of the Hollywood sign.
Because of the offshore wind, Santa Monica tower called for right traffic to runway 3, meaning we would fly past the airport, leaving it to our right, then come back in from the sea, to land toward the east. The tower called for winds between zero and 16 knots – a range of nearly half the minimum flying speed of the airplane. Leo, at the controls for this landing, flew a "hot" approach with no flaps, maintaining safe flying speed until we were all the way down to inches above the runway, where he held it, floating just off the ground, until it had slowed enough to land. It worked, perfectly.
We parked 70L right in front of the terminal and climbed out, a little stiffly.
And, just like that, we had done it – we had flown the Light Sport Airplane all the way across the country, Florida to California: 1,841 nautical miles, 2,119 statute miles, 3,410 km. We had spent 24+ hours in the air over the course of three days and a year. I had visited four states for the first time, bringing my total to 37; and Leo had visited his 50th state (in Grenada, MS). The headwinds had been stiff at times: still, according to Google Maps, had we driven it would have taken us 39 hours of driving time to cover the distance, or 14 hours - 56% - more travel time than in the plane.
There was no band waiting. We were just two guys in an airplane, on our own adventure, catching up after too long. We shook hands: it seemed like the thing to do. We took a couple of photographs with the plane and the terminal building in the background: in the pictures we look a little wind-blown, but pretty darned pleased with ourselves.
Looking pretty darned pleased with ourselves
And then Leo had to run: if he moved fast, he still could catch the last flight from LAX back to Albuquerque and make it to work in the morning.
I walked around N770L one more time, to make sure everything was secure. When I bought the airplane, I had thought that having “double seven oh” in the registration was kinda cool, kinda tough, a touch of the Bond thing. But, in so many radio calls over the three-day trip, I had used the convention of abbreviating the aircraft’s registration to its last three characters: I would never refer to the S3 as double seven anything - she was “70L”. Which, I now realized, looked very much like “LOL” with a twist.
I patted the airplane on the wingtip, chuckling to myself. “We’re getting to know each other,” I said. “Now I know your name.”
I took out my phone to call Paula; it was time to go home.
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I walked around N770L one more time, to make sure everything was secure. When I bought the airplane, I had thought that having “double seven oh” in the registration was kinda cool, kinda tough, a touch of the Bond thing. But, in so many radio calls over the three-day trip, I had used the convention of abbreviating the aircraft’s registration to its last three characters: I would never refer to the S3 as double seven anything - she was “70L”. Which, I now realized, looked very much like “LOL” with a twist.
I patted the airplane on the wingtip, chuckling to myself. “We’re getting to know each other,” I said. “Now I know your name.”
I took out my phone to call Paula; it was time to go home.
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