Learning to Fly Pt. II

Rabbit #1: “So – do you like this new piece of wood sticking out of my head?”

Rabbit #2: “Uh oh. Crawford is flying again. I’ll start packing… ”

Ah yes – the joys of flying ultralight aircraft. Wind in your face. Bugs in your teeth. Bits of propeller flying off in all directions. Such is the life of a flying instructor in these marvelous aircraft.

Ultralights, in the early 80’s, were a big thing in aviation. They were/are tons of fun, relatively safe (this statement is usually accompanied by a large asterisk), and I used to fly them a lot.

Since you weren’t allowed to call it a “joyride”, what we did was call it an Introductory Flight Lesson. We would hop into the plane with a prospective customer, fire up the engine, and take off into the wild blue yonder.

Due to the underpowered nature of these aircraft, takeoff would occur mainly due to curvature of the earth rather than aerodynamic forces.

On one of these flights I turned over the control stick to my prospective student – a young man keen on learning to fly. We were bird-like as we happily putted along in what appeared to be a motorized lawn chair.

Upon reaching our cruising altitude and before meal or beverage service could commence, a fairly large piece of the wooden propeller rudely decided to make its own travel arrangements, and departed the aircraft without my express, written permission.

Now, when something is spinning rapidly and it suddenly becomes unbalanced, a certain violent vibration sets in, which causes the remaining components of the spinning object to flounder. Owners of ceiling fans usually become experienced with this phenomenon when a child jumps on a bed and carelessly destroys the fixture by thrusting their head or arm into it, for example.

The vibration in our case was imparted from the propeller to the engine, which was situated just over my head. Being seated beneath a large, heavy, explosive steel object violently shaking from side to side, tearing itself from its mounting bolts, can be disconcerting.

As an experienced flying instructor reacting to an in-flight emergency, I uttered an exclamation (“Goodness gracious!” were my exact words I believe) and immediately took back control of the aircraft from my ‘student’ by breaking his terror-frozen fingers one at a time in order to remove them from the stick.

Throttling back, knowing we would not be able to return to our scheduled point of departure, I began looking around for a place to execute a non-airport landing, or ‘crash’ as we pilots call it. This was not easy since I was busy going through my emergency landing checklist, which mainly consisted of shrieking like a school girl.

I quickly briefed my passenger on emergency procedures. “Did you sign the waiver back there?” I yelled. “Yes!” he replied. “Good!” I said. “Prepare for landing!”

I may also have shouted “We’re gonna crash!” “Goodbye cruel world!” “I can see my house from here!” and other words to that effect.

The landing/crashing experience taught me that travelling in the same direction as the deep, ploughed furrows in a field would make a non-scheduled landing there much more comfortable. I’ll try to remember that next time.

As we rumbled along through the tall grain and across the furrows, my student shouted with joy “We made it!” “We’re not finished crashing yet!” I cried. “Drop the anchor!” Seconds later we stopped.

The silence which follows a successful crash landing is wonderful, and a feeling of joy permeated the air. An unfortunate smell also permeated the air and it wasn’t just leaking gasoline.

Following our landing, in true ‘Right Stuff’ fashion, I just trotted back to the airfield, got a new propeller and some other parts, replaced what needed replacing, and took off back to the airport from the dirt road we had almost reached during our ‘landing.’

My student did not avail himself of this return flight, despite my entreaties about it being safe. As I departed, I recall seeing him walking funny towards a farm building.

Pity – I was going to refund his lesson money. Go figure.

Learning to Fly Pt. 1

Having learned to fly at a young age (4), I am always baffled when I meet someone who is afraid to get into an aluminum tube of imminent fiery death. People who have a phobia about flying are what we pilots sensitively call ‘chickens’.

One way for scaredy-cats to get over their fear of flying is to actually learn how to fly. “Get onto the horse that is about to violently buck you off!” we say. Here’s how to do that.

First, get young, coordinated, thin, fit and rich. Learning to fly costs quite a large amount of money so if you are not independently wealthy or have not recently struck oil on your property, your best bet would be to become a brain surgeon. Go ahead – I’ll wait.

Um de dum…

OK so now you’ve got lots of money. Good. Hand it all over to a Flying School which you’ll find at any airport, ‘airport’ being defined as ‘That place where you go to stand in line and have your toothpaste confiscated and x-rays taken of your privates on your way to Disneyland.’

What a flying school will do, after taking all of your money and buying cases of scotch, is take you flying in one of their training aircraft to see if they like you. There are a number of different small airplanes out there, with comical names like MessieSchlitz, Winnebago, Sopwith, Fakker, Caterpillar, Piston, Pipper, Spad and Clunk.

Today you’ll probably get into what is known as a Thunderbolt, or ‘Cessna’. The first thing you’ll notice about this or any airplane is the dizzying array of knobs, gauges, buttons, boeings, twittles, spigots and flings that are on the dashboard. Pay no attention to these since most of them will be marked with little signs saying “Damaged in last crash” or some such. Only airline pilots actually use them anyway so for now just focus on the fact that there is a goofy steering wheel and two brake pedals.

These pedals are awesome in that they are used to steer and they are both brakes! Can you imagine how cool it would be to drive a car that had these? You could drive with no hands and still steer – what an excellent way to terrify the children!

