A whisper from the past

I walked away from aviation when we moved onto Kintala. Something that, for most of my life as a pilot, I could never have imagined doing. (Aviation was, at least for my generation, more of an affliction than a career choice.) For the first several months I looked up whenever I heard a motor of some kind overhead, usually able to name the class of aircraft, and often the exact model, just from the sound. As the years of cruising passed, those looks up grew ever less frequent. Being a pilot was something I was once, a period of my life that had ended.

Life unfolded as it will, and we ended up back in St. Louis, me collecting shillings by working in a full flight simulator for one of the world's most sophisticated civilian jet—a simulator bolted solidly to Mother Earth. No medical was required and all the associated paperwork needed to gain permission to teach aviation once again was handled by the company. After a couple of years the idea of doing a little contract flying in the jet came up. With a First Class medical in my pocket, once again I did a couple of flights. It felt good to be back up in the Flight Levels, but it was also just part of the job. I am a better instructor for having flown the actual aircraft in its designed environment and, at the same time, a few more shillings got added to the bank account. But that is as far as it went. First Light had been acquired and real plans had started coming together for getting back on the water. Indeed, less than a month remains before I hand my flying "stuff" back to the company and head east for big water once again. Flying, simulated or actual, will not be a part of that life. Something that is of little consequence. I am far more concerned with the idea of being away from grand kids than I am with being away from the Sim and a little contract flying. 

But then one of the grand sons started talking about, maybe, getting a pilot's license to go along with his anticipated Coast Guard Captain's license. Grampy T is a pilot and a flight instructor; any chance an introduction ride in a light airplane could be arranged before we headed off again? 

And so it came to pass that I found myself sitting in the left seat of a two-seat Cessna 152 belonging to a local flight school. Next to me was one of their instructors who, I suspect, was not particularly pleased to find himself sharing a cockpit with a dinosaur lugging log books showing 12,000+ hours of flying time and holding a couple of  licenses festooned with multiple ratings. Old pilots have a well-earned reputation of being a bit cranky when it comes to taking flying advice from those half their age. There is no doubt I now fit that description. 

But I wasn't convinced all that time and all those ratings would matter much to the little Cessna. One thing this old pilot has learned is that no one is the ultimate expert in anything. Everyone has something to teach and, more importantly, everyone still has something to learn. More then a decade has passed since the last time I taxied a light, single-engine piston banger toward a runway with the intent of taking flight. Worse, I had not really thought about actually going flying this day. We were just out checking options. Absolutely none of the prep work involved in any kind of flying, even just a short hop for fun, had been done. I had nary a chart with me and I had to ask for the proper radio channels to get the current weather as well as taxi and tower clearances. As we went through the pre-flight procedures I was as clear as I could be with my instructor.  I was beyond rusty. He could not hurt my feelings or make me mad in any way, and that I expected some honest criticism about my performance as I expected to deserve it. He relaxed a bit after that and off we went.

As we started moving out of the parking spot, it was suggested that I do the run-up on the ramp before calling for taxi clearance to the active runway. Run-up? That's right, magnetos, carb heat, gyro headings, suction, engine oil pressure and temperature; all need to be checked and/or set before attempting flight. We don't do run-ups in the jet. It doesn't have magnetos, carb heat, or suction. The gyros align themselves via GPS satellite signals before the engines are even started. And all of those engine parameters are monitored continuously by a multitude of computers on a continuous basis, said computers sending a visual and/or aural warning message to the pilots if something goes awry. 

I also needed some additional information on proper speeds for lift-off, climb, and cruise. The numbers I got were ridiculously low to my jet-a-fied ears. Lift off at 50 knots, climb at 60? At 50 knots I can't even get the jet's nose wheel off the ground. (If I happen to be following a SouthWest 737 down the taxiway, we are likely going near that fast just getting to the runway.) The jet's auto-brake function for an emergency abort doesn't even arm until 60. Then I asked for the proper flap setting for departure, sparking an odd look from my instructor. The little Cessna doesn't use flaps for departure...something I once knew many, many moons ago, but had forgotten.

I managed to find the end of the runway without being embarrassed, though it was odd to feel the little airplane shudder and sway in the light wind. Once cleared for departure I pushed the tiny (and only!) throttle knob toward the instrument panel and watched the airspeed slowly build. The jet stores a bit more than 7,000 pounds of thrust in each engine. The little Cessna has all of 110 ponies in its single stable. Acceleration in the jet will push you back in the seat and spill any unattended drinks. The Cessna? My grand kids accelerate faster on their scooters. Eventually the airspeed indicator showed the required number and I attempted to leave Mother Earth, finding the control force needed to lift the tiny nose wheel clear of the ground far higher than that needed on the side stick of a full fly-by-wire 38,000 pound jet. I pulled a little harder and...Yee-Haw! Skyward! Just a second or so later I even remembered that the yaw forces involved with levitating little airplanes are controlled with one's feet pushing on the appropriate rudder peddle. A task that remains throughout all regimes of flight. The jet, once airborne? Put your feet on the floor as they will not be needed until landing, unless one needs to walk to the head or to get some fresh coffee. 

We flew south for a little while and did all of those things pilots do in a new-to-them (or long forgotten) airplane. The rust started to flake away as the little airplane showed me steep turns, aerodynamic stalls both power on and power off, and a simulated engine failure / power off approach to a suitable farmer's field. This is not something we practice at the job. If both engines fail in the jet, one is having a very bad day. Setting it down in some farmer's field without doing considerable damage to both the jet and the farmer's crops is unlikely. We do fail both engines in the simulator at 5,000 feet or so after takeoff, simulating a massive bird strike reminiscent of Captain Sully and First Officer Skiles' splash down in the Hudson River. In the Sim, gliding back to a runway is the challenge. Landing in a corn field? Not. All of those maneuvers seemed to go well and I am pretty sure the grin on my face gave away how much fun I was having. Ah, but then it was time to return to the airport and put this little soap-box derby of an airplane back on the ground.

Approach and landing speed were as ridiculously low as those for departure and flight. The visual picture in the traffic pattern was odd. Not only has it been more than a decade since I flew a single engine airplane, this one has the wing on the top, and I was not sitting in the pointy end. Every way I looked had airplane parts in the picture. Check list complete, we turned final and I started searching for the ground.

The first landing was nothing to write home about. I am not used to sitting that close to the tarmac and misjudged the height in the flare by a fair amount. Not enough to have the instructor next to me grab the yoke, but I saw his hand twitch. The second landing went better. And the third? That was the one I was looking for. The little airplane rewarded my efforts with the stall warning horn whispering in my ear just as the mains rolled onto the tarmac. (Stall warning horn? The jet says "LOW SPEED - LOW SPEED" in a scolding female voice and, if one doesn't reduce the pitch attitude, the jet will do it for you regardless of what you do with the stick.)

With two "Okay" landings and one squeaker under my belt, we called it good and taxied back to the ramp. My young instructor allowed as I could take grand kids for a flight without putting them at risk. Back home I logged a "Single Engine" flight for the first time in more than ten years. It is hours later and I am still smiling at flying that little Cessna. I guess there is still some "pilot" lurking in me after all.

Legacy 550 from Embraer, the plane Tj instructs in