Chapter Fourteen
February 4, 1958. It was probably an ordinary day for most people. But not for me. That was the day I decided, after years of loving airplanes, that I would learn to fly.
I asked around among our neighbors, friends, and acquaintances and I found a flight instructor, a local crop spray pilot, who said he would be happy to teach me, charging a grand total of six dollars an hour for both the instructor and plane, a Piper PA-11. On the off hours, when he wasn’t in the air, he spent a lot of time sitting in the local bar, maybe waiting for potential pilots to call him. I scrambled to keep my lesson appointments in the morning, before the alcohol had a chance to kick in and he had settled comfortably into his bar stool. Once in a while, before a lesson, I would get a call from him, asking me to pick him up from the bar. As a fledgling pilot not able to depend on my instructor’s judgment, those lessons were tainted with terror.
The airstrip where he taught was extremely narrow, flanked on one side by a fence and rough ground on the other. It ribboned across gently rolling land that made both takeoffs and landings way more difficult than they should have been. When preparing for a landing, my goal was to reach the ground and the stalling speed of 40 mph at the same time, without running out of runway, trying to control the plane’s movements as it careened up and down, left and right, clockwise and counter clockwise. Corrections had to be made immediately but with a slow purpose. I fought the tendency to overreact, an elusive goal especially with an instructor who had just spent several hours tossing down a few. The second the plane touched the ground, the instructor opened the throttle for another one of my uncontrolled takeoffs, ready or not. I was thrilled and scared to death, all at the same time.
My day to solo came unexpectedly on March 6. By now I had been practicing takeoffs, climbs, glides, and landings for a grand total of three flying hours. I was having a hard time making smooth landings, my confidence at an all-time low. Just about the time I got close enough to the ground to land, a crosswind would blow me off the airstrip. Once I finally succeeded in getting close, I would hit one of the runway’s high spots, at a speed that was too fast to handle so that when I landed into a low spot, the plane slammed down. Hard.
If my instructor wasn’t thrilled with one of my maneuvers, he’d grab his leather gloves, slapping me hard in the back of my head as he yelled, “Come on. You can do better than that.”
Because of a strong crosswind during one of my lessons, he decided to have me land in a large open field instead of the airstrip. That way, I could land into the wind, making things a little easier. And it did. But the second we landed, he asked me to bring the plane to a stop. He got out.
He turned and looked me in the eye. “Go around and land all by yourself. You haven’t had complete control of a landing yet and your bad crosswind experience will make you lose too much confidence if you don’t solo now.”
Confidence? What confidence? I haven’t had any yet.
“Now listen to me,” he added. “If your landing doesn’t look right, watch for me because I’ll wave at you to go around again for another try.” And he walked away.
I sat in the plane at the end of the field, feeling more alone than I’ve ever felt in my life. I sat there a long time before I dared to open the throttle and attempt what I thought was suicide. Although it was a cold day, sweat was running down my neck as I finally pushed the throttle forward, the cockpit ripe with the smell of fear. Once I reached about halfway to take-off speed, the plane turned to the left and, no matter what I did, I couldn’t get it straightened out again. But before I knew it, I was in the air, flying solo.
Because the back seat of the plane was now empty, the instructor being notably absent, the balance was off, further complicating a landing already headed for disaster. As I turned the trim crank to raise the nose, I noticed that the tail was getting lighter and lighter. Almost paralyzed with fear, I couldn’t think straight and, for some reason, I did the opposite of what I was supposed to do. I cranked the nose down even though it was too far down already. Miraculously, that seemed to balance out the plane.
My concentration was so focused on avoiding death that I forgot to watch where I was going. When I felt comfortable enough, I looked down at the ground to regain my position. Nothing looked familiar. Not one thing. I had misplaced the entire landing field.
The beads of sweat on my forehead slid over my glasses. I was lost. I looked frantically for something, anything on the ground that I could recognize, like maybe an instructor standing in a field. Nothing. I didn’t even know for sure how far I had flown or in what direction.
Finally. I spotted him, way off to my left and started breathing again. I wasn’t aware I could hold my breath that long without passing out.
Being in the air by myself, the only choice I had was to land the plane. As I lined the nose up with the field, I noticed a high-power electrical line across one end. Directly in my path. My entire body tensed, cringing and sweating, as the plane barely skimmed the wire. I succeeded in dropping the plane to the ground, a rough landing that shook my teeth. But at least I was still in one piece.
After several deep breaths and a puddle of sweat at my feet, I taxied over to pick up my instructor.