Anyway, with your instructor, get into a seat and let him or her grope you into your seat belts, of which there are about 19. Not that you’re going to need them when you crash or anything. Their purpose, like helmets on skydivers, is to humour insurance agents who will be watching your every move from here on. There may even be one lurking in the back seat, trying to visually check your cholesterol level. Pay no attention.

So the instructor will push a few things and pull the gas handle thingy and start the noisy motor up front, called the impeller as I recall, and off you’ll go, plowing into all the parked airplanes because the gas pedal stuck and didn’t you know Cessna is made by Toyota?

Actually, you’ll be wearing comically huge headphones at this point and the instructor will tell you how to plug your nose and blow up your ears to unplug your crustacean tubes so that as you climb your eardrums won’t burst, messing up their comically huge headphones. Something like that. It’s like scuba diving only going the other way.

So now you’re racing down the runway until you magically lift into the air and experience a wonderful sensation which we pilots call ‘barfing’, which is completely normal.

Once you recover, you’ll notice you are headed straight for the tall trees at the end of the runway but don’t panic! We’ll cover what to do about that in the next exciting episode of Crawford’s Crashes, wherein I’ll explain exactly how a propeller once flew off the airplane I was piloting, and, coincidentally, why pilots always carry a spare set of clean underwear with them when aviating.

Until then, this concludes Part One. Please rewind before returning to storage case.

Flying Fun

The weight shift model I learned on...

The Fighter Plane version I played with a lot...

Many years ago, in a land far, far away, I used to fly these things (the pictures are not of me or my aircraft btw).

It was on the western fringes of Edmonton, AB and since I had no money, I would trade shop help for flying time. I actually got to the point where I was teaching people how to fly them.

It was a time filled with joy, wonder, wind in the face, bugs in the teeth, and occasional events which turned my bowels to water. Such is flying.

I was telling my kids the other day about how, when I was still learning in the weight shift models (top photo), I happened upon a duck.

He was flying along ahead of me, and slowly, slowly, I was gaining on him. Understand that the early weight shift models were very under-powered (a 15 hp Yamaha engine as I recall). It took forever to get airborne, and I suspect it was only the curvature of the earth that caused it to leave the runway. The great fear among us pilots was experiencing bird strikes from the rear - a very real possibility.

Anyway, you steered it by (surprise!) shifting your weight left, right, forward or back. This shifting behaviour mainly resulted in you plummeting from the skies, shrieking.

So there I was, approaching the duck, like I was passing him slowly on the highway. As I gradually pulled along side, his look was priceless. He couldn't quite figure out what this big thing was, and he was a little upset that it was passing him. Typical guy in traffic really. He kept glancing over at me as if to say "Hey! This is my turf up here you inelegant oaf! Buzz off!"

So I moved over and chewed him up with my propeller.

I didn't really do that - I was a Sky Warrior at that point, guiding my Sopwith Camel towards my home aerodrome. I saluted him chivalrously and slowly pulled away.

In another posting I'll tell you how we used to race snow mobiles in winter in these things, and how we regularly bombed rabbits and coyotes with water balloons. Yes, that unique fur coat with the fur collar? See how the fur is standing straight up? That's from me.

I can also expand on the time I was flying and part of the wooden propeller fell off, prompting a quick response, successful emergency landing, and change of undies.

Until then...

Learning to Fly

I am working on a series of columns about airplanes and learning to fly. Here is a sample...

So now you’re ready to fly. Turn on the ignition and pull the rope and lets get going! The big noisy thing up front will start to turn, so drive out to the runway and just go!

As you see yourself leaving the ground for the first time, you will experience a strange sensation. This sensation is called “Barfing” and is completely normal.

Once the heaves settle down, or you experience ‘emptiness’ as we pilots call it, you will notice that you are headed straight for the big trees of the end of the runway. Pull back on the stick, try to stop shrieking for just a moment, and show your student how the controls work together in harmony, side by side on the piano keyboard, oh lord why can't we? Nevermind.

Now we can see how all the buildings and farms really are the size of ants. If you have done some careful planning, you will notice the ant-like people down there really jump when the water balloon you dropped near them explodes in a great, big splash! This is lots of fun to do, if technically illegal, so limit your bombs to friendly neighbours who won’t fink to the police on you. Or fly so high they can't see who it is.

I learned to fly when I was much younger, back when I had time, money, thinness, hair, muscles and coordination. I grew up with a flying father who even owned an airplane for a while. It was great – we’d fly into remote fishing strips and denude the rivers of small inhabitants, then spend the next 4 days cutting brush and trees from the end of the runway so we could take off again without getting too many branches stuck in our wheels. We would usually just tell Mom about the fish.

When flying, Dad would bellow something vital about seat belts or engine fires or whatever from the pilot’s seat up front from time to time. I could never hear these commands since the wax in my crustacean tubes was making me deaf and brain-swollen, so I’d just merrily sit in the back seat, undoing screws or bolts on the aircraft, completely oblivious as to what was going on around me. Kind of like being at work come to think of it.

Now before you can become a pilot you have got to learn The Principles of Flight. These are, in no particular order: loft, drag, flops, gravity, thrust, parry, waddle, rudder and smoke.

Incidentally, Waddle, Rudder and Smoke is where my lawyer works.

To be continued...