The High of Flight
It's difficult to describe the thrill of flying at the controls of a small plane. I make that qualification about pilots because there are some veteran airline jockeys who are probably bored out of their minds, at least most of the time. Indeed, my aviation guru lady — lady should probably come first — describes flying as hours of boredom punctuated by moments of terror. Audrey means the take-offs and landings. But she doesn't mean it about the boredom part. That girl, who claims to have taught Orville and Wilbur how to fly, would be happy to be in flight most of her waking hours.
Late Tuesday afternoon, I returned from a flight to Marin to pick up a box of videotapes of my newly-completed and now dubbed television program on child-rearing. It would have been much less costly to have FedEx do the lifting, but it was a reason to get into a plane and loosen the rust flakes from my wings. I asked Audrey if she wanted to go with me, and normally — were this not the Christmas season — she would have said yes, but she said no, and told me to file a flight plan. I was going to anyway.
It was my first IFR flight plan. It said I would take-off and fly to Gnoss Field in Novato according to a particular itinerary of direction, speed, and altitude, and use GPS to find my way to the airport. That's what I'd studied and tested for, to get my Instrument Flight Rating; even though the weather was fine for VFR (Visual Flight Rules) if I went down the valley. But I'd done all of that work so I could fly direct, and so I booked the Piper Cherokee Archer with the Garmin 430 GPS and had my videographer-pal Richard deliver the tapes to the airport.
I did feel rusty, and particularly because I've only logged a half-dozen trips, mostly local, in the Piper. It's a low-wing aircraft, a little faster, and with a different configuration of switches and dials. I also fly it better than I do the high-wing Skyhawks, even though I'd spent the vast bulk of my limited hours in them. Audrey said I was made for low-wing, and she should know.
I pulled the Piper out of the hangar, pre-flighted, and secured my clearance from the control tower of the municipal airport. When I took off, it was knowing everything was fine, but not being entirely sure that I had remembered everything that wasn't critical, even though I'd gone over the check list. Climbing to 9,000 feet, I cleared the eastern peaks in the coastal range, already snow-capped, on a nearly due south track. To the west, a huge dark cloud bank stretched from out of sight to the north behind me down into the valleys, and obscuring the mountains toward the coast. My path looked clear — indeed, I only went through a corner of a cloud before I broke into partially scattered clouds.
The afternoon sun shot through here and there and then doused the deliciously-lime green valley in luscious brilliance, but the forecast and the growing clouds foretold more rain. I made a clean approach to Novato, closed my flight plan on final approach, and brought the Piper in smoothly. In ten minutes, I had picked up the tapes and was back at the controls.
The 24-knot tailwind that had poured me south at 140 knots now was going to hold me up, perhaps to after dark. I had never flown the Piper at night; I hadn't flown at night for going on two years. I flew slightly easterly, pushing the time that I would clear the hills and could fly behind them up the valley. From a 85-knot ground speed at 7,500 feet, I managed to duck beneath the brunt of it at 4,500 feet, where the GPS said I was tearing along at 100 knots. I was also sideslipping in a significant crosswind that had me crabbing ten degrees to the west.
It could have taken hours longer than the one-forty-five, and the trip would still have been grand. The sun was setting, and the pyrotechnical dance with the clouds created colors probably not seen but from the air. Good thing I was alone up there, and could spend the time looking out the window. Comfortably, once I calculated that I would be landing fifteen minutes before the ink fell on the page. As it turned out, I made a well-turned, reasonably-gentle landing a half-hour after dusk. The runway lights were on, and useful, but I didn't need them. I taxied to the hangar, retrieved my car from inside, and maneuvered the Piper back into its shelter.
There are simpler challenges in the world than pushing a 1500 pound aircraft into a tight area with a crowbar, especially for someone who at 51 still finds parallel parking a challenge. Look left, think right, or something vice versa. Driving home, not a long time later — I got the plane in on the third try — I could imagine sitting in a lawn chair across from the hangar, studying the geometry with a drink in hand, and associates with whom to discuss the matter.
And as I drove home, I thought, what a really neat thang, to have flown this afternoon, three months to the day after that craven insult to flight, to life, to the appreciation of what is possible. I felt pride of my heritage, to be a citizen of a great nation that has pioneered so much. Not only flight, but women pilots. It's exhilarating to imagine what more is possible.
And that's SetonnoteS...I'm Tony Seton.
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