Pilotage

My last flight of 1994 was an 800-nautical mile trip from Kansas City to western New York. 1995 began by reversing directions and flying back.

What a difference a few days makes. The balmy temperatures and relatively light tailwind that made for a pleasant eight-hour, one-stop flight out packed up and moved south at the end of 1994. The New Year brought with it a companion: the deep of winter. On the return flight temperatures at the surface and aloft were bitterly cold, headwinds were strong (it took two fuel stops), turbulence was seatbelt-straining rough down low and a snowstorm blanketed home base. Happy New Year.

The trip was flown in a Cessna Skyhawk. Want to know what the opposite of high performance is? Climbing to 11,000 feet on 150 horsepower. Having headwinds scrub off 30 percent of your speed. Never seeing the groundspeed display post more than two digits. And worrying about fuel on a 250-mile leg. Perhaps you can understand that when I finally taxied up to the FBO at 10 p.m. on a snowy, blustery January night after spending 10 hours ambling nearly halfway across the country in a Skyhawk, I felt as though I had accomplished something.

I'm not exactly sure what it was I accomplished, but that kind of trip etches a permanent entry in the mind's logbook. It has everything to do with the Skyhawk. A winter trip is an adventure in the airplane because of its modest power, speed, and fuel capacity. The weather has much more of a say in the flying schedule than the person who is supposed to be in command. Strong headwinds and low, icy clouds are showstoppers. When contemplating a long winter flight I become a television weather junkie, tuning in to long-range forecasts to look for windows of opportunity between those messy winter low pressure systems.

When that opportunity presented itself — 1,000 miles of high pressure, marred only by the forecast of a chance of snow moving into the Kansas City area by 9 p.m. — we launched.

Low level was the only way to go. My passenger and soon-to-be-six- year-old son was recovering from an ear infection. The doctor had said it was okay to fly as long as I played it conservative on the altitude. Given strong headwinds that only got stronger with altitude, I was happy with flying low. We would have gone at 1,000 feet agl the whole way to minimize the headwind penalty except that the first 2,000 feet of atmosphere was uncomfortably rough. So I flew just on top of the turbulent layer and learned to live with 30 knots on the nose. For amusement I would occasionally allow the airplane to drift slowly down until I began to feel the disturbed air. I was amazed at how abruptly the air changed from smooth to rough, and at the consistency of the demarcation line across so many, many miles.

I find it a wasted exercise to plan my fuel stops prior to departing on a Skyhawk adventure. Fuel consumption differs markedly with altitude, and I'm never sure of exactly what altitude I will settle on for the best combination of fuel efficiency, groundspeed, and a smooth ride until I'm actually flying. One of the ways I occupy myself on long flights is figuring out where to stop for gas. The trip east required only one stop, at Terre Haute, Indiana. Coming back we stopped at Bowling Green, Ohio, and Springfield, Illinois.

During daylight we flew a VFR great circle route to Kansas City Downtown Airport (MKC), in part because at the beginning the airway MEAs were too high for my son's well-being. The only obstacle was Lake Erie. To avoid venturing out over the fast-freezing water, I called up Cleveland Approach and asked to hug the shoreline. No problem, they said, just keep your distance from that Boeing 737 on the wide right downwind to Runway 23L at Cleveland-Hopkins.

Next time someone starts yammering about how good the good old days really were and how lousy things are now, take a trip across the country. You'll find you can fly almost anywhere you want, and even those places that require a gate pass usually are accessible without a lot of hassle.

We landed in Springfield after dark and filed an IFR flight plan for the concluding leg. After crossing Quincy VOR we flew through a very turbulent front with moderate or heavy snowshowers. Nothing in the forecasts or pilot reports had flagged the weather. Just as I was contemplating a turn back to escape the wind and snow, we flew out of it into smooth, clear air and unlimited visibility. That lasted until about 30 miles from MKC. The forecasts there were on target: It was snowing.

At the end of that long day I was not as tired as I expected. Typically after a long flight it takes a while to shake the feeling of always being in motion. The Skyhawk does not have an autopilot, and in flight the airplane is constantly moving around the pitch, roll, and yaw axes. Not much, mind you, but even in smooth air it is impossible to maintain as consistently steady a hand on the controls as a good Mechanical Mike. Any distraction — talking to a passenger, looking at a chart, fiddling with a frequency — will upset the apple cart, however slightly. I must have done a decent job of controlling the airplane, because this time there was no lingering sense of motion.

On the ride home from the airport that night I tried to remember what I had thought about over those 10 sedentary hours. I couldn't recall much, other than spending a great deal of time concentrating on the airplane and the flying: How does the engine sound? Is the mixture leaned properly? Are all the instruments, dials, and gauges indicating an "all's well?" How much time is left in the fuel tanks? Is there any traffic to be concerned with? Am I on course and altitude? When do we get to the waypoint? What will the new heading and waypoint be? And that most important question of all, where are we?

But I can't spend 100 percent of the time worrying about the progress of the flight and the status of the airplane. The brain needs an occasional breather. When I'm driving a car, my mind wanders aimlessly over a range of topics: work, family, personal projects, New Year's resolutions. Ideas float through my head. Some get written down. When I'm flying, however, I find I don't think about much of substance other than how goes the flight. On that 10-hour trip I scribbled a few work-related thoughts on a yellow legal pad, but when I looked at them later they were of no real consequence.

Instead, I relaxed mentally by sightseeing, looking out the window at the world above, ahead, and below. I also played with my son. He is just the right size for a small airplane: big enough to enjoy the view outside, yet small enough to stretch out in the back seat and snooze. His waking hours were spent chasing digital villains lurking inside an electronic game, and imagined enemies hiding behind clouds and among terrain features. We fought the bad guys side by side, and I'm here to tell you we made the world a lot safer that day. Defensive energy fields and powerful laser weapons turn a humble Skyhawk into a force to be reckoned with, and a long winter flight into a warm memory.