Learn to Fly

One Pilot's Tale of Flight Training

Everything you need to head skyward

BY THOMAS SIMMONS

The Intro Flight

February 27, 1990: I'm standing next to a four-seat, single-engine airplane, Piper Warrior N2150F, at Shoreline Aviation in Marshfield, Massachusetts. Though I keep trying to listen to Larry Schramm, Shoreline's chief pilot, as he explains our preflight inspection of 2150F (which he calls "Five-zero Foxtrot"), I'm really caught up in my own thoughts. I hate to fly. For some reason, after hearing about the 1989 crash-landing of United 232 in Sioux City, Iowa, in which 112 people died, I panicked at the thought of having to fly at all.

Obviously, I don't really know why I'm here. Maybe it's because my father was a flight instructor in the Navy during World War II. Maybe it's because I feel lost because I'm afraid of losing my job, of just generally screwing up. Maybe it's because I already know a little about airplanes; I coaxed myself into taking an intro lesson 12 years ago in California in a Cessna 152. That was an awful flight — bumpy, loud, and uncomfortable. But what I learned in that hour about altimeters and climbs and turns and rudders and ailerons has stayed intriguingly in mind through all these years.

Larry's completed the preflight while I've been appearing to pay attention. Now he motions me into the airplane. After running through a check list, he starts the engine, we taxi out to the runway, announce our departure, and take off. My God! The ground! What's it doing down there? Looking away from the window, I keep my eyes glued to the instruments until, after about three minutes, Larry gently says, "Hey — why don't you take a look outside?" When I do, I see something amazing: Cape Cod Bay, dark and quiet on this cloudy day, and Duxbury Harbor and the spit of land 20 miles east where Provincetown nestles behind the high dunes. It's astonishingly beautiful. For a couple of minutes, I even forget that I feel airsick.

Ground School

Several flight schools in my area, including Shoreline, offer a private pilot package with a ground school thrown in, but I'm too chicken to sign up. After all, I have no intention of ever becoming a pilot. Still, I know that if I were to go for flight training, I'd have to have the private pilot written exam out of the way. What to do? Because my usual rule of thumb is "when in doubt, do it on your own," I go for a video ground school series. John and Martha King's videos have the flashiest ads in the various flying magazines I read, but there's also something folksy and familiar in their approach. Because I'm no scientist, I want some ordinary Jane or Joe to come out of the woodwork and talk to me about flying — not some astrophysicist with three Ph.D.s trailing a contrail of technical jargon.

So I order the King series. Late at night, after the kids are asleep and I can put my other work aside, I turn on John and Martha King and open their study guide. By the end of the course, I do know something about basic aerodynamics, airspace classifications, and aircraft weight-and-balance calculations. I've also learned to plan a cross-country course with a map, a compass, and a stopwatch (as well as with radios, including VORs and ADFs, although I've never actually used these yet). At the start of the King course, I didn't seriously plan to take the Federal Aviation Administration written exam. But I do take it a couple of weeks after finishing the course -- and I pass.

Smooth as Glass and Beautiful

I putter along for almost a year, taking a lesson now and then, feeling airsick, stopping for three or four months, finding myself drawn back to Shoreline and its airplanes. Whenever I return, I feel that old surge of fascination with the air, with airplanes, with their instruments. Then, after seven or eight tenths of an hour in the air, I'm confused again. Why does the throttle have more to do with lift than with airspeed? Why does pitch have more to do with airspeed than with lift? I can't even make a 360-degree turn without gaining or losing 300 (or more) feet; flying with me is like flying with a roller-coaster demon.

Then, on January 3, 1991, I go up with Steve Grable, a flight instructor who's about to take a job as first officer for American Eagle. It's a beautiful, calm, brilliantly sunny winter day. Everything seems to be in slow motion, or maybe it's just Steve's manner: There's no urgency. For a while, we swing back and forth over Duxbury Harbor, practicing straight-and-level flight. Then, after I ask about the VOR navigation radio, Steve gives me a quick lesson: We tune in the Providence station, turn to the heading shown on the VOR, and fly that way for a while. Finally, turning east again, we climb to 5,500 feet over Cape Cod Bay to get a good look at Nantucket Island, 40 miles away.

Steve teases me a little: "You have to get used to the idea that learning to fly is the most useless thing in the world," he says. This from a man who's about to become first officer for a major airline. Still, his strange comment somehow takes the pressure off, and as I look out over the Cape to Provincetown and the Atlantic, I realize this is something I want to do.

