waits with his camera beside the runway. I plan for a dozen landings unless he waves me in sooner.
The landings are fun. I come in high and slip the plane some, do some wheel landings, some full stall, really work at flying the Queen. Like a fine horse, she responds to every twitch of the controls, absolutely obedient, seemingly trying to please the man with the reins. This quality is what made the Stearman such a fine trainer.
If only I were better at it. But I guess if competence came too easily it wouldn’t be worth much.
Here we come on base leg, intentionally high and five miles-per-hour fast, carrying a smidgen too much power. Wind off the left side, with maybe five knots crosswind component. On final, still high and fast, I crank in a ton of right rudder and apply left stick. She comes down like a brick in the slip.
Now! Straighten her out, little right rudder for the crosswind, power just so, glide angle okay … coming down nicely …begin the flare by reducing power and pulling the stick back while the rudder is adjusted and more left aileron is applied. Correct for the burbling air and shifting wind, increase the backstick, watch the nose … and she touches down slightly tail first. The mains fall a good six inches. Darn!
I let her slow while working the rudder to hold her straight.
“He wasn’t waving,” David tells me, so I smoothly advance the throttle and mixture and lift the tail. 50 … 60 … 65, and we’re off to do it again!
I like flying. I like getting up early in the morning and looking out the window at the sky, the feeling of the breeze on my face as I preflight the airplane, the look and smell and feel of the airplane. I like anticipating the flight to come and imagining how it will be. I like thinking about it afterward. I like everything about flying.
The next morning we fly south from Topeka through a sunny sky dotted with scattered puffy clouds. As soon as David takes over the controls he tells me, “The airspeed’s a hundred miles an hour.”
“We’re in an updraft. The aircraft is actually descending in a column of rising air, so it goes faster. We’ll be out of it in a bit.”
We soon are. Now we enter a downdraft. Our airspeed decays and we start a descent. I tell David to pull back more on the stick. He does and our airspeed falls to 80. A little thermal activity has a big effect on your airspeed when you don’t have much to play with.
David tells me from the front cockpit, “This is the only way to travel.” This comment draws a wide grin from his old man. The boy feels the magic too.
He is following the highway. And today he is using the rudder to keep the plane in balanced flight. We talked about it last night and today he is working at it. I sit in the back cockpit studying the sectional. Hmm, Yates Center has a grass field southwest of town.
“You wanta land at a grass field?” I ask my chauffeur.
“Sure.” He is agreeable to most of my suggestions, so I try to reciprocate by being agreeable when he advances his. We get along very well, I think, for father and teenage son.
He has no brothers but he has two teenage sisters, both older. Lara is eighteen and Rachael nineteen. They include him in most of their activities, so in many ways David seems older than he is. He knows what’s cool and what isn’t—he avoids what isn’t like a Pentecostal avoiding sin.
Lara paid him the ultimate compliment one day in my presence while talking to a boy her own age who wanted to take her somewhere. Lara wanted David to go along. I didn’t hear what her male friend said to that, but I heard Lara’s reply: “My brother is the coolest guy I know.”
I have high hopes that the three of them will remain close friends all their lives. I won’t have a say, of course, but like all parents I have hopes. And like all parents I worry about each of them too much. They will grow up and do just fine as they find their own way in life. I know this and fret anyway.
I am still
The landings are fun. I come in high and slip the plane some, do some wheel landings, some full stall, really work at flying the Queen. Like a fine horse, she responds to every twitch of the controls, absolutely obedient, seemingly trying to please the man with the reins. This quality is what made the Stearman such a fine trainer.
If only I were better at it. But I guess if competence came too easily it wouldn’t be worth much.
Here we come on base leg, intentionally high and five miles-per-hour fast, carrying a smidgen too much power. Wind off the left side, with maybe five knots crosswind component. On final, still high and fast, I crank in a ton of right rudder and apply left stick. She comes down like a brick in the slip.
Now! Straighten her out, little right rudder for the crosswind, power just so, glide angle okay … coming down nicely …begin the flare by reducing power and pulling the stick back while the rudder is adjusted and more left aileron is applied. Correct for the burbling air and shifting wind, increase the backstick, watch the nose … and she touches down slightly tail first. The mains fall a good six inches. Darn!
I let her slow while working the rudder to hold her straight.
“He wasn’t waving,” David tells me, so I smoothly advance the throttle and mixture and lift the tail. 50 … 60 … 65, and we’re off to do it again!
I like flying. I like getting up early in the morning and looking out the window at the sky, the feeling of the breeze on my face as I preflight the airplane, the look and smell and feel of the airplane. I like anticipating the flight to come and imagining how it will be. I like thinking about it afterward. I like everything about flying.
The next morning we fly south from Topeka through a sunny sky dotted with scattered puffy clouds. As soon as David takes over the controls he tells me, “The airspeed’s a hundred miles an hour.”
“We’re in an updraft. The aircraft is actually descending in a column of rising air, so it goes faster. We’ll be out of it in a bit.”
We soon are. Now we enter a downdraft. Our airspeed decays and we start a descent. I tell David to pull back more on the stick. He does and our airspeed falls to 80. A little thermal activity has a big effect on your airspeed when you don’t have much to play with.
David tells me from the front cockpit, “This is the only way to travel.” This comment draws a wide grin from his old man. The boy feels the magic too.
He is following the highway. And today he is using the rudder to keep the plane in balanced flight. We talked about it last night and today he is working at it. I sit in the back cockpit studying the sectional. Hmm, Yates Center has a grass field southwest of town.
“You wanta land at a grass field?” I ask my chauffeur.
“Sure.” He is agreeable to most of my suggestions, so I try to reciprocate by being agreeable when he advances his. We get along very well, I think, for father and teenage son.
He has no brothers but he has two teenage sisters, both older. Lara is eighteen and Rachael nineteen. They include him in most of their activities, so in many ways David seems older than he is. He knows what’s cool and what isn’t—he avoids what isn’t like a Pentecostal avoiding sin.
Lara paid him the ultimate compliment one day in my presence while talking to a boy her own age who wanted to take her somewhere. Lara wanted David to go along. I didn’t hear what her male friend said to that, but I heard Lara’s reply: “My brother is the coolest guy I know.”
I have high hopes that the three of them will remain close friends all their lives. I won’t have a say, of course, but like all parents I have hopes. And like all parents I worry about each of them too much. They will grow up and do just fine as they find their own way in life. I know this and fret anyway.
I am still
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