Flying from your backyard

Today I realized one of my recent dreams...I took off from my backyard! Let me back up. I live in Maine, so as a pilot our time to get aloft without clouds or ice is....well limited. So when a warm summer day with 5 knots of breeze comes along, you take advantage of it. But today would be no ordinary flight, I would depart from my own backyard!

We had purchased our old cape a decade ago with hopes of someday taking advantage of the fact that it was on water. Apart from swimming on hot summer days in the lazy river was my dream to someday taxi a float plane up to the dock in our own backyard. The latter goal was always just that-a goal. A fallen oak had other plans, covering half the river with it's bows and limbs but a few hundred yards upstream.
Granted that tree provided many bass for the anglers in it's cool summer shadows, but I had other motives, and secretly wished the currents to come along and sweep it toward the dam downstream of our house. This spring my wish was realized, as I looked upstream as the snow melted and saw no tree! My heard skipped a beat and I at once envisioned what it would feel like to taxi the float plane down the river to our dock. The tree was gone, now I had no excuse but to try demonstrate my float plane taxi skills.
Last Friday the weather cooperated, and on this perfect day with gentle breezes from the south I made my trek down the river after touching down on the floats. What a wonderful feeling to shut the engine down and drift into the shallow familiar waters surrounding our home. All the rocks, sticks, mud and Lily pads were so familiar to me from the shores of dreaming of this day, and now I got to see them from a different angle...from the step on the Cessna's float. My two wonderful worlds were combining...I was in heaven.
Timing not coincidental, I went up to the house and when my family got home that evening, I feigned that I had launched the boat that day, and so my car was across the lake, and therefore not in the driveway. They bought it, and so I then suggested we go for a quick boat ride, again they took the bait...this was going to be fun. When they got to the end of the wooded river path their surprise was worth the years of wait and effort. "Wow!" they said, "you did it!" "Let's go flying" was my reply. And after preflighting, boarding, and "un" docking we were off for one of the prettiest flights ever. Lifting off the water and circling the island, shores, buoys and houses you're so familiar with was exhilarating, and sharing this with friends and family was beyond words. We flew to a nearby river where the float plane calls it's "home" and went out for a bite to eat.
How can a pilot top lifting off from their own backyard with family and friends beaming out the windows? For this one I'm not sure that's possible. If "home is where the heart is" then I think that I found mine.

Wind, Rain, Sun

This summer in Maine has mimicked the inside of a turtle's aquarium-wet and misty! So on many days where I find myself thinking of flying, I instead decide to pick up a good book or magazine and get my "fix" that way.

This morning I found an old copy of "Wind, Sand, and Stars" and read the last chapter. I'd forgotten how wonderful it is to read the prose of an aviation enthusiast who'd also be considered by many to be one of the greatest recent philosophers. Antoine de Saint-Exupery has an amazing ability to weave Mediteranean flying images into his thoughts about what it means to be human and earth bound; the perfect escape for a rainy Sunday morning in Maine.

As my instrument skills remain "honed" by my flight simulator, IFR charts/approach plates, and the occasional "actual" flights with peers; I remain in the literary clouds through my reading of aviation authors who, like myself, like to draw parallels between the wings and the stories that lift us through the air that surround our lives. Ernest Gann's "Fate is the Hunter" is a great read for those who enjoy escaping rainy low ceilings in their favorite living room chair. He talks of flying mediocre military equipment through the north Atlantic. One of my favorite stories involves a cargo plane loaded with toilet paper in marginal weather, wherein he asks (as many of us have) "Is this worth it?"

Amidst these times of high fuel prices, global warming, economic recession and instability, those of us who use the pricey hobby as our "escape" have to ask ourselves is this worth it frequently. In an attempt to link my flying to humanitarian acts, or offset my carbon-use with more eco-friendly activities, I find myself thinking about the days of old wherein these aviation authors perhaps weren't plagued with these same issues or questions. Did these questions not exist then, or did they just neglect to get caught up in them? Unsure of how to answer them, or whether they need answers anyhow, I remain stuck with the truth revealed this morning by Antoine-"that if one form of activity rather than another, brings self-fulfilment to a man...then that scale of values, that culture, that form of activity, constitute his truth."

