Posted on 11/23/2007 1:37:11 PM PST by Hal1950
Letter to the FAA
Gentlemen:
I was asked to make a written statement concerning certain events that occurred yesterday.
First of all, I would like to thank that very nice FAA man who took my student pilot's license and told me I wouldn't need it any more. I guess that means that you're giving me my full-fledged pilot's license. You should watch that fellow though, after I told him all of this he seemed quite nervous and his hand was shaking. Anyway, here is what happened.
The weather had been kind of bad since last week, when I soloed. But on the day in question I was not about to let low ceilings and visibility, and a slight freezing drizzle, deter me from another exciting experience at the controls of an airplane. I was pretty proud of my accomplishment, and I had invited my neighbor to go with me since I planned to fly to a town about two hundred miles away where I knew of an excellent restaurant that served absolutely wonderful charcoaled steaks and the greatest martinis.
On the way to the airport my neighbor was a little concerned about the weather but I assured him once again about the steaks and martinis that we would soon be enjoying and he seemed much happier.
When we arrived at the airport the freezing drizzle had stopped, as I already knew from my ground school meteorology it would. There were only a few snow flakes. I checked the weather and I was assured that it was solid IFR. I was delighted. But when I talked to the local operator I found out that my regular airplane, a Piper J-4 Cub, was down for repairs. You could imagine my disappointment. Just then a friendly, intelligent line boy suggested that I take another airplane, which I immediately saw was very sleek and looked much easier to fly. I think that he called it a Aztec C, also made by Piper. I didn't have a tail wheel, but I didn't say anything because I was in a hurry. Oh yes, it had a spare engine for some reason.
We climbed in and I began looking for an ignition switch. Now, I don't want to get anyone in trouble, but it shouldn't be necessary to get the airplane manual just to find out how to start an airplane. That's rediculous. I never saw sow many dials and needles and knobs, handles and switches. As we both know, confidentially, they have simplified this in the J-4 Cub. I forgot to mention that I did file a flight plan, and those people were so nice. When I told them I was flying an Aztec they said it was all right to go direct via Victor-435, a local superhighway, all the way. These fellows deserve a lot credit. They told me a lot of other things too, but everybody has problems with red tape.
The take-off was one of my best and I carefully left the pattern just the way the book style says it should be done. The tower operator told me to contact Department Control Radar but that seemed kind of silly since I knew where I was going. There must have been some kind of emergency because, all of a sudden, a lot of airline pilots began yelling at the same time and made such a racket that I just turned off the radio.
You'd think that those professionals would be better trained. Anyway, I climbed up into a few little flat clouds, cumulus type, at three hundred feet, but Highway 435 was right under me and, since I knew it was straight east to the town where we were going to have drinks and dinner, I just went on up into the solid overcast. After all, it was snowing so hard by now that it was a waste of time to watch the ground. This was a bad thing to do, I realized. My neighbor undoubtedly wanted to see the scenery, especially the mountains all around us, but everybody has to be disappointed sometime and we pilots have to make the best of it, don't we?
It was pretty smooth flying and, except for the ice that seemed to be forming here and there, especially on the windshield, there wasn't much to see. I will say that I handled the controls quite easily for a pilot with only six hours. My computer and pencils fell out of my shirt pocket once in a while but these phenomenon sometime occur I am told. I don't expect you to believe this, but my pocket watch was standing straight up on its chain. That was pretty funny and asked my neighbor to look but he just kept staring ahead with sort of a glassy look in his eyes and I figured that he was afraid of height like all non-pilots are. By the way, something was wrong with the altimeter, it kept winding and unwinding all the time.
Finally, I decided we had flown about long enough to be where we were going, since I had worked it out on the computer. I am a whiz at that computer, but something must have gone wrong with it since when I came down to look for the airport there wasn't anything there except mountains. These weather people sure had been wrong, too. It was real marginal conditions with a ceiling of about one hundred feet. You just can't trust anybody in this business except yourself, right? Why, there were even thunderstorms going on with occasional bolt of lightning. I decided that my neighbor should see how beautiful it was and the way it seemed to turn that fog all yellow, but I guess he was asleep, having gotten over his fear of height, and I didn't want to wake him up. Anyway, just then an emergency occurred because the engine quit. It really didn't worry me since I had just read the manual and I knew right where the other ignition switch was. I just fired up the other engine and we kept right on going. This business of having two engines is really a safety factor. If one quits the other is right there ready to go. Maybe all airplanes should have two engines. You might look into this.