First Landings

After Steve leaves, I sign on with Donnie Whittle, a CFII/MEI (a certified flight instructor capable of teaching instrument and multiengine flight) who's between airline jobs. Donnie pretty quickly figures out that what I lack is faith: I simply can't believe I'm going to land an airplane. Whenever we go up, I get the airplane to within 50 feet of the runway and then fixate on the threshold. Either I forget to pull up on the yoke, putting us perilously close to a propeller-first landing, or I pull up too soon, and without quite touching the runway, we're suddenly nose high with almost no airspeed.

Donnie is incredibly patient. "Fly the plane all the way to the runway," he keeps saying. "You get almost to the runway, then you stop flying. Fly it all the way to the runway." Like a kind of mantra, his words begin to make their way through my unconfident brain. As I keep going through the routine of the airport traffic pattern — downwind leg, base leg, final — I also learn the routine of preparing the airplane for landing — throttle back, fuel pump on, flaps on, trim. I begin to feel what I haven't felt before: The airplane can be controlled all the way to the runway. I don't have to just drop it onto the asphalt and hope everything turns out okay.

I still do a lot of dropping and bouncing. But one day, hovering over the runway, drifting a little left and right, pumping the rudder pedals, easing back on the yoke, I slip down a couple of feet onto the asphalt and realize that Donnie's hands and feet were just resting on the dual controls. "That one was all yours," he says as we take off again.

First Supervised Solo

Donnie's a popular instructor, and my work and child-care schedules make it hard for me to fly except on weekends. This means that the only time I can go up with Donnie is between 6:30 and 8 on Saturday or Sunday morning. Arggh — I'm a night owl. Standing by the coffee machine, sipping hot caffeine, he and I stare at each other. "Hell of a time to fly," I say. "Ugh," says Donnie.

But after our usual seven words to each other, we're ready to work. We go up and down, up and down, slowing down, adding flaps, descending, getting a sense of how the runway should look all the way through the approach. I'm beginning to dream about the runway at different altitudes — 800 feet, 500 feet, 300, 50.

At 7:25 a.m. on April 13, 1991, four months and 8.3 hours after I first really committed myself to flying, Donnie climbs out of the cockpit of Warrior 44949. My left leg is shaking almost uncontrollably, and the radio's making quiet crashing noises — "Swoonk, pop, brink, brink, brink, brink." When a rabbit leaps onto the center of the taxiway and just sits there, staring at me, I wonder whether he's trying to tell me something. He's not the kind of traffic I was expecting. Finally, after he moves, I pull onto the runway; it's incredibly easy just to sit there. "Don't sit!" a small voice in the back of my head says to me. "Go!"

Somewhere in the middle of the downwind leg, pulling the throttle back to 1,500 rpm, trying to remember what to do next as I stare blankly at the check list, I realize there's no one else to get me on the ground. Although I used to think this would scare me, it turns out to be about as consoling a thought as I've had in a long time. On final approach, I'm concentrating so hard the experience seems hyper-real — almost dreamlike. Donnie's ecstatic on the ground, despite my bouncing three-point touchdown. He knows I've made it past the first big hurdle.

Slump Number 1: The Elusive Solo Permit

April 20, 1991, is a bad day — my first. I've already done two of the three required supervised solos; with the last one out of the way, I'll be free to fly anytime, as long as I don't go more than 25 miles away from Marshfield.

It's true that, this morning, I feel a little distracted: My wife is leaving for a job interview on the West Coast, a job we're both hoping she gets. Among other things, it would allow me to quit my current job for a less punishing one elsewhere. I find I'm thinking a lot about her trip. When I meet up with Donnie, however, I tell myself I'm ready to go.

Once we're in the air, however, it's as if the airplane and I have never met. On one approach to Plymouth Municipal Airport, near Marshfield, I almost land short of the runway; on another, I'm so high over the threshold, I'd need 50-foot extendible landing gear to get down.

Donnie is mystified. "What was your airspeed on final?" he asks after my last, near-emergency landing.

"I don't know," I say.

"Didn't you look?"

"No."

"Well, what did your vertical speed indicator say?"

"I don't know."

"You didn't look at that, either?"

Donnie had been emphasizing seat-of-the-pants technique — getting the big picture, listening to the airplane, getting used to its attitude and speed relative to the ground on final approach. And I'd been doing this pretty well. But I'd also been neglecting some basic numbers, like airspeed and rate of descent. Basically, I'd been lucky — until now.

Donnie reassures me: He can see I've been preoccupied in the cockpit. "Sixty-five to 70 knots on final," he says, "and 400- to 600- feet-per-minute rate of descent." He points out that this may be one of the most useful days in my flying career, but I don't believe him. I'm never going to be a pilot.

