Big World, Small World

Back in the “old days,” back when transitioning from domestic to international flying usually meant also transitioning from two and three engine narrow body aircraft like the DC-9 and the 727 to three and four engine wide body aircraft like the L-1011 and the 747, one of the first things you noticed was that “the world gets bigger and the runways get shorter.” That’s how a senior captain once described the experience to his very inexperienced 1011 First Officer, me. What he meant was, you start to cover very large distances when you can fly at Mach .85 for nine hours, and you realize what a big place the world is. You also discover that to do that—to carry that much weight in terms of fuel to go that far with a big airplane full of people and bags—that you also need a lot more runway both to takeoff and land. Where you might have been pretty comfortable with a 7000 or 8000 foot runway before, 7000 feet was now a short runway.

But the more you fly and the more people you fly with, the smaller the world gets as well. (But it doesn’t make the runways any longer.) You meet so many people in aviation, and often spend quite a bit of time with them, get to know them well, and then things change—you change aircraft, or bases, or companies, and you never or seldom see them again. But you do meet and see other people who often knew the same people you did. In aviation, it is both a big world and a small world.

I remember, for instance, back in 2004 or 2005, doing a Honolulu turn out of San Francisco on the 757 for ATA, talking to my copilot who, it turned out, grew up in New London, New Hampshire. I told him that I knew New London very well, having lived just a few miles away in Hanover, New Hampshire for four years when I flew corporate jets for AMCA International out of Lebanon, New Hampshire. It turned out that he knew several of the other AMCA pilots as well, no surprise there, but what was a real surprise was that he also knew one of the captains I had flown with at a previous job, Cub Snively, because Cub was also from New London and one of his sons was my copilot’s best friend from childhood. He also told me that, sadly, Cub had died a few years earlier. (Pilots often seem to die young—I joke that it’s the coffee—but more likely it’s the strain we put on our bodies being awake at all sorts of odd hours combined with years of extra radiation bombardment. Or maybe it’s nothing, maybe we just remember the ones who die young.)

I’m thinking about all this right now because I got an email the other day from another former AMCA pilot, Keith Hasperg, who found me because he had stumbled across my blog. I hadn’t talked to Keith in many, many years, going back before ATA, but often thought about him, for two reasons: One, he was one of the funniest and smartest people I had ever known, and two, he was one of the best pilots I had every flown with, a very skilled pilot, but, unlike most “naturals,” very careful and conservative as well. So it was great to hear from him again. But he also had bad news—another of the AMCA pilots, Nate Lake, had died in July of 2007, and I had fallen so out of touch with Nate that I didn’t even know he had died—I just assumed I could call him any time I wanted or go up to New Hampshire and that he would be there. It struck particularly hard because Nate really was one of the best pilots I had ever known, and taught me an awful lot about how to fly airplanes well, simply by his example and his tactful, always diplomatic “suggestions” for better ways of doing things. He was also a great friend, and that doesn’t always happen.

I remember asking Nate once how it was he was able to hand fly the aircraft so well, exactly on altitude and airspeed—you almost couldn’t tell if the autopilot was on or not when Nate flew, except his hand flying was, if anything, smoother than the autopilot. He said that when he was in Navy primary flight training that they trained in tandem seat aircraft, and that his primary instructor carried a small stick with him. Communication was difficult from front to back, so this guy would just tap him on the helmet whenever he saw anything he didn’t like, like the altitude being off by 20 feet. Nate said it just got easier to never let anything deviate than to put up with that d… stick. What it really was was Nate’s careful way of telling me that anyone can do it, you just have to try.

After I left AMCA, I got into aviation writing and eventually got a contract to do what would turn out to be the first edition of my navigation book, The Aviator’s Guide to Modern Navigation. The first person I consulted before starting was Nate Lake because he was also a trained Navy navigator. He read all of my chapters in draft form and caught many mistakes and made many helpful suggestions. I owe him a lot. If it hadn’t been for aviation being such a small world, I never would have found out what a big world it is. If I have any excuse for not having gotten in touch with him later, it was that I thought he would live forever.