As pilot in command, I take my responsibilities very seriously. It was apparent that I would have to go down lower and keep a sharp eye in such bad weather. I was glad my neighbor was asleep because it was pretty dark under the clouds and if it hadn't been for the lightning flashes it would have been hard to navigate. Also, it was hard to read road signs through the ice on the windshield. Several cars ran off the road when we passed and you can sure see what they mean about flying being a lot safer than driving.
To make a long story short, I finally spotted an airport that I knew right away was pretty close to town and, since we were already late for cocktails and dinner, I decided to land there. It was an Air Force Base so I knew it had plenty of runway and I could already see a lot of colored lights flashing in the control tower so I knew that we were welcome. Somebody had told me that you could always talk to these military people on the international emergency frequency so I tried it but you wouldn't believe the language that I heard. These people ought to be straightened out by somebody and I would like to complain, as a taxpayer.
Evidently there were expecting somebody to come in and land because they kept talking about some damn stupid son-of-a-***** up in that fog. I wanted to be helpful so I landed on the ramp to be out of the way in case that other fellow needed the runway. A lot of people came running out waving at us. It was pretty evident that they had never seen an Aztec C before. One fellow, some General with a pretty nasty temper, was real mad about something. I tried to explain to him in a reasonable manner that I didn't think the tower operator should be swearing at that guy up there, but his face was so red that I think he must have a drinking problem.
Well, that's about all. I caught a bus back home because the weather really got bad, but my neighbor stayed at the hospital there. He can't make a statement yet because he's still not awake. Poor fellow, he must have the flu, or something. Let me know if you need anything else, and please send my new license airmail, special delivery.
Very, truly yours,
LP
This would be a good thread for someone to post the photo of the first all-female B52 crew smiling at the camera.
Anyway, he and another man were having a detailed discussion about what were the origins of problems on a certain aircraft. As this dialog went on, they did end up in the aircraft. At some point they came to a mutual agreement to take it up for a test hop and go around the pattern a few times etc.
I think it was sometime during the ground taxi after landing where they both came to the realization that neither one of them were licensed to fly, so they nonchalantly tied down the airplane, and sauntered off the airfield.
Joe was a precious man, a great mentor and leader. Joe had been all over the world as a tech rep for Lycoming (among other things) and therefore he had lots of exotic stories to romanticize and entice us with. He did restrict those stories to exotic eating, and I heard about balloout, and I found out that ‘dog is good till you find out what it is’ LOL.
And that was a fantastic team of Professors/Instructors they had back then. People like retired GE jet engine engineer Dick Canon, and Jose. Dick already knew of/about the Scram-Jet back in 1980, which he should have, given his background with GE, since the scram-jet was already being developed and tested on the X-15 Project.
It was my badge of honor (at least to me) that I was one of only two people to ace his semester exam (that year) on all the dynamics of airflow from subsonic into supersonic and back down into the subsonic again. And while I could do the math, it was not because I could do the math that I aced his exam. It was because I could visualize the concepts he presented all at one time.
While I like to fly (and I have not flown I guess for at least 12 years), I guess that is one reason general aviation never appealed to me enough to make it a dedicated hobby. The weather can change much quicker than predicted.
I heard too many stories from my buddies at work getting about trapped in the canyons/mountains of the west when I was out in the Bay area for 13 years. Those mountains and canyons have taken many a soul, including Steve Fosset.
I did have some fantastic teachers, A retired F-84 driver and a retired F-100 driver, who both taught me how to 'fly by the numbers'. And in my very first flights with them, we went into stall/spin recovery. I guess that is that not that unusual tho.
In 1992 here in Alaska I seriously considered flying, I logged only 7 hours when my regular instructor left and another was assigned to me, well she may have been blond but she used to fly in Alaska but had been living in Florida recently.
After our takeoff and our vector to what she thought was the pattern between Merril Field and nearby Elmendorf AFB is when things got interesting, I saw over my left shoulder and below as I was banking to the right what looked like a pair of darts coming after me, well apparently the pattern had changed and she did not know it and it really scared me to have what I think were a pair of F-16s passing by at a few hundred feet at full throttle. I never flew again, sold my com gear and gave up because of a bimbo instructer.
