How to locate that elusive strip
One of my early flight instructors had a vivid way of teaching the importance of being able to quickly find the nearest runway. First he would get his student lost over an expanse of woods, hills, and lakes. Next, godlike, he would set the ceiling at 1,000 feet, with fuel remaining at 30 minutes. Then he would smile and say that all was not lost — somewhere around here there is a little lost — somewhere around here is a sod strip where we can get this thing on the ground.
Today it was my turn. And because I was a thorn in his side, he had been looking forward to this moment. I can still see the look of shock and disappointment on his face as I calmly made for the airport and entered the pattern. I knew that the old fox could only sit and wonder how this exceptionally average student with a big ego, uncoordinated flying style, and argumentative demeanor — who was only moments ago hopelessly lost — had pulled it off.
The truth can now be told. A few days earlier I had been driving in the same area. Of course, I had peeked in at the airport. I had also observed that just across the way was a garage, and in front of the garage, three yellow school buses snoozed in the sun. It's no trick to pick out three yellow school buses from 1,000 feet. And that, Don Strout, is how I found the field on that day so many years ago.
Had my new piloting skills been in the dock on that day, I would have had a much harder time. As student pilots often discover when beginning cross-country training (with the GPS turned off), finding the field can range from simple to baffling, with no hard-and-fast rules as to when and why. Practice helps, so it is a good idea to make some attempt to find airports you pass by, even on training flights focusing on other tasks. Doing so is also a hedge against emergencies and makes the gods smile.
Finding the hard ones is worth the effort. Not far from where I fly is a large grass strip that, by its appearance on a sectional chart, should be simple to find. It is on the south edge of a large lake, just north of a major highway and just southeast of a racetrack.
Surprise! Along the same shoreline is another racetrack that does not appear on the chart. The airport is west of this track; if you take the bait, you may circle for a while before other distinctions help you figure things out. The grass strip is surrounded by other green fields and does not stand out.
An airport does not have to be unpaved to be elusive. A normal-sized 3,000-foot runway in an outlying town escapes notice by many pilots. The clever find it by realizing that in the immediate vicinity it is the only large surface feature that bears northwest. The pavement is an oddly pale color that the eye passes over in search of a darker object.
Expectations have set up some rude surprises at the biggest airport for miles around. You would not think that a 2-mile-long, 300-foot-wide runway on which B?52s once roosted would be hard to find. It's only a problem if you are lined up for the 150-foot-wide parallel taxiway, which resembles a "normal" runway. (As a rule, we discourage such things, but folks keep trying.)
Some airports just love to hide. In Massachusetts, a small paved strip that is supposedly on my most frequently traveled route has never revealed itself from a variety of altitudes and vantage points. By contrast, an airport with a pair of mile-long crossing runways in a flat coastal area is so prominent that I cannot imagine flying southwest without inspecting the coffee shop parking lot for vacancies. As an alternate, it's a natural.
Going someplace new? The Airport/Facility Directory descriptions, AOPA's Airport Directory listings, and pilots familiar with your destination are valuable resources. Before my second solo cross-country, a pilot's simple description of a mountainous-region airport helped to keep the approach orderly: "When approaching from the south, you cross the ridge — and there it is." A small private strip where I assert coffee-sipping rights will always be hard to find, but spotting the water tower on the downwind is easy from 10 miles. That's the advice you'll get if you ask.
Bigger cities can hide bigger airports. As you enter the Class C airspace around Portland, Maine, from the northeast, the airport lies beyond the city. Pick up the rounded inner bay or the cluster of fuel tanks, and leapfrog to the runway. Once found, always found. I expected the airport in Lantana, Florida, just down the pike from Palm Beach International, to be an easy sight for tired eyes, as all the other airports along Florida's east coast had been. But now it was night. Had I been looking for the only dark rectangle for miles, I would have found the two tiny rows of runway lights on the first try.
A small airport in a wooded valley can be very difficult to find, as I found out years ago on a checkride for my flight instructor certificate. This time the low ceiling was real and there were no parked school buses to help. In the end it was the inspector's body language that saved the day. Every fiber in his being was shouting, "We're here!" even though he tried to hide it. I had missed by only about half a mile, but at this altitude it would have been enough. I smiled at him and banked right. He smiled back and said, "You're having an engine failure." Darn. At least I knew where I was going to land.
New Pilot's Journal: Cross-Country Challenges
As a student pilot, after 20 hours of maneuver training and landing practice, I was getting bored. Even though I was flying solo, I had been endorsed to land at only two airports. I was anxious to do some real flying. To me, real flying is going places, seeing the sights, and meeting the challenges of cross-country flight.
My first dual cross-country was exciting because I got to use radios, charts, instruments, and my brain, too. Calling flight service to file a flight plan and get a weather briefing was my first step in communicating with others. And do they like to communicate! I wrote down every bit of detail the briefer threw at me, not knowing which of it I really needed. Afterwards, in talking it over with my instructor, we decided which information was applicable to our flight.
