No More Stalling: Shellbell's Flight Adventure Number 2
Shelley J Alongi

 

All night you could hear it: the whipping sound of the cool wind that swept down from somewhere definitely giving our city a much needed cleansing, but making me wonder if there would be a flight in a little Cessna for me the next day. Six months in the making, that was going to be quite a day, whatever happened. Unlike the last time I took a flight in a small plane I did not wake up with arms and legs tangled around me. No I woke up all alone with my two pillows and the cool air greeting me, the halfway clean kitchen, and the nagging thought: so what will I do today? Oh, yeah, besides go flying, if the wind doesn�t call the whole thing off! The morning progressed and somehow I decided what I was going to do: besides go flying, of course! Somehow I got to the bank and to the school to wait for a bus to go to Fullerton College and drop off an ice-cream dipper and pick up some candy and then decide whether or not to take the bus to the airport, call a cab, go home and call a cab or go home and take a bus. Oh, the pain of making a decision! Standing in the breezeway at Cal State Fullerton, Tim asked if I wanted coffee. I usually get free coffee for helping sell donuts at the table. No, I said, I was wired up as it was, and if I had coffee I would probably be trying to jump out of the plane, whether or not a parachute was included with emergency gear. Emergency gear? In the Cessna? The only emergency gear was the pilot eleven years younger than me and the �because I said so� routine wasn�t going to work with him because he was going to give the orders and I wasn�t.. If you know what I mean�maybe you don�t! Well, anyway I forwarded the calls to my cell phone expecting any minute through the whipping breeze as I crossed the street to hear that the flight was off. I was prepared for such a collapse of my plans for the day: hey I�ve been rejected before, and done the rejecting, a little wind interrupting my day could be dealt with! By 2:00 the wind had died down and the pilot hadn�t called me so I figured he was busy or we were on or I was just paranoid and just needed to get the heck to the airport so I could wait on edge there instead of standing around at my old job looking at people and making senseless conversation about history classes and such things. So I gave up and at 2:00 I made my way to the airport and arrived for my 4:00 appointment one hour and a half early!

But I did not sit there biting my nails or playing with my watch! No! When I got there, a man and a woman were waiting for their alternator to be fixed or replaced because during takeoff for Lauflin their ameter had discharged and that could mean a drained battery, causing a failure of electrical power, stranding vital communications between Air Traffic Control and You, and so they had returned to the airport and were waiting for the alternator to be fixed! I started talking to the lady whose name was Sharon and then I pulled out my pictures of Dale�s plane!

�I want you to know they walked away,� I said. Everyone gawked in polite fascination, I�m sure. By the time those pictures made the rounds the instructor had seen them, the Mooney�s pilot had seen them. We had all seen them! And recognized one of the guys in the picture! Very, very interesting!

But like I said I did arrive early and so while the pilot flew with a student and country music blared from the hangar and the sounds of mechanical work went on, and crew wandered in and out of the office, I got on the phone and played the role of the YUPPIE with her cell phone looking important! Then it was my turn!

This time I wasn�t so nervous! Anticipating, yes. Nervous, maybe a little. Actually, possibly a bit anxious if the truth were told! Anxious because there had been two serious aviation accidents in the last week piled on top of the Columbia disaster, all of this making for the feeling that this was a little closer to home than I wanted. One of the accidents involved a flight instructor and a pilot whose plane slammed into a hangar causing a huge fire and�well, what if the pilot had been me? Now admittedly I wasn�t too worried about me dying in a plane crash but when suddenly the confines of a small plane become an intimate, personal thing�well it just leads to some what ifs�but not to many! At least, not for me! So we walked around the plane feeling the props and checking the rivets.

�Hello, plane, how are you?� I said, touching its cowling. The last time the plane had been an object to be admired, now it was an object to be loved. Love and admiration are two separate things, you know. Intimately familiar with the bugs on the wings and the little rivets and the feel of the props, I made my way around the plane with the pilot explaining things to me. I do have to admit that I did learn some things I hadn�t retained from the last flight: the shape of the spinner, the windows in the baggage area, the actual fly wheels the engine. We were a team, holding up the elevator controls (I think it was) while he checked the number of nuts holding the hinge pens (hey no comments about the number of nuts in the plane�: Somehow I forgot about putting my hand in the engine last time. The pilot said I was going to become an expert in preflighting. There really is a love affair that has to go on with planes or else why spend so much time taking care of them? To save your life perhaps? Well, now there�s a possibility!

