Around the patch: Planting seeds
I’d taken Brietta and a few other members of our church’s youth group flying. It turned out to be one of those perfect late-fall Sunday afternoons. In exchange for a donation to the youth group’s trip fund, the dozen or so kids had washed my Piper Cherokee and my colleague David’s Piper Arrow.
But first, we’d given airplane rides. “Because I believe in dessert first,” I’d told the kids. Truthfully, I didn’t see the point of having them clean the airplanes if we were then going up immediately for a bug-smashing session.
Now I remembered Brietta. She’s tall and shy, and sings in the church choir with her mom and sister. She’d climbed in my airplane, put on the headset, and said hardly a word during our short excursion. When people are quiet in the right seat, sometimes it means they’re scared, or—worse—getting airsick. But Brietta didn’t seem scared, and she didn’t admit to airsickness, even though I had a bag at the ready.
I kept trying. I pointed out landmarks, such as Sugarloaf, the 1,282-foot peak that juts up to the south of the airport. Brietta nodded. I asked if she’d flown in a commercial airplane before. She said yes, to visit her grandparents.
She wasn’t just being polite. She was enjoying the flight! I felt like cheering as I turned final.As we headed back to the airport and re-entered the pattern, the tower asked me to extend my downwind for arriving traffic. This added a few minutes to our trip, and I told Brietta we’d have to wait a bit before we could land.
“I don’t mind,” she said. She wasn’t just being polite. She was enjoying the flight! I felt like cheering as I turned final and added full flaps. I don’t remember my landing so it must have been fine, which is a good thing when you’re flying with newbies.
I told Brietta’s mom I wasn’t sure she’d had a good time. “She was so quiet,” I said. “Sometimes that’s a bad sign.”
“Oh, no,” her mom assured me. “She was quiet because she thought you needed to be able to hear the radio.”
Aha. We fly at a towered airport, and I’d planned our flight to take us near the practice area. The route gives nonpilots a view of our county’s rolling foothills and the Potomac River flowing past the railroad town of Brunswick on its way from West Virginia to the Chesapeake Bay. There was the usual Sunday-afternoon chatter on the frequency as airplanes moved in and out of Frederick Municipal Airport’s Class D airspace, and on 121.5 MHz Potomac Tracon had called out a pilot who strayed too close to the Baltimore-Washington Class B airspace and the Special Flight Rules Area.
I’d had the opposite experience with another passenger. Michele was bubbling over with questions. What was the sombrero-shaped building on the airport? How often do you fly? How far can you go in this airplane? She took many photos, expressed much wonderment, and was a joy to fly with—even when I had to cut her off as we approached the airport so I could hear the tower’s instructions. David’s passengers were equally enthusiastic, although only one took him up on an offer to take the controls for a few minutes and fly the airplane.
We all had so much fun that we plan to offer rides again—no strings attached—in the spring. That’s the best time for planting seeds, and we cannot pass up an opportunity to plant a seed of aviation whenever we get one. We might not know until weeks, months, or years later whether our contribution will bear fruit, but in the meantime we’ll have a great time preparing the soil.