Then wham. It hit me. I was supposed to be watching him to see if he waved me around again. I had not looked at him even once. But it really didn’t matter because I was absolutely certain I was not going around again. Not under any circumstances.
He was cold to the bone and asked me where on earth I had gone. I told him about my problem. He looked a little sheepish as he informed me, a little late, that he had fixed the trim tab crank, mistakenly installing it backwards.
The next lesson wasn’t any easier and I was bound and determined to become a pilot. When I arrived at the field, my instructor barked, “You are going to solo again.”
This time the airspeed indicator was not working so before I took off, my instructor told me two things, “When you glide in for your landing and you notice a lot of wind noise, you know you are going too fast. If you notice that it is very quiet, you are going too slow. Be careful not to stall the plane.”
Now, in case you don’t know, a stall occurs when an airplane can’t produce enough lift to stay in the air. So the plane begins to fall and, as it does, the airspeed is regained and the plane will correct itself and come out of the stall. Unfortunately, if the plane is too close to the ground when the stall occurs, there may not be enough time or altitude to recover. When that happens, the airplane crashes.
Like any beginning pilot, I panicked at the mere thought of going into a stall so, as I came in to make my landing, I kept the speed way up until I got close to the ground. As I leveled off, I realized I was going way too fast to land the plane. Opening up the throttle, I went around again. This time I slowed down a little and succeeded in making a landing.
As I taxied over to my instructor, he had a funny look on his face. “Oben. Oben. Oben. On your first try, you were diving like a P-51 fighter with no possible way that you would ever stall out. I was a little concerned, though, that the wings might fold back from all the speed.”
By now I was a veteran pilot with a total of four hours flying time in my log book. Regulations specify that students must be capable pilots and have at least twenty hours of instruction before they are allowed to solo a plane. But who is around to check on little details like that when you are way out in the country?
Six years later, I bought my very own plane, a two-seater side-by-side Cessna 140. It had sat in a field, unused for several years, so I simply tightened the spark plugs, taped up the fabric, and proceeded to work towards getting my private pilot’s license.
I did some work on one side of a field fairly close to our house, turning it into my airstrip, using the gravel road as my runway. In the meantime I kept my plane in a hangar at the Grand Forks Airport. The day I planned to fly it home, both family and friends came to celebrate the event. Waiting anxiously, the hum of an engine finally sounded above them. As the plane grew closer, they could see it was the silver Cessna they had been told to watch for.
My plane maneuvered a few gracious circles in the sky, causing favorable cheers from the receptive onlookers. I’ve always had a flair for the dramatic and I certainly wasn’t going to miss my chance. Totally without warning, the plane paused its flight and started towards the earth, nose first. Everyone watched. Horrified.
In a few moments, the plane came out of the spin. It made a circle and flew close to the ground, passing close enough to where everyone was standing that they could see one of my neighbors, a professional pilot, seated firmly at the controls alongside me.
Jan wouldn’t speak to me for a week.
Other than every one of my flight lessons, I did have one close call with my airplane.
It was a balmy summer evening. Jan, our pastor, and I decided to spend some time flying, checking out the countryside. I flew over a couple of friends’ homes, dipping the wings of the plane as a greeting. Then I turned the plane and proceeded to fly over a nearby dam, looking down to see if we could recognize anyone who was fishing and swimming.
I was flying directly into the sun and it was almost impossible to see against the glare of the light. We were about 150 feet above the water when I focused my attention ahead of the plane. All I could see were power lines, big and heavy, about the size of my wrist, directly in the path of the airplane.
My heart hammered all the way up into my head as I pushed in the throttle and pulled back on the yoke as hard as I could. A loud noise shuddered through the cockpit. As I looked back, all I could see was the top wire bouncing up and down. Hard.
Taking several deep breaths, everything appeared to be normal so we headed back for home. When I was landing, I held the wheel, located directly under the nose of the plane, off the ground as long as possible, just in case it had been damaged when it hit the wire.
I taxied from the grassy airstrip into our yard and carefully looked the plane over. It was then I saw that the paint on the nose gear faring had been scraped away, one inch below its point. If the plane had hit the wire a mere inch lower, the wire would have gone over the faring, catching the nose gear, flipping the plane over, more than likely plunging all of us into the water.
It was a close call I would never forget.
Today, the windsock I had erected at the end of my grassy runway is a little worse for wear, a little ragged around the edges, but it continues to blow in the breeze and gauge the wind’s direction. I consider it a monument, a memento of some of my happiest days in the air.
I had fulfilled one of my lifelong dreams. I was a pilot.