As a pilot who feels fulfilled flying spiritually from his arm chair with a good story as well as his cockpit, my truth is that on rainy Sunday mornings I already feel lifted above the wet misty morning air, and I haven't spent a dollar or burned a drop of hydrocarbon fuel.

One of those Flights...

Do you ever just have one of those flights where everything seems to just come together? Well I had one last week and it makes all those hours of studying, planning, arranging schedules and of course financing, worth it.

Our destination was a small airport at the tip of Cape Cod and our steed was a formidable Baron 55. Weather was looking good with winds out of the northeast and a scattered layer at 3000 feet enroute. I called a friend the night before to see if he was interested in joining me. I told him he’d have one of the best views of Boston’s morning skyline from the copilot window, he was sold.

I called up weather the morning of the flight on DUATS and filed direct from Nashua NH, not knowing what sort of route they’d give us to keep us out of Logan’s flight arrivals and departures. After pulling the plane from the warm hanger and preflighting, we were off to the run-up area along runway 32.

Having done my undergraduate work at Daniel Webster College, I was familiar with the airport and I couldn’t help but take a few moments to reminisce on all that I’d learned since getting my private pilot license here some 20 (ahem) years ago. Kids, family, countless preflights, articles, books, and stories separated me from that life of the innocent college student. I have lost much of my innocence of youth, but not the zeal for lifting off at rotation speed to see the world beneath me float away along with all its chaos, noise and politics.

After copying my clearance (they gave us direct Boston direct Provincetown), and making sure the IO 470’s were functioning properly, we were cleared for takeoff. “Let’s go flying.” I said, as I pushed the throttle levers forward. As always I was impressed at how much faster twins will accelerate than the light singles I’m used to flying. In no time we were up at 3000 feet enjoying the view and trying to keep up with the numerous frequency changes enroute. After only 30 minutes we were cleared for the visual by Cape Approach, and despite a hefty crosswind, the Baron handled the landing well. After cleaning up the plane and completing the shutdown checklist we sauntered into the quaint airport and enjoyed the views of one of the neatest communities in the Northeast.
Provincetown is home to but a few thousand locals in the winter months, but surges to over 30,000 in the summertime. We spent an hour enjoying the views of sand dunes, galleries and seabirds before heading back for Nashua.

The return flight was also uneventful with a few more vectors around traffic than on the way down, but still fantastic views and good company made it all worthwhile.

I hope you have flights like this one where all the hard work seems to pay off. I don’t think we should ever take for granted what it means to have a smooth flight where we think “wow, this is easy”. In my mind, that usually means we’ve done our homework and there is always something to be learned from every flight. At the same time, one of the things that I love about aviation is that it’s never seemed like burdensome “work” for me. I actually love reading books, flight manuals, practicing approaches in simulators and figuring out the nuances of a weather report. I can’t think of a better gift than a spectacular view of this amazing planet when all that “work” pays off. Safe and happy travels.

Speed Bumps

Flying in Maine in February is really more like running the Iditarod than a quick jaunt to the airport to pull the plane out, preflight and go. Such was the flight I had set up with a friend of mine last week as we were to fly from Augusta to Bar Harbor in a Beech single. The weather looked good, the engine heater had been plugged in, but wait, when did they decide to install speed bumps in front of the hangers?!

Let me back up…did I mention that Maine (and much of northern New England) is in one of the top 10 snowiest winters in history? And on those occasionally rare days, where the temperature creeps above 32 F, the snow turns to water and then, you got it, back to ice in front of the hanger door whose roof it just fell from minutes ago. Hence, the speed bumps.

