Solo Page 3

  TO REMEMBER THAT “THROTTLE CONTROLS ALTITUDE; NOSE CONTROLS AIRSPEED”

  Instinct tells you to raise the nose if you want to climb, and to put in the power if you want to go faster. Mr. Vaughn’s above rule of thumb broke through instinct. In order to climb, simply add a little power and the aircraft takes care of the rest. To go faster, just drop the nose a bit and the aircraft takes care of the rest. Thinking in his terms simplified some finer points of piloting.

  TO NAVIGATE FROM POINT A TO POINT B

  TO UNDERSTAND THE WEATHER CHARTS AND WRITTEN FORECASTS THAT COME TO THE AIRPORT HOURLY

  It was another language—little figures and circles and designs.

  TO TALK ON THE RADIO

  I learned what to say, when.

  TO MAKE A LEVEL TURN, A DESCENDING TURN, A CLIMBING TURN, A STEEP BANKED TURN

  TO PERFORM SIMPLE AEROBATICS, LIKE A LAZY EIGHT

  “Okay now. A lazy eight just draws an eight out there on the horizon with the nose of the airplane. Like this.” Mr. Vaughn added power and started a climbing left turn. As if the nose of the aircraft were a giant piece of crayon, he painted a horizontal figure eight along the horizon line far out in front of us. In the middle of the figure our wings were perpendicular to the ground. It was thrilling.

  TO RECOVER FROM A STALL

  As I said earlier, a stall occurs when the airplane, because of insufficient airflow under and over the wings, refuses to fly and starts to fall. The condition of the engine is not necessarily related to a stall. In other words, the engine generally keeps working just fine during a stall.

  Picture a paper airplane you’ve just thrown. It swoops straight ahead and then climbs. But suddenly at the top of its upward turn, it stops and the nose drops. This brief stop is the moment of stall. The paper airplane does not have the power to continue its course, so the nose drops and points toward the ground, and the airplane heads in that direction (or else it spirals or spins toward the ground). Let’s back up to that moment of stall. What has been keeping the paper airplane climbing is the speed of the air over the wings, coming from the force of your throw. That throw has caused the wind to push from below the wings and keep the aircraft up in the air, just as your hand stuck out the window of a fast-moving car is pushed upward as long as you keep the same correct angle and the car keeps its speed. When the speed of our paper airplane is low enough, that upward wind push stops. Weight overcomes lift. The moment of stall occurs. The heavy nose falls first (if you’ve attached a paper clip to it, making it relatively heavy).

  It’s all clear and fine when you’re talking about how it works with a paper airplane, but now sit in the left seat of the Cherokee 140 (normally the seat of the pilot or the student) with me while Mr. Vaughn, in the right seat (the copilot or instructor’s seat), takes me through my first stall and stall recovery.

  “We’ll do a power-off stall first,” he says.

  We are flying straight and level. He pulls out the throttle knob to idle and we start slowing down, but to keep the nose up he gradually pulls back on the yoke as our speed decreases. (The single throttle was located between us, but we each had a yoke and a set of rudder pedals.) “We’ll just let it slow down, but we’re going to maintain our altitude as long as we can,” he says. Soon we are down to about forty-five miles per hour and the stall-warning horn sounds (sort of like a teakettle), and immediately the airplane starts shuddering and shaking like a car going over a series of potholes. This is a little unnerving.

  “There are your stall-warning signs,” he says. Mr. Vaughn has pulled the yoke back to his stomach and is kind of wrestling with it to keep the nose of the airplane up and the wings level. Suddenly—with the yoke still back—the left wing drops, and then the nose drops as if a rope holding it from above has been cut. We head almost nose-first toward the ground. I now get the idea. Mr. Vaughn releases all that back pressure on the yoke as he thrusts the throttle knob in to 100 percent power, and we pick up speed quickly. Then he pulls the yoke toward him so that the nose comes right back up to level. “There we go,” he says. “We caught it, recovered, and didn’t lose but about two hundred feet,” he says. “Now you try it.”