Solo

Sometimes a slump is just the thing to clear away the cobwebs. Having grounded myself for a couple of days to think through things, I realize Donnie's right: My poor performance snapped me to attention, and I have the Warrior's final approach speed and vertical descent rate emblazoned on my mind. When I close my eyes, I can see the airspeed indicator and the vertical speed indicator on the Warrior instrument panel; I can see where the needles should be pointing.

When I return to Shoreline on April 25, Donnie's there with his prehistoric video camera. For the past couple of weeks, he's been half-teasing me about videotaping one of my flights for posterity. I can't figure it out, though, how he's going to film me from the right seat with a camera that big.

"I'm not gonna be in the front seat," Donnie tells me. "I'm gonna be in the back seat."

I stare at him for a minute. He's that sure of me? If I screw up, he won't be anywhere near the controls.

But I'm not going to screw up — and I don't. Although my takeoffs and landings at Plymouth, with Donnie filming all the way, aren't likely to astonish viewers in VCR land, they're clearly under control. I've got the feel of the airplane, but I also have the numbers.

Two days later, at 7:30 a.m., I take off alone from Marshfield for my third supervised solo. When I'm down, I'm done: Donnie signs me off for 90 days of solo flight. "There you go, Cap'n," he says as he endorses my logbook. "You're free."

First Dual Cross Country

There are a few things in life you just can't explain to someone who hasn't experienced them. You can't explain what it's like to fall in love or fall out of love; you can't explain what it's like to ride a motorcycle through a banked turn at high speed; and you can't explain what it's like to try to navigate over open terrain in a small airplane using only a sectional chart, a compass/directional gyro, a straight-edge marked in nautical miles, and a stopwatch. Just when I thought I'd gotten a handle on flying, I now have to fly the airplane, look for landmarks, check them against the appropriate symbols on my sectional chart, keep my course heading and altitude, and figure out how to get back on course if I mess up.

Because Donnie's picked up a captain's job with Nantucket Airlines, I've come back to Larry Schramm as my flight instructor. On this 62-mile flight to Southbridge, Massachusetts, Larry makes benevolently gruff noises as I drop my sectional, drop my pen, drop my stopwatch, and generally make a mess of things. My altitude and airspeed vary wildly as I stare at the sectional and then at the ground, trying to figure out where the town of Brockton is and whether I want to be over it. Offering a few helpful hints along the way, pointing out critical landmarks that I've missed and helping me to see their arrangement on the sectional, Larry shows me how to establish a relationship between the sectional and the ground. Aerodynamics may be a science, but navigation still seems like 90 percent art and 10 percent mystery. When we actually arrive at Southbridge about 45 minutes later, I'm willing to call myself an artist, at least for the day.

First Solo Cross Country

After completing dual cross countries to Manchester, New Hampshire, and Bradley International Airport in Windsor Locks, Connecticut, I get Larry's sign-off for my first solo cross country. My destination is Westerly (Rhode Island) State Airport — an uncontrolled field just a breath away from the Block Island Sound. My route on August 13 takes me south of Plymouth and Fall River, Massachusetts, around the Providence Class C airspace, and down along the Newport coast. It's an exceptionally beautiful trip. As I fly along, using the Ocean Approach controllers at Providence for traffic advisories, I also have time to watch the fishing boats and sailboats in Buzzards Bay and Rhode Island Sound.

I'm feeling both happy and confident as I begin my approach to Runway 25 at Westerly. Announcing my 45-degree entry into the downwind leg, I hear a Beech Bonanza come on the frequency: He says he's entering the downwind leg, too. Looking around for him quickly, urgently, I notice I've lost about 100 feet of altitude. Just as I begin to pull up, radioing my position at midfield on the downwind leg, the Bonanza zips by about 100 feet above me, going upwind. "Warrior 44949," he calls, "still don't see you." Shaken, I glance behind me to see the Bonanza doing a steep turn onto the downwind. Unable to think of anything else to say, I simply announce my turn to base and hear him acknowledge, as if everything were routine, that he's number two to land following the Warrior. Despite my confidence, I remember what is too easy to forget: Safety is a matter of constant vigilance, the more so because the other guy, for whatever reason, may have dropped his guard.

The Long Cross Country

For me, this is the dividing line — the biggest hurdle in my career as a student pilot. I'll be flying from Marshfield to Albany, New York, to New Haven, Connecticut, and back to Marshfield.