We were comparatively lucky however. The hanger we were in faces south, and therefore the H2O stayed in its liquid form longer and therefore had more of a chance to make it to the drains before freezing again. Those with northern facing hangers had bumps that looked more like K2 than speed bumps. However, ice is slick and no matter how much or little there is of it, when it’s perfectly formed in front of your hanger, and you don’t have on your cleats, it’s very hard to get enough traction to pull your fully fueled plane over the one inch ice mound. Thank goodness for cell phones- this allowed us a simple call to the FBO to have the tug come over to pull us out. (After it’s rough start from a cold and likely overused battery).

Once over the mound we thanked the tug operator and finished the preflight and started without a problem. The good news about cold clear air is that airplanes really perform as more of those closely packed molecules mean more lift, and we were off the runway before the first taxiway climbing at over 1000 fpm with 30 miles of unrestricted visibility.

Yes, winter flying can take more effort, time and patience, but really… who cares. Isn’t the fun of getting out and above our earth worth the extra effort? Life puts plenty of speed bumps in our way, but those smaller ones which can be easily overcome with a call for help make the ongoing journey well worth the wait. Pass the hot chocolate please; I think that’s Bar Harbor off the nose.

Learning to Fly or Flying to Learn

I’ll admit it…I’m a nerd who loves to learn! Libraries have always fascinated me and as a kid I can recall how I would always find myself sitting on the floor of the aisle amidst the non-fiction books. Any of them even remotely connected to airplanes, I’d read, often more than once!

So when I turned that magic age of seventeen I knew where my hard earned cash was going…flying lessons. Hours of vacuuming and cash register work had earned me the privilege of sitting in the left seat of a Cessna 150. Like many new pilots I was awed by how much there was to learn about how to get the seemingly simple machine up in the air, around the pattern, and back on the runway safely. I remember countless takeoffs and landings over the Holstein cows that peppered Vermont fields around the north-south runway. “Don’t scare the girls”, I used to say to myself as I’d hold off adding all the flaps until assured of the runway. And then one summer day my instructor said those words, “You’re ready.” He got out and I alone got that little Cessna off the ground and back safely. What a moment!

Now fast forward twenty years, where instead of the left seat, I sometimes sit in the right, and have had the opportunity to say those words, “You’re ready”, to the student who has entrusted me with their teaching. Watching the now solo pilot safely takeoff and land the Cessna, I think of all the hours of flying and learning that have occurred over the past twenty years. An instrument and seaplane rating, a Commercial and Instructor license, countless aviation articles and books all have kept that yearning for more knowledge fulfilled. As a known life-long learner, I admitted to myself long ago that I would always want to learn more, and given that there’s always more to learn in aviation, I need not worry about that day when I say “Ahh, I learned it all.”

What I’m struck with recently however, is how much I’ve learned about myself through learning how to fly. Have any of you ever asked yourself the “why” questions related to flying? For example, “Why do I enjoy flying so much?” I usually, ask this at least once or twice a week. I’m sure there are as many answers as there are pilots…”the view”, “the challenge”, “quick transportation”, “it’s cool”. All of these answers have probably crossed your own minds, and rationalized too many dollars and numerous cold starts as well.

And what about aviation teaching us the “how”? Consider, how we make decision to go or not. Do we gather data, or go on our “gut”? Do we try to please others or do we make backup plans? The way we answer these questions can decide a pilot’s and person’s fate. Do not make them rashly.

Have you considered the “who” question? Who goes into aviation? Who are those friends who like to “slip the surly bonds” too? Do we call them for that weekend getaway to the coast in our trusted bird? This one ties in nicely with the question “where”? Do we simply go around the pattern perfecting our shortfield technique, or do we sit down for days and plan that cross country we’ve been meaning to do for years? How about a nice half hour flight off the river to our favorite fishing hole where only float planes can reach? And the “where” questions always seem to keep me glued to the side windows when I have a free moment between scans and checklists, as I ask “where will I be in 20 years, and will all this beautiful landscape be here in another thousand?”

The parallels between flying and our own life’s decisions are vast. Are there crosswinds that are just too strong, where we need to go to another destination for a runway that aligns us better? I suspect many of you have chosen other activities that you use as metaphors to your own lives. I am glad that mine is aviation. I will continue to learn and draw parallels and I hope as I do to become a better pilot and student of life.