  I practiced power-off stalls several times, awkardly, recovering with as little loss of altitude as possible, and then we tried power-on stalls. With a power-on stall, the aircraft enters a climb that is steeper than the engine can maintain. (Imagine starting up a mountain road that is too steep for your car engine.) The airplane climbs with the engine at 100 percent power. Speed drops, and at about forty-five miles per hour the stall warning sound comes on and the aircraft shudders. The nose is trying to drop, and I have the yoke back as far as it will go, trying to hold the nose up. Suddenly a wing falls and then the nose drops as if somehow released. You’re in a stall but your engine is already at 100 percent, so you can’t bring that in to help you recover; you must use rudder and ailerons to get the wings horizontal to the ground, and as you reach about fifty-five miles per hour with the nose pointed downward, you can smoothly but briskly pull the nose right back up to the horizon again. You’ve recovered and in the process lost minimum altitude.

  A stall is a clumsy state of affairs—you momentarily lose control of the aircraft—and Mr. Vaughn was so precise and safety-conscious that his participation in a stall and recovery seemed incongruous. Nevertheless, we practiced and recovered from many power-on stalls, power-off stalls, and turning stalls.

  All kinds of things can go wrong just after the moment of stall, depending on what the pilot is doing with the flight controls (yoke, rudder pedals, and throttle). The pilot may, for example, instinctively pull back on the yoke to keep the nose up, when the nose should be allowed to fall or should even be pushed over so that speed will increase. And in general, the closer to the ground a stall occurs, the more dangerous it is.

  Mr. Vaughn and I practiced stalls at high altitudes, of course. We’d name an altitude that we would pretend was ground level. Let’s say we chose five thousand feet. We’d pretend we’d just taken off from the ground and then at fifty-five hundred we’d stall our aircraft and attempt to recover from the stall while remaining above five thousand feet.

  ON THE DAY I thought I might fly my initial solo flight (usually planned after about nine hours in the air), we took off and stayed in the traffic pattern—the pattern that airplanes fly for orderly landing. We made several touch-and-go landings (as soon as the wheels are firmly on the runway, full power is applied for a normal takeoff).

  Then Mr. Vaughn said, “Make the next landing a full stop.”

  After the next landing, I taxied off the runway and to the flight building.

  “Okay,” said Mr. Vaughn, “I’m getting out of the aircraft, and you take it up for a couple of touch-and-gos and then a full stop. Say ‘initial solo’ on all your radio calls”—sniff, sniff—“right after your call sign.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  I sat alone as he walked away, and then I took a deep breath. “Ground, this is Cherokee Six Seven Two Sierra, initial solo, taxi for takeoff.” The empty space beside me seemed as big as the Arctic, as silent as snow.

  I took off, entered the traffic pattern. On downwind, I looked at a parking lot far below. Sun glinted off a tiny automobile. My mind held panic at arm’s length. I knew my procedures, but the runway looked so narrow. I knew that if the approach didn’t feel right, I could execute a go-around, which meant leveling off, adding power, and coming around to land again. As I turned to final approach for the first landing, everything seemed normal. “Throttle controls altitude; nose controls airspeed,” Mr. Vaughn’s mantra, ran through my head. The Cherokee was doing its job. I’d learned that, left alone, it could fly pretty well by itself. I just needed to make the right adjustments: Add a little left rudder and aileron, a bit of power, pick up the left wing a bit, back off on the power. Airspeed is hot; back off the power some more—no, just lift the nose and wait. Things are looking good. Drop the nose a bit; it feels good. Now flare, hold it off, hold it
off. The sudden uurkurk of the main wheels touching, the rattling of the empty airframe, the urk of the nose wheel. Down. Add power for takeoff.

  I put the little airplane down twice more, then taxied in, all by myself, relieved and happy.

  Mr. Vaughn was waiting for me in the flight building with a pair of scissors. I pulled out my shirt and he cut off my shirttail, wrote my name and the date on it, and hung it on the wall beside shirttails of those who’d recently gone before me.

  I walked out into the sunlight and pumped my fists above my head.

  Cross-Country

  AFTER TWENTY HOURS IN THE AIR, it was time for me to plan and fly a cross-country trip all on my own. The trip was to Wilson, North Carolina, then over to a small airfield near Fayetteville, and then back home to Raleigh-Durham. I drew a line for the route on a map and marked mile ticks (short dashes) and minute ticks out from the line. The mile ticks, labled, were on one side of the route line, and the minute ticks on the other. Since I was cruising at around one hundred miles an hour and thus over a mile a minute, the minute ticks were farther apart along the route than the mile ticks.