The weather report sounds a little iffy, but nothing to worry about: a scattered-to-broken cloud layer at 4,000 feet, unrestricted visibility, winds from the northwest at 22 knots. The first 40 minutes of the flight are glorious. But by the time I reach Orange, Massachusetts, one of my checkpoints, the clouds have gone from scattered to broken to overcast, and I'm on top at 6,500: If I can't get down through breaks in the clouds, I'm in trouble.

But I can't bring myself to acknowledge my predicament to Boston Approach or to Albany Approach. Instead, I elect to descend through ragged holes in the clouds, announcing my change in altitude to Albany and hoping to break out at the newly forecast 3,300-foot base. Glancing at my sectional chart as I bump down through turbulence, I know that I'm over the Berkshires, where the highest elevation in my area is about 2,800 feet. What I somehow don't notice is Mt. Greylock — a mere 3,688 feet.

At 3,300 feet, I'm still not below the clouds. Just then Albany Approach comes on: "Warrior 4347H, I've lost you on radar." They think I've crashed.

Climbing at the Warrior's best-angle-of-climb speed through another ragged break in the overcast, I manage to escape. Back at 6,500 feet, I see the western edge of the clouds just past the Berkshires and, beyond that, Albany — I'm safe. I'm also stupid. But I've learned an unforgettable lesson: If you need help, ask for it. The rest of the flight, down to New Haven and back along the southern New England coast to Marshfield, is both routine and beautiful. By the time I get back to Marshfield in late afternoon, I feel as if I've been to the moon and back.

Slump Number 2: Pre-Check-Ride Blues

Now, in late October, with almost 60 total hours and all my cross countries behind me, I can't seem to pull everything together. I've never been very good at reviews, and the last few hours of flight training are review: going over the very first things I learned, the shallow turns and the steep turns and the stalls, going for absolute precision and accuracy, gaining or losing virtually no airspeed or altitude. In midsummer, I could swing into a 45-degree turn and hold it there, right at 2,500 feet, for 360 degrees; now I wobble up and down, occasionally slipping beyond the FAA's standards for maximum altitude gain or loss.

My short-field landings are never short enough, and on my soft-field landings, I always forget to hold the nosewheel off. Even on normal landings, I seem to make higher approaches than usual, and I can't get my final approach speed below 70 knots, whereas a few weeks ago, I could putter in at 65 knots with no trouble.

What's the problem? There are lots of possibilities. I've accepted a new job in Iowa, and I'm on the verge of a divorce. Either of those, as Larry points out, would be enough to convince someone to stop flying for a while. Larry's been incredibly understanding and supportive during all these changes — these changes in me, as I learn how to fly, and in my life, as I learn that I can't keep on being the person I used to be. It's been great to be able to work with him in these last, toughest hours. But I don't want to take a break from flying while my life smoothes out. I want to fly. And to do that, I have to get the check ride out of the way. With Larry's blessing, I schedule the check ride for November 18. It has to go well, I tell myself. I just can't be a student anymore.

Check Ride: Fiasco and Recovery

Having met my FAA designated examiner, Lew Owen, several times before, I've been too impressed with his decent and gentle demeanor — I don't realize until it's too late what a demanding examiner he is. My course planning for the cross-country part of the exam is idiosyncratic; he tells me to do it the usual way, warning me that he could fail me already.

In the pattern, my approaches are consistently too high and too fast. Lew tells me I've failed them. I'm about ready to give up, but something in me won't let go. A few minutes later, I've also managed to get off-route on the cross-country segment of the flight. Lew, who looks fairly upset, asks me what I'm going to do about it. Suddenly, I snap to; I'm not going to screw up anymore. Taking command of the airplane for what amounts to the first time, I explain the recovery procedures and do them; in a few minutes, we're back on course. From then on, the check ride goes well. My instrument work, my maneuvers, and my recovery from unusual attitudes all turn out fine. Nevertheless, I do not pass.

A week later, on November 25, 1991, having worked intensively on landings with Larry, I go up with Lew again. Demonstrating a reasonable approach speed and decent soft-field and short-field landings, I satisfy him; back on the ground, as he types out my temporary airman certificate, I reflect on what a long route it's been, on how far I've come. The feeling is one of intense satisfaction and peace, despite the other upheavals in my life.

After Lew leaves, I take my favorite Warrior, 44949, out for a half-hour spin over Duxbury Harbor. Nothing has changed — it's still a beautiful airplane, a beautiful day — yet everything has changed. I can leave now. I have wings.

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Thomas Simmons is an English professor at the University of Iowa.