Walking around to the door of the plane I had the distinct impression that something was different this time around! I was right. Because I wanted to fly longer, I was going to be the pilot today! Aha, it **was* different! I climbed into the plane with a little more trepidation than the last time. Maybe last time I was just too nervous to care. There seemed to be more room this time, but perhaps it was because I was positioned further back from the controls? Locating the lawyer locks was a challenge, turning the hand backwards to locate a small piece of metal which could save your life as the plane drops or burns all around you is certainly my idea of the ultimate stress test! Find the hardest to locate piece of metal in your plane and oh yeah, fly the airplane too while you�re at it.

Clipping myself in and getting the briefing, latching the door, adjusting the headsets (yes the same ones as last time), it was time to start the engine, the old fashioned way: with a key! The single engine sputtered into life, caught, and powered up, letting us know it was ready even if I thought I wasn�t.

Many of you who are wondering about this Shelley as pilot thing don�t have to worry because I didn�t do the critical maneuvers, just the token ones, but I have to tell you the perspective was different! Soon we were climbing at 650 fpm and this time I could hear the pilot and the tower, and then we were over the 91 and into the PAR approach airspace! We didn�t get to do that. I had planned my schedule so that we could do PAR, and guess what? The tower was closed! The pilot was laughing! Don�t worry, I said, next time I�ll come in on Friday and we can do it. Of course he could probably do it whenever he liked, but if I was going to be their, it had to be Friday rather than Monday! And then the new thing happened, but some observations about the old things. When we reached altitude and went into level flight, when we checked for traffic, when we were 3500 AGL I remembered why I like this so much! The confidence of the engine in front of me, the propeller spinning, all the while creating motion over the wings, the machine responding to the carefully planned movements of flight control surfaces. Suddenly it was all happening again, the feeling of being above everything, hurtling at a mere 68k just being there above the houses and the hustle and bustle of the world. Okay it wasn�t too far above but far enough to make a difference!

Then the new thing happened! It was time to do what I had asked for the stall. We had taken care to make sure I could hear the pilot this time, and then he was talking to me, placing my Hand on the throttle, a little shaky at first hoping I didn�t push it in or pull it out too far, listening to the reassuring voice of the pilot explaining what we were doing, hearing the engine power down, and then the truly sinking feeling as the plane descended at merely 500 fpm and the engine strained against the physical properties of air and the stall horn went off and the plane rocked�and then finally the engine revved back in power, the nose was pushed down, and the engine sighed in relief and maybe me, too. There is nothing so reassuring as lift and then power! I have to wonder at this point as I was sitting in a closely monitored environment with the comforting closeness of the pilot much more experienced in these matters just exactly what it was like for Dale�s plane to hit that fence! I remember the report talking about losing altitude and I just had to wonder if the experience was even comparable. Whether comparable or not, this little plane was a living, breathing little machine trying to do what it was created to do: fly; and here we were restraining it all because a curious human wanted to know what it was like to stall the plane. I think he asked me how I felt about it. It was kind of like crossing the street. That�s a long, long story! The anxious part and then relief! It was a bit scary. Maybe he asked if it was frightening. I don�t� remember now, all I could think about was how the plane was dropping and how I was glad we could recover it�and then I asked if we could do it again! You know, some people are just�well, gluttons for punishment!

Then we listened to JWA airspace telling the heavy to turn here and then we saw something�the red light saying the meter was discharging! Oops! We had to cut the flight short because of the same problem the couple mentioned earlier had encountered! We began our descent to Fullerton airport, executing the traditional pattern and then the landing gear squeaked confidently onto the ground without incident. When I got out of the plane I was a bit shaken, or was it cold, or was it exhilarated! I�d do it again in a heartbeat...all of it!

Tomorrow it�s back to school and archives, and number crunching, Pampered Chef, proofing, singing, and planning my next flight.

Perhaps it wasn�t till after the whole adventure when I was seated at a restaurant with a chicken pot pie and a salad that I fully realized how much I had enjoyed it all�even the stalls! I have found something that I truly enjoy. I don�t particularly like many movies these days, I�m not into what might be considered traditional forms of entertainment, so spending $100 plus to hang out in a plane and then treat myself to dinner�well, it�s just my style. Someone was teasing me today, asking if I had a date. Sure it was! But it was better than dinner and a movie! Way better!

 

 

Copyright © 2003 Shelley J Alongi
Published on the World Wide Web by "www.storymania.com"