“So what do you do for a living?”
I think, what, is this instructor nuts? I’m about to lift off from an international airport for the first time in my life, near the Southern beach town where I am on vacation, and this guy wants to talk about my job during my takeoff run?
“I can’t talk about that,” I say. “I’m trying to take off here.” I push the throttle in and worry about the jet that is getting ready to turn onto the runway behind me.
“Where’d you say you were from?” he says.
Then it dawns on me. He’s trying to distract me. As the 150-horsepower, 1973 Cessna 172 gathers speed, I plainly state: “Sir, I need to maintain a quiet cabin during takeoff.”
That does the trick. He quiets—a crafty, seasoned instructor, I think; a grizzled, old-school kind of a guy. Little do I know what’s coming as I pull back slightly and we’re suddenly, easily, gaining altitude.
“Turn south,” he says, and I do. Fifteen hundred feet and trimmed up sweet, 2,200 rpm, and a remarkable view—one-quarter mile west of the ocean, forest to the right, a few clouds in an ultra-blue early evening sky. Just beautiful.
I’m brutally snapped out of my reverie, because now this crazy instructor starts randomly working the pedals, yawing the airplane left and right.
“What are you doing?” I ask, agitated.
“Well,” he says, “you don’t have your feet on the pedals so I figured I’d play with them.”
OK, I think, lesson one, feet on the pedals. Then the wise one speaks: “You can’t fly the airplane without the pedals; every time you touch the ailerons, move the rudder with them. Give me some turns now and show me.”
He’s right, I think. I’m lazy on the pedals, my feet usually just resting on them. Rats. Amazing that no one has seen this flaw yet, but he saw it right away.
“How did you catch my lazy rudder work?” I ask.
“I know how they teach these days,” he says. “Young instructor, right? Teaches you by steps? Keep the needle on 30 degrees, that kind of thing? See this instrument, it’s called an artificial horizon, right? Well, the real horizon is out there. Use it and give me a 360, one way and then the other.”
I comply and use the pedals mindfully, becoming increasingly aware of the feel, starting to get it, and then…he pulls the power out. “What the heck?” I say and look at him, kind of ticked.
“You just don’t like that throttle, do you?” he says. “If you are not going to use it, then I am going to.”
“No, no, no,” I say, “I’ll use it, I got it, OK?” Geeze. Lesson 2, driven home. Hand on the throttle. I adjust my seat to get closer to it. He speaks again.
“Drop down to 700 feet and fly over that river,” he says. “Make the airplane go where you want it to go.”
Now this feels like flying! Following the twisting, turning river, rudder and aileron coordinated, I’m feeling my way through the turns now—anticipating them—and the turns feel tight.
Later, my landing is better. I feel way less apprehensive on base because of the practice turning above the river. I start to put in flaps, and he says, “What do you need flaps for?” We do a couple of flapless touch and goes. I start to get it, feeling my way through the landing, eyes outside the cockpit, then I get tired and I tell him. The lesson ends and he lands the airplane with the neatest slideslip I’ve ever seen, handling the airplane like a sports car.
Back on the ground, during our debrief, he directs me to the Airplane Flying Handbook section titled “Feel of the Airplane.” “You caught on quickly,” he says. “But you got a long way to go. Flying the airplane is not a series of sequential steps and checks on instruments. It’s about making the airplane go where you want it to go, by feel. Everything you need to know is outside the airplane. Use your ears and eyes, body, and even your nose, if you have to.”
I thank him and spend the next week pondering the implications of this valuable lesson. I feel like I’m getting it now, and I can’t wait to fly again.
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