At Auburn Municipal Airport in the Northern California foothills, where I am based, common weather conditions such as fog in the valley and clouds obscuring the mountains mean that you often hear the dreaded "VFR flight not recommended." I learned that it is very important for weather briefers to say this when they believe the conditions warrant it, but also that it is up to the pilot to make the go or no-go decision.
Honestly, I was most excited about getting a chance to talk on the radio. I had practiced my script, which I wrote out in longhand, leaving blanks where squawk codes and frequency changes could be inserted. My instructor reminded me to aviate, navigate, and then communicate, however.
My instructor assisted me with my first straight-in landing at Sacramento Executive, and I did make some "I'm-a-student-pilot" radio calls that needed correction. We also practiced VOR navigation and pilotage while checking time and checkpoints from my flight log. Overall, though, my first dual cross-country flight was uneventful, and the hazy day made for poor sightseeing, too. My instructor even commented that he wished he had brought his lunch along so that he could eat while I flew.
On my subsequent solo cross-country flights, however, I found myself wishing for an uneventful hazy-day flight. During one flight from Chico Municipal to Sacramento Executive through Class C airspace for Sacramento Metropolitan Airport, I was vectored around airline traffic. After several minutes I was then told by the approach controller to "resume normal navigation." Great. I didn't have this little diversion drawn on my course line on the chart. What heading should I take now to resume my normal navigation? I had not planned on this. I was 1,000 feet agl over the city of Sacramento, and I could not locate Sacramento Executive. I had to ask the controller to vector me to the airport.
During my long cross-country flight from Auburn to Fresno I had dialed in the Clovis VOR to help me locate the Fresno Air Terminal, but it never came in. At the time I thought it was because I was too far away, but when I got close enough to pick up the signal, I could see Fresno. After refueling both the airplane and myself at Fresno, I flew to Modesto. In dialing up the Modesto VOR once off Fresno, it became clear to me that something was not working. Either both VORs were inoperative or my radio was. I had not been told about an inoperative VOR during my preflight briefing. Upon my return, I reported the problems and was told that other students had also experienced intermittent problems with that nav radio.
On another trip, shortly after departure from Auburn I had the chance to see the weather the briefer had talked about. The overcast layer seemed much lower than I expected. In flight I called flight watch, but their reports were basically the same. I descended to a lower altitude but felt as though I was still flying into a layer of encroaching overcast.
Because of this initial distraction, I did not immediately get on my course heading. I was flying south toward my destination when the controller asked for my next checkpoint. As I answered him, I started double-checking everything. Why would he ask me that? What is he thinking? What is he seeing on radar?
After about 2 minutes of thought, I had that squirmy, uncomfortable feeling of failure that allowed doubt to attack my self-confidence. So I called the controller and informed him that I was turning around and going back to Auburn. I could hear approval in the voice of the controller, or maybe it was my own sense of relief affecting what I heard. On the way home my spirits rose as I realized I did not fail — I succeeded in making the right decision to fly safely.
Over the 10-plus hours of solo cross-country flights, only the first one was uneventful. Each subsequent flight had its own special challenges. I learned that it is important not only to get as much information as you can and process it all during preflight planning, but also to be prepared for unexpected events that may occur during flight.
That is flying: going places, seeing the sights, and meeting the challenges.
This is the second of three articles.
Practice Area: Parachutes and Seat Belts
BY WILLIAM K. KERSHNER
While working as a lineboy at Outlaw Field, Clarksville, Tennessee, in 1946, I had to stretch out my presolo, and this meant that there were time gaps between flights (there was one of more than 3 months). Then a money problem delayed my first solo until a month after my sixteenth birthday, with a total of 8 hours and 20 minutes, including 1.5 hours of riding right seat in an Aeronca Chief. (I'd been flying the tandem Aeronca Defender.) I was told basically to keep my hands off the control wheel while we flew an hour-and-a-half round-robin as required by the high school aviation program (4 hours at $4 an hour).
Things were simpler then, and people soloed more quickly because trainers didn't have radios and were simple to fly; a lot of the training was done from quiet country grass fields.
I had 11 hours and 35 minutes of solo time (at this point I had about 21 hours total) when I practiced my first solo spins. We had done spins before the first solo, and the instructor had given me dual in spins in a Champ before sending me out to practice solo stalls in that airplane. (A good procedure that I suggest for today — assuming that the airplane is properly certificated and the instructor is qualified and current.)
There was a certain amount of hesitation and a lot of clearing turns before I finally spun. The following spins were easier because the Champ had a gentle and easily recoverable spin, and my confidence had increased measurably after the first one.
