Waypoints

Editor in Chief Thomas B. Haines has endured many exciting flights in his more than 25 years of flying.

Somewhere on a T-shirt I've read a clever saying, something like: "You can't scare me. I've raised teenagers." As the father of an 11-year-old going on 19, I'm beginning to appreciate the mettle it takes to weather those years. One minute she's curled up next to me on the sofa purring about her day; who's in love with whom; how she did on the math test. She's thoughtful, helpful, reasonable, and downright considerate — genuinely concerned about the feelings of others. The next minute she's sprouted horns and the house is a cacophony of shouts, stomping feet, and slamming doors. My new saying: "Hey, I'm here to disappoint."

While I'm mustering newfound courage in dealing with a preteen, I find I'm becoming more of a wimp in my flying. In the cockpit, experience breeds conservatism. Machismo is for the inexperienced.

I'm contemplating all of this while flying over the rolling Appalachian Mountains of central Pennsylvania. If you've flown in the Rockies, you'll hardly consider these mountains, but the many, many miles of parallel ridges and deep valleys — all tree-covered — provide few options for a safe off-airport landing. These crinkles in the Earth's crust, while much lower than their western cousins, can cause tremendous turbulence across many states. And no place breeds embedded thunderstorms better than the Appalachians.

While instructors drill into students' heads the concept that they need to always be looking for a safe place to land, in fact, many pilots give it little thought — until an engine or two have betrayed them. With that betrayal comes a greater commitment to spy those openings in the trees that might just do in an emergency. Or the planning of a strategy for arriving just over the forest at stall speed, hopefully allowing the wounded airplane to settle into the treetops — under control. Or better yet, plan an airport-rich route — one that hops from airport to airport, which might add only minutes to a direct flight over more hostile terrain.

In aviation, experience yields distrust, rather than trust. I love my old airplane, but I don't trust her quite as much as I used to. You may recall that two summers ago I began to experience engine roughness at high power settings, usually at takeoff. Hot day, full load of fuel and passengers. Any loss of power gets your attention. The engine analyzer quickly showed a cylinder losing power and then recovering. Eventually, an engine teardown revealed damaged lobes on the camshaft and spalling on the corresponding tappets. My father has turned the damaged camshaft, pushrods, and tappets into a floor lamp. I refer to it as my $30,000 lamp. The airplane got an overhauled engine and we're happily back in business. But all is not the same. The new engine runs great, but I'm more alert now to anomalies. I assume it's going to fail on every takeoff and I have a plan about what I'm going to do when it does. It's this line of thinking that has me searching the trees for a possible safe haven in the Pennsylvania forest.

The people factor

While we can't discount mechanical maladies, people are the real culprits when it comes to safety. I've both witnessed and even participated in some boneheaded aerial maneuvers. Mostly, I've learned to recognize early the signs of a pilot whom I don't want to fly with. For example, any time a pilot says, "Hey, watch this!" I know it's not going to be good. I say "watch me get right out of this airplane."

Many years ago a pilot was demonstrating for me the benefits of vortex generators on a Cessna 340. I could tell he was a bit of a hot dog and gave him explicit instructions that there would be no demonstrations below 3,000 feet agl. This would be normal takeoff and climbout. Right after takeoff he said, "Hey, watch this," and then yanked a throttle closed, and stomped on the rudder pedal. "See how great it flies on one engine. With the VGs it even climbs!"

I applied power, banked the airplane around for the downwind, landed, got out of the airplane, and went back to my office, leaving the demo pilot still babbling about the VGs and wondering why we weren't doing more flying.

He wasn't the only demo pilot to believe too much of his own press. On another occasion, a pilot attempted to demonstrate for me the merits of a three-blade prop conversion on a Piper Comanche. In another "watch this!" moment, he racked the airplane around as we were climbing out after takeoff, dove for the pavement, and pulled up at what looked like about 30 feet for a screaming pass down the runway and a sharp pull up at the end. The Comanche's wings didn't fold, but it felt like they might.

That demo ended as succinctly as the VG flight. Today, if I sense any of that hot-dog mentality, I don't get into the airplane.

Self-inflicted wounds

I'd love for you to believe that I've never done anything stupid myself, but you're too smart for that. If someone who's been flying for 25-plus years tells you he has never done anything foolish in an airplane, your "watch this" meter should be pegged.

I had the "you're an idiot" light come on once in a Piper Aztec that I shouldn't have been flying. I knew the light was for me because I was the only one on board.

A colleague had dropped me off at an airport to pick up another airplane that was in for avionics work. With an assurance that the avionics work was all complete, I sent my colleague back home and waited for the paperwork to be completed on the other airplane. Upon start-up a problem surfaced that had to be fixed. Hours later it still was not fixed and wouldn't be until the next day. I needed to get home.

"Why don't you take that Aztec over there home. Bring it back tomorrow and your airplane will be ready to go," offered the helpful avionics guy. I had flown an Aztec quite a bit a few months earlier — but in the sunny Bahamas. Still, this was a short flight. Yes, the weather was IMC — not low IMC, but still I'd be in the clouds most of the flight. But it was VMC at my home airport....

Well, you can imagine how it went from there, with me eventually convincing myself that it was OK to jump into a strange airplane for a trip through weather. Of course, right after takeoff, ATC revised my clearance and sent me directly to an intersection, which was fair game given that I had filed "/R" on the flight plan. This was before GPS. The Aztec did have a creaky old area navigation system in it that I didn't really know how to work. After a fashion I managed to get it programmed and find my way to the intersection.

The flight proceeded without much problem until just before landing. As I neared my home airport, the weather improved to marginal VFR, so I wouldn't have to shoot an approach. But as I turned downwind, I could see an isolated thunderstorm parked right off the end of the runway, casting an enormous shadow across the field. The wind had picked up and I was in for some serious maneuvering in a strange airplane if I was going to land without brushing the edge of the clouds. "Ping!" The "you're an idiot" light went off in my head. I chose another runway and landed safely. The next morning I called the avionics shop and told them to bring our finished airplane over and to pick up their Aztec. I wasn't flying it anywhere. Lesson learned — strange airplane, solo, IMC, no thanks.

Although I like to believe that experience and maturity have made me a smarter pilot, I don't have any illusions that either quality provides a vaccine against doing something foolish.

Maybe I'll get a T-shirt made: "You can't scare me. I've flown with me."

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