We'll See

Winston Churchill is famous for many things, and one of those things was his quick wit. One of my favorite examples came after his defeat as Prime Minister following World War II. (Despite leading England from The Battle of Britain, Their Finest Hour, to eventual Victory in Europe, he was thanked for his efforts with rejection.) In the dumps, his wife apparently tried to cheer him up with a typically British, “Come on Winston. Chin up and all that. Might even be a blessing in disguise.”

He is alleged to have replied, “In which case, it is very cleverly disguised.”

I’ve had one of those “very cleverly disguised” moments with my proposed new book. After struggling for a couple of years with what exactly I wanted to write about (see my last post, “After Oshkosh"), and, having finally come up with an idea and a rough outline, I then had to decide if I really wanted to intrude upon a retirement schedule that I have grown very fond of (the best part of which is not having much of a schedule at all). I, of course, decided that I did want to—as much as I enjoy retirement I also know I need projects and a book is a good project—so I emailed my publisher with a quick summary and asked him if it sounded like something he was interested in. He promptly emailed me back saying that they weren’t doing any new aviation books, that they just couldn’t get shelf space for them anymore at the national retail level (read Barnes & Noble and Borders), and he hoped I could place it elsewhere. So, as the Brits like to say, “And Bob’s your uncle.” That’s that.

My retirement schedule is still intact, and as Mrs. Winston Churchill said, “Maybe it’s a blessing in disguise.” We’ll see. It’s still pretty cleverly disguised at this point.

After Oshkosh

I have taken a bit of a vacation from doing regular posts since my week in Oshkosh this summer. There isn’t any specific reason for that, I just had other things to do and was still sort of absorbing the experiences of Oshkosh. I also began to feel that I may have told enough ATA stories: the stories could go on for a long time, but the important ones—the ones with, what seem to me anyway, important lessons—I think have been told.

One of my first thoughts in starting this blog was that I hoped some of the articles and stories would make their way into a book. I had an idea that I might write a book in which each chapter started with a story that would set the tone and background for the subject that followed. But I found that the stories took on a life of their own and were too long to serve as introductions to chapters; I also didn’t think they warranted a book of their own. I still wanted to do a book, but I couldn’t get a good idea of what I wanted to do or how to structure it.

Then, as usually happens, a book idea came to me once I had let go of the previous idea and after the experience of Oshkosh, a part of aviation I had been away from for many years. It was centered on the idea of adapting professional aviation standards to general aviation. I sort of touched on the issue in the post “Pro-Am,” where I talked about the differences between general aviation and professional aviation, and, in a way, it is something I have been thinking about since my very first book, written back in 1983 and now out of print, Fly Like a Pro.

I‘ve got a starting outline, and how that happened is an interesting story in itself. I had tried, back before going to Oshkosh and before I had a clear idea of where I wanted to go with the book, to make up an outline, or at least a list of topics, and had really struggled with it: no coherence, just a bunch of different ideas, some that could become chapters, others that were just thoughts, and I couldn’t even get a consistent writing style in listing them. I put it away, thinking it was a start and could be improved on later after I had thought about it more.

When the idea did click in my head to specifically focus on professional standards and general aviation, I didn’t even go back to that first outline. I just sat down with a notepad and a pencil, and within 30 minutes had a pretty good outline. A good start anyway, consistent in style with each idea for a chapter of about equal importance, and fairly complete. I have thought about a few additional ideas and it still needs a lot of fleshing out before I can submit it as a proposal to my publisher, but the hard part is done. (That experience of struggling when trying to make a dead end idea work versus everything falling into place once on the right path, is so common, it is kind of a lesson in itself: When it’s right, it works, when it isn’t, it doesn’t. And you can’t force it, you have to step back and hope you can get back on a path that makes sense.)

I also quit doing regular posts partly because I think I finally got down, shortly before leaving for Oshkosh, what I think the most important lessons were from my flying career, and I have, in fact, listed those three posts on the right hand side in a section titled “Credo.” So I have a sense that I have done what I wanted to do with this blog, and probably won’t be doing any more posts on a regular basis.