At the time we had F-4 Phantoms. They'd wake me up at 5:00 in the morning. I miss that.
Thanks for the ping, Aeronaut!
A must read thread.
Had John John Kennedy survived his last flight, he could have written most of that letter.
You beat me to it.
Thank you for the ping!
Don’t say “BUMP”!
This is a flying story!
Great story, reaffirms what I have always felt, that Navigator /bombadiers ought to have pilot training and a huge vice-versa. I hope in the days of GPS, that navigation, as the navigators of yore new it, does not disappear as a skill. One thing I never appreciated, was the name “dead reconing”. Something just didn’t sound right.
Whoops! Good point.
GPS has definitely taken some of the mystique and theory of the arcane out of the art and science of navigation. The Navy no longer teaches celestial navigation, for example.
However, since “Murphy” ALWAYS has at least N+1 failure modes, where N is the number of your systems and their backups; it has been my experience that aviators who are beyond being a “nugget” have developed a fairly solid set of deduced reckoning (dead reckoning or DR) skills out of the will to survive, if nothing else.
Time, distance, and heading are your friends; even if only tracked on a blank kneeboard card. And after using DR to take a KA-6D tanker with non-function navaids 1000 miles over the Indian Ocean, I have a deep appreciation for the decision to “turn on the lights” at Midway.
Even the most modern of systems are not fool proof. It is amazing how often really smart people attempt to code machines to divide by zero.
Every flight test plan I have been involved in had the testers insisting of a flight to the North Pole, South Pole, across the International Date Line, and through the Prime Meridian at the Equator. And every Program Manager immediately cancelled those test flights during program development as “too expensive.”
And every program went back and flew those test flights and incorporated some really expensive fixes after the aircraft was fielded.
LOL... Joe Schafer, now there’s a name I have not heard in a long time. You were fortunate to be taught by one of the Old Masters. Does Jeppesen still publish his books and are they in print?
You knew when you were in the presence of one of the elites of aeronautical engineering or aviation maintenance, and / or in the presence of one h&!! of a technical problem if the Chief or Maintenance Officer pulled out a dog eared copy of one of Joe’s books, particularly if it was a weight and balance, stability, or rotary wing aircraft problem.
As for my flight instructor, she definitely knew the limits of her experience because she was totally disoriented.
Regarding the limits of the aircraft; none that I have ever flown, including the trusty A-6, were really meant for ice accumulation or thunderstorm penetration. I have always depended upon my highly refined thunderstorm avoidance skills. It is just that it is easier to accomplish that if you know where you are and you believe (and know how to fly) your artificial horizon.
And if you have weather radar (which we did not), well, that is cheating...and “if you ain’t cheating you ain’t trying.”
The next day, same flight, another Delta captain did it again!
Years ago a Frontier pilot headed for Post Army Airfield at Ft. Sill landed at Lawton, OK, 10 miles south out of habit. Took off, flew to Ft Sill, never got busted.
I got into an argument with Kennedy Tower a few years ago. Was descending VFR for 24 Left, but it was nothing but a big black hole. Local controller insisted runway lights were on. Finally I asked her to bump the lights. Lights on 24 R flared. After I confirmed I was assigned 24 L and described problem, he supervisor took over.
She was on TV all the time as VP of PATCO!
Jimmy Carter frequently wants impress potential consulting clients that he is “arriving by private jet.” He drives past ATL to Peachtree, hops on a chartered Citation, flies 6 minutes to ATL, has the meeting at the FBO, then departs, saying that “really can’t tell anyone where he is going, very backdoor diplomacy, you know.” Flies 6 minutes back to Peachtree, drives home. What a phony.
>>>>Regarding the limits of the aircraft; none that I have ever flown, including the trusty A-6, were really meant for ice accumulation or thunderstorm penetration. I have always depended upon my highly refined thunderstorm avoidance skills.
The best safety device around really heavy WX is a runway and an hour in the airport restaurtant while it passes.
BTW, Bittygirl and I just built her first plane yesterday.
It was written by someone who can’t sing worth a paragraph.
Like watching the opera in your skivvies.
Nothing a good editor couldn’t have fixed, though.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.