  I took off, flew to Wilson, landed, and took off again, having determined that at about eight minutes after my last checkpoint on this leg of the flight I would see the little airport near Fayetteville. What I didn’t know was that I’d confused the minutes and miles written on my flight-planning card, a card that summarized the information written on my map. It wasn’t eight minutes after that last checkpoint that I’d arrive; it was eight miles—and five minutes.

  At about two miles short of my airport (I thought), I started looking, not realizing that it was a mile or so behind me.

  I got on my radio and called the airport to let them know I’d be landing shortly.

  Nobody answered. So far, no air-to-ground radio call of mine had gone unanswered.

  And when I thought the airport should be directly under me, I could see no airport anywhere. I looked at my map and then back out at the ground. Nothing matched up. I was sweating. I looked from ground to map. There on my map was a racetrack. I looked all about the earth beneath me for a racetrack. None. I searched on the ground out in front of me, looking for anything that resembled an airport. Perhaps I wasn’t there yet . . . but . . . okay, okay. I saw a runway—three runways, and . . . I pulled my power back to set up a glide. Thank goodness. Now, Mr. Vaughn had warned me that to the west of the Fayetteville airport was Fort Bragg Army base, but . . . wait . . . were those . . . army tanks? Yes! And big guns!

  I turned east, added power, started climbing, then called the little airport again.

  Someone answered!

  “Yes, Cherokee Four Four Seven Charlie,” said the voice. “Our airport’s at eleven miles from the Fayetteville VOR—that’s channel one two two—on the one-eight-seven-degree radial.”

  “Roger,” I said.

  Of course. That’s how I should have been looking for the little airport once I got lost. I tuned in the Fayetteville VOR. An instrument on the panel in front of me would tell me exactly how far and in which direction I was from any station I could pick up. Okay. Okay. Okay. All I had to do was . . .

  “Cherokee Four Four Seven Charlie, what’s your location?”

  “This is Cherokee Four Four Seven Charlie. I’m south of the Fayetteville VOR at, uh, twenty-three miles.”

  “Roger, Cherokee. Travel inbound toward the station on a heading of about three zero zero degrees, intercept the one-eight-seven-degree radial, head inbound, and at eleven miles out, we’ll be under your nose. Give me a call when we’re in sight.”

  “Roger.”

  I was relieved. The miles ticked down on the instrument that was saving my life. Twenty, nineteen, eighteen. At twelve miles I looked frantically below the nose. Yes, there it was, just ahead!

  “Fayetteville,” I said into my radio, “this is Cherokee Four Four Seven Charlie. I have your runway in sight and I’m landing. Numbers, please.”

  “Roger, Cherokee. Landing runway zero niner. Winds zero eight zero at ten. No reported traffic in the area.” (The designation 09 refers to the direction the runway is pointed—in this case, east: 090 is east, 180 is south, 270 is west, and 360 is north.)

  Before-landing check. Okay. Complete. No rush. Mr. Vaughn said to fly over the airport to get my bearings before landing.

  I looked at each end of the runway below. There was a big 18 on one end and a big 36 on the other. Was I crazy? Was the world coming to an end? There was no runway 09 down there!

  “Fayetteville, this is Cherokee Four Seven, uh, Four Four Seven, and I’m—I’m above your airport and I don’t see a runway zero niner. I see one eight and three six and . . .”

  Then I saw a wide field that crossed the asphalt runway in the middle at a ninety-degree angle. Of course. Runway 09 is a turf runway. They can’t write numbers on it. I’m okay! Damn, if I just hadn’t—

  “Roger,” the radio said, “Cherokee Four Four Seven Charlie, we—”

  “Never mind, sir, I—”

  “—have two runways. One is asphalt; one is turf. You will be landing on the turf runway to the east.”

  I’d never landed on a turf runway. No problem.

  I flew the traffic pattern, forgetting that I was landing at a field three hundred feet lower than my home field. I was so high on my first approach that I had to go around. On my second try I landed, taxied in, and finished my after-landing checklist.