If you’re used to checking here to see if I there is anything new, I thank you and I apologize for not having done anything lately to justify your interest. It’s probably not going to get any better. If my proposal is accepted, I will be tied up writing on a daily basis for six to nine months and probably won’t do any posts. The next thing I need to think about is whether I really want to do that. But I probably will.

Oshkosh, Saturday and Sunday

Saturday was another good day. Sunday has been a bit of a let down.

Saturday was good for lots of reasons--good weather, a productive hour and a half at the Authors' Corner, another great airshow and lots more walking around--but Saturday was also good because Tom Jacobs, an ATA First Officer and International pilot who used to fly with me a lot on the Hawaiian turns, showed up at the Authors' Corner, with his father, an aeronautical engineer. And I also meet up with another old friend from ATA, Bill Leeds, Lt. Col. AF (Ret.) and a fellow L-1011 and later 757 captain in San Francisco. Bill had major heart surgery three years ago and was looking great. Also, funny and charming as ever. It was great to catch up with these old friends and introduce them to my family.

Sunday was a let down because Sunday seems to be "Get out of town" day. I got to the airport just after 9am, and probably half of the aircraft were gone already, and most of the rest left before the airshow which started early, 2pm. It was still a nice way to finish up--no crowds with a nice cool breeze. I walked all the way down to the end of runway 36 and discovered a separate area for ultralights with its own grass strip. Even on the last day you can find new things.

The highlight of the airshow today was the Aeroshell three ship acrobatic team of T-6s'. (The T-6, or SNJ for the Navy, "Harvard" for Canada, was the most common primary trainer in WWII and there are still a lot around.) These guys were real pros and I always find acrobatics with more than one aircraft so much more interesting than single ship demonstratinons. The single ships can do more extreme maneuvers because they don't have to worry about aircraft around them, but I find them to be a little repetitious after a while. But three aircraft doing complex formation flying is always thrilling.

The photo about shows the team diving straight down into a three way split at the bottom. Pretty impressive.

Oshkosh, Friday

We got a late start Friday (birthday party the night before plus some people still on California time), but made up for it after that. I gave the new arrivals an orientation tour--the show is so big, you hardly know where to start otherwise. Most of us toured a restored Piedmont Airlines DC-3 (photo above) which was flown in by the Carolina Air Museum. They asked for a dollar donation, "To help pay for the 800 gallons of gas we'll need to get back." A really nice restoration.

Then we picked our spots for the air show which was highlighted by a limited demonstration flight of the F-22 Raptor, the newest air superiority fighter. The F-22 does everything the F-15 does, except faster, slower, tighter, and stealthier. The demonstration was limited because Oshkosh doesn't have a big enough "box"--protected airspace--for a full demo, but it was still very impressive. On takeoff, it points straight up for two thousand feet or so, until it comes to what seems like a complete stop, then, incredibly, pitches straight ahead to level flight and accelerates away, a sort of upside down L pattern. If you don't know airplanes, it's kind of a "so what." If you do, you can't believe your eyes.

Then there was a "Warbirds on Review" show, a series of fly-bys and overhead formation passes for every kind of warbird, from L-19 Birddogs to B-24 bombers, with lots of ground pyrotechnics to simulate an airfield under attack. Very impressive. All the kids watched with their hands over their ears, but I noticed that during an kind of lull in the action, they all had little model airplanes in their hands which they ran around with shooting their brothers' and sisters' airplanes down.

The only hitch in the day was a line of thunderstorms that went through that, fortunately, missed the airfield but threatened to cancel the show. I even saw some nasty looking stuff coming out of the bottom of one, scratchy patches of clouds swirling in circles, but nothing developed. When we got back to the house though, the outdoor umbrella was on the ground and turned out to have a broken strut. The neighbor said there was only one big gust, but it was enough to launch it 15 feet or so. So I owe the owner a new umbrella. It was worth it.