Posted Sun Jul 10 19:47:20 PDT 2022
This morning dawned, like most of them on this trip, rather too early for complete comfort. My brother David and I had made a plan: we would go flying this morning, to give him the experience of flying in an open cockpit plane.
David is in the midst of the surprisingly long process of writing a novel with historical aviation elements, and I've been proud to act as one of his advisers on aviation matters. It's a cool book, full of adventure and excitement and really wild things, set in an alternate-history 1929, where WWI was stopped by invading aliens from Venus, who invaded, and took over the Earth.
His main character, is a young teen girl living on a fictional channel island in the English Channel. She is the daughter of a famous WWI/Globulon Invasion hero who she never really knew, but he left behind his airplane. Of course, such technology is completely forbidden under Glob rule, so they keep it hidden until, of course again, it must come out for an urgent mission, and she's the only one who can fly it.
So, he wanted to experience some of the things that our young hero would be experiencing on her flying adventures, including dogfighting with the Globulons, and carrying accidental passengers. We've been talking about these things for years, but the chance to experience it directly was far too good to pass up. He's the whole reason I decided to fly home via LA instead of on a more direct route.
So, we planned to meet at 7:30, to try to get up before the air gets rough with the sun's heat on all that pavement. We got ourselves out to the airport, and had a longish discussion in the lobby about what exactly he wanted to get out of the flight, what I thought he needed to know, both as a normal passenger, and as an author of a book featuring a historical aircraft with some similarities to this biplane. Then we went out to the plane, and he filmed my preflight inspsection with me talking through everything I was doing. The engine needed more oil, so we had to walk to a couple FBOs to find some. Getting David situated in the front cockpit (which is relatively tight to get into and out of) took a while. In all, we didn't actually start the motor until 10:30.
One of the downsides of the way this plane is set up is that the front cockpit gets a lot of air through it, which rumbles powerfully against the headset, making it very hard to hear anything without leaning down into the still air behind the windshield. It also means that the passenger's microphone is subject to a lot of noise, and for some reason, every radio call includes the sound from both mics. This means that radio calls include not only my relatively quiet mic, but also the huge rumble from the passenger's mic, unless I switch off the intercom.
So I had David do the same thing my instructor Scott had done, and just pull out the microphone cable when he wasn't talking. There really needs to be a push-to-talk switch in the front cockpit.
Communication difficulties aside, we were in the air pretty quickly. I realized as we were climbing out that I'd completely failed to hand him the airsick bags I'd promised. We were planning on pulling some Gs to demonstrate what his main character might have faced in her anti-Globulon adventures. I mentioned this, and (with David ducking down into the calm behind the windscreen) just had him promise to tell me if his stomach started to turn.
We climbed up to 3500 feet, and went into the Santa Fe practice area, where I got the plane all leveled out, and flying straight. Then I handed him the controls, and took my hands and feet away from the stick and pedals. After a momentary overcontrol, his control inputs were frankly nearly perfect for flying straight and level. When I tried to do that in John Smutny's Eagle in 2008 or so, I overcontrolled the thing so badly that it was like the plane was being piloted by a drunk person.
I told him to try gentle turns, which also went well. Then on to steeper turns. I was amazed at how well he did. I spent my time keeping an eye on other planes in the area, and making sure we didn't wander into any controlled airspace, as we were talking to the practice area frequency.
Then, we switched off, and I demonstrated very steep turns (actually pulling the plane into the beginning of a stall in the first one -- not a dangerous situation since we were so high up, but an excellent reminder that, aerobatically capable though a plane like this is, it's far from proof against mistakes). Then, since he wanted to feel high G, we dove down to about 130 MPH, and I pulled up at about 3G. That was enough to get his stomach gurgling, so I pulled back to very calm level flight, and we headed back to the airport.
The landing was uneventful, though a touch bouncy. We taxied back to the same tiedown spot where I'd left the plane the previous night, and shut down. He clambered out of the cockpit, which requires a bit of contortion, and we recorded 0.8 hours of flight time together again.
It was a cool start to the day, and the rest of the day we basically just hung out, talking about whatever came up. It's been a long time since I've gotten to just hang out with my brother, and it was a most excellent way to spend a day.
For tomorrow, it looks like (weather permitting) I'll be departing early and heading to the Bay Area, which is closer than I had remembered. It should be just a day of flying, and that day of flying should be more comfortable: I ordered one of those pillows with a tailbone cutout, and it seemed to work well for today's flight. Only time will tell, but anything is better than what I was dealing with before.
It's exciting to be in this phase of the trip: I've flown these routes before, so I know what to expect. I'll be visiting old friends and new. I'm much more on my home turf. I'm interested to see how much of my stress and anxiety feelings have evaporated now that I'm past all the stuff that's completely new to me.
Of course, there are still 860 nm to go between LA and Seattle, and some of that trip will be new. There's still plenty of challenge to go, but at least I'm feeling more calm about the whole thing.
As happened in Little Rock, having a day of rest has been really excellent for making me feel more like myself, and less frantic and rushed. Getting to hang out with more friendly people is another highlight. In many ways this visit is too short, but then the purpose of the trip is really to get the plane safely to Seattle, so I feel some urgency to press on with that.
Now to look up the weather, plan out my flight, and get myself to bed.
Copyright © 2022 by Ian Johnston.