  When I walked into the flight building, the man behind the counter with the little radio set beside him said, “So, you’re Cherokee Four Four Seven Charlie.”

  “Yessir,” I said. “I couldn’t get you on the radio for a while.”

  “Your instructor called and said you’d be on the way. I had to go outside and I guess I missed your first call.”

  I hadn’t known that radios at small airports often go unattended. “Yessir. I need to look at my map and flight plans for a minute. I got lost somehow.”

  “Happens to the best of us. Probably be a good idea to call your instructor and let him know you’ll be a bit late on the trip back.”

  “Good idea.” I was still flustered. This man was so kind—he didn’t say anything about the runway mix-up.

  I called Mr. Vaughn. He asked no questions when I told him I’d be a little late getting back. It was as if he already knew.

  I sat down, studied my plans, and discovered that I’d confused miles and minutes. I’ve never confused miles and minutes since. And I never will.

  I’d thoroughly embarrassed myself in front of the radio operator, so I decided that my takeoff would be impeccable. Surely after all this, he’d be watching.

  The preflight checklist for the inside of the airplane is divided into two sections: “Before Taxi” and “Before Takeoff.” On the before-takeoff checklist there is an item that says, “Trim: Takeoff Position.”

  A word about trim. Imagine you’re on the Nevada salt flats in an automobile. You turn the steering wheel to the left. You release it and it straightens up by itself. Now suppose you want the automobile to stay in a turn for twenty minutes. Without a trim device you’d just hold the steering wheel in the turn position, exerting pressure on the wheel in order to keep the car turning—and you’d gettired. A trim device (a small wheel or a small movable button, like the one that moves a rearview mirror on a car door) can be set to the right setting, and bingo, the steering wheel will stay where it is (turning the car) without any pressure, whether you’re holding it or not. When you pull back on the yoke (or stick), the airplane will start to climb, but you’ll have to hold the yoke back to keep the airplane climbing; otherwise, if you turn it loose, the yoke goes back to a neutral position and the nose drops.

  If you have a trim wheel, then you can position it to hold the yoke where it is while you climb, and the hands-off position of the yoke will keep the airplane nose up and the airplane climbing without your having to hold the yoke back. That’s what trim is all about. It’s an aid. Once you want to le
vel off, you’ll change the trim back to where it was. Most pilots trim often so that little if any pressure on the yoke or stick is needed for long.

  Now, before beginning your takeoff roll, you set the trim so that only a slight pull back on the yoke is necessary to get you off the ground at the correct airspeed. As you gain speed after takeoff, you may have to change the trim a bit, but basically with takeoff trim established you don’t have to worry about exerting strong back pressure on the yoke as you lift off the runway.

  On this day, on my first solo cross-country trip, I forgot to set my trim to the takeoff position (a potentially dangerous mistake). And it had last been set in a very nose-high position for landing.

  I wanted this to be the smoothest takeoff I’d ever made. Mine was the only plane taxiing out, and I knew Mr. Radio Man was watching me. I looked through my before-takeoff checklist, missing the trim item, and announced on the radio that I was taking off. At airports with no tower, you always look to be sure no one is landing or is on the runway, announce that you’re taking off, and go.

  I started my takeoff roll. Liftoff is normally at about fifty-five miles an hour. At thirty-five miles an hour, the nose wanted to lift off the ground, but I held it down. I was puzzled. At liftoff I released forward pressure on the yoke, and the nose pitched up at a dangerously high angle. I firmly pushed the nose back to almost level flight.

  Mr. Radio Man would have seen my airplane charging down the runway for takeoff, but instead of smoothly flying off the runway, the plane lurched up into the air with the nose far too high, and then the nose suddenly pitched down to a level flight attitude. Awkward at best. Deathly at worst. Funny in between.

  Further humiliated, I realized my mistake and trimmed the aircraft. Never since have I forgotten to set takeoff trim. Those cheap mistakes have a way of burning themselves into your brain—seat belt, miles and minutes, takeoff trim.

  I landed safely at home, completed my after-landing check, and walked into the flight building. It was late afternoon and I wasn’t sure Mr. Vaughn would still be there. He was. Sitting at our table, waiting. No smile, no frown, no nothing.