Then, as now, the minimum age for the private pilot certificate was 17, and it looked as though there would be another long period of waiting to get old enough. In the meantime, I flew a 40-horsepower Cub (once getting up to the unbelievable altitude of 5,500 feet), and a Piper J?5 Cruiser; got some dual in the Dart Model G; but spent most of the time in the Champ.
After an engine was overhauled, there was a certain amount of ground running, followed by what was termed "slow time," in which the airplane was flown at lower-than-normal power and within gliding distance of the airport. I would drone around and around the field, looking for other traffic and wishing that the Champ was a Mustang or Corsair. Seven years later I would be (voluntarily) doing slow time in Hellcats and Corsairs, wishing that they were a Champ. (Just kidding.) I made arrangements with the maintenance people of the particular squadron to which I was attached to do slow timing, well, because I enjoyed it. But getting back to 1946:
Since I had to wait, I started working on chandelles and lazy eights (not while slow timing) and got a couple of dual aerobatic flights in the Dart GC. I also worked on spins, rectangular courses, stalls, and eights around pylons for the private flight test. Talk about being overtrained and no place to go ....
There were breakfast flights (they were called $20 hamburger flights in those days and are now called $100 hamburger flights because of higher prices) and flights over a nearby town where there was a girl I was interested in who hardly knew that I existed and probably had no idea that an airplane was flying over, much less that it was piloted by a smitten swain.
After much practice, the recommendation ride was completed the day before I was 17. As a worrier, knowing that I had been born at 2 p.m., I wondered on my birthday morning if I had to wait past that hour in order to be legal.
I was as nervous as it was possible to be and still be able to walk a straight line as I reported for the flight test (as it was called then). In addition to stalls, slow flight, and ground reference maneuvers, the test would require a two-turn spin in each direction, to be recovered within 10 degrees of a prechosen heading/reference.
The examiner was getting a bit restive as I gave the Champ a preflight check that would have done the manufacturer proud. The examiner suggested that it was really not necessary to run a fabric punch test, and he was sure that the engine compression was just fine, so I could put away those tools and finish the preflight since we had only 6 hours until sunset.
Parachutes were required for the test, and that's where a slight problem occurred. I had not worn a parachute much, and there were a lot of fasteners and straps involved, so it seemed as if it took a half-hour to get secured in the thing. The man in the back seat was the soul of patience as I fumbled, fastened, unfastened, and refastened the chute, although several times in the interim I could detect a sigh of resignation.
The airplane was cranked and the process got under way. I began to feel less nervous as the flight test continued. Slow flight, stalls, and then the spins. Good. It looked as if I really had a handle on this stuff.
A high altitude emergency worked out fine, and after I "made" the field, I climbed to ground reference maneuvers altitude and got set up for the eights around pylons.
What prompted me to look down beside my seat is lost in history, but down there was one-half of an unfastened seat belt. Looking at the other side, I saw there was the other half of the unfastened seat belt. In making sure that all the straps and fasteners of the parachute were fastened, I had forgotten a minor item.
I quickly pointed out an (imaginary) menace to the right and behind the airplane while I hoped to get the seat belt fastened during the examiner's period of inattention.
He shook his head (having seen the belt's condition during the past 45 minutes of flying).
I fastened the belt, grasping at the straw that my spin recoveries had been pretty good since I'd stayed in the seat without such a restraint, instead of flying up into the windshield.
The spot landings went OK, I think, and we taxied up to the line and I shut down the engine. My friend, a lineman who was always supportive, asked how it went. The check pilot said nothing. I was kind of choked up and wondered if the Foreign Legion would take a 17-year-old.
The check pilot got out and walked into the airport office, still saying nothing. I knew that several flight instructors were in there, and from my position at the airplane, there was comparative quiet in the office — for a while.
This silence broke as several of my former friends and formerly much-admired instructors laughed loudly (too loudly and too long, in my opinion).
I returned the source of all my troubles (the parachutes) to the line shack shelf and turned to see the check pilot waving me to come into the office, which I didn't want to do at that time — or anytime ever, for that matter. As an alternative to the Foreign Legion, would sticking my head into the propeller of a running engine hurt much, or would it be quickly over?
No Christian walking into the Coliseum filled with lions dragged his feet more than I did.
When I entered, the instructors and check pilot said nothing but looked at me with ultra-serious faces, and there were one or two frowns. There must have been 75 or 100 people in that 15-by-20-foot room.
After letting me squirm for an hour (it seemed), the check pilot asked me the first thing to do after getting into an airplane.
"Fasten the seat belt," I said in a choked voice.
He said he knew that I'd been waiting for my checkride for several long months and that I had passed, but he hoped I'd learned a lesson. I certainly had, and I immediately canceled plans concerning the Foreign Legion and sticking heads into rotating propellers.
Could I have been passed on a checkride under the same conditions in 1997? Today, I don't even taxi an airplane with the seat belt unfastened (true). I have had other pilots comment on this habit, and my only answer is that "it's a long story, going back to one day in the autumn of 1946."
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