Chapter 49

Cindy’s turn:

Sometimes I have to pull back from what I’m doing with the National Lab and just enjoy the Munchkins at work. And sometimes I get to fly.

A lot of people don’t know how often an airplane needs an official ‘pop all the covers off’ inspection. For ours, it’s annually. Wally’s been taking care of most of it, but when we picked up our Cessna twin, well...

“I can’t do the annual on that one. Same reason I can’t do the annual on Nikki and Dan’s Mooney.”

“Landing gear checks,” I said. Yep, when you do the annual inspection on a plane with retractable gear, you want to put it up on jacks and run the gear through its paces. Nikki’s Mooney, well, it’s small, but Wally didn’t have the jacks. The company’s Cessna twin, though, it’s BIG, relatively speaking, AND a twin, AND retractable gear. And radar. And TWO engines ... It’s expensive, even for simple aircraft. We sort of shuffle off some of the costs by doing the prep work where we can, pulling up carpets and cabin liners and removing access covers so he can just do the official looking at things, but, with the big twin, well...

“I talked to the people down in Mobile. They’ll do it. Best price you can get.”

Alan says, “It’s a good thing she only cost us a dollar. The annual’s quite pricey.”

“I know the number. But we seem to like jumping around the countryside with ‘er.”

“Yes, it’s given us the flexibility to work some people to death,” Alan admitted.

And I’ve gotten quite adept at turning a couple of remote locations into a round robin tour, dropping a crew here, picking up a crew there, bringing them back. Of course MY Dan keeps telling me that being a taxi driver is below my doctorate.

“I do some really good thinking when I’m flying,” I tell him.

“We could almost get a staff pilot.”

“I AM the staff pilot,” I said.

So anyway, today I’m flying Songbird down to the FBO in Mobile and leaving her there for a week or so. Dan’s going to come pick me up in our Cessna 180. He gets to fly more now.

And one other milestone flew by. (Hah! A flying pun!) I am proud possessor of an instrument flight rating. Wally’s tutelage along with some progress checks by the head instructor down there in Mobile, and I took the test. Passed, naturally. That makes a difference. I can file flight plans for weather that would have kept us from making a trip before. I’m not thinking of punching through thunderstorms or icing conditions, but I get a lot more leeway for low visibility and ceiling and such. Means that we can make trips under more conditions. Also means that the flight instruments on the plane need a bit more scrutiny for certification for instrument flight.

This morning we were going to fly off, him ahead of me, but he got tied up with some changes to one of his projects, so I’m going to fly by myself down to Mobile and put Songbird in the shop and wait for Dan to come retrieve me. My MacBook flies with me, so I can work while I’m waiting.

I can do this. I’ve done it many times – take this plane across the country for one purpose or another. I thought of taking Nikki, but a couple of things pop up. One is that if I am not there, she’s the leader of the Munchkin operation. Another is that she’s cautious, being quite pregnant now. So it’s Cindy braving the elements in heavier than air flight.

It’s a bit over two hundred miles, straight line. I’m figuring an hour and a half. I’m not in a hurry. As soon as I’m off the ground, I’m climbing to forty-five hundred feet, headed generally southwest. I contact the traffic control system because I like to make myself known. They give a transponder code that I enter. Now my plane’s progress shows up on their radar screens. Comforting.

I could’ve just dialed in ‘1200’, the required code for uncontrolled aircraft, but now they know who I am. I also filed a flight plan, so if I don’t show up, they’ll know to come looking, but come on ... this is a walk in the park. Ten miles from Mobile, I switch to their approach control frequency, then a bit later, take a hand-off to the control tower for landing. Finally I end up on the ground control frequency. The line boy – I love that term. He’s probably ten years older than me - guides me to a parking spot next to a neat, shiny bizjet, a Cessna Citation CJ2. Neat plane. I’m a bit envious.

After I secure the cockpit, I grab my computer bag and exit the plane, walking to the FBO office. At the counter, I turn the keys over to the nice middle-aged lady. “She’s here for her annual,” I said. “We called...”

“Oh, yes. I’ve got you down. Can I get you a ride somewhere?”

“Oh, no ma’am,” I replied. “My husband’s going to fly down here and get me. If you don’t mind, I’ll scoot over there at that desk and get on my computer...”

“Wait. Where’s the pilot?”

“That would be me,” I smiled.

“Seriously?” She looked shocked.

“Oh, come on, Mizz Shirley.” I’d read the nametag for her name. “Surely you’ve seen a bunch of female pilots...”

“Yes, I have, but you ... how old, if you don’t mind my asking.”

“Eighteen. And fully rated. Multi-engine. Instrument. Building hours like crazy.”

“You’re trying to get on with an airline?” she asked.

That’s a common path – get the licenses, build hours until you can get that coveted airline transport rating and a job with an airline. Frankly, if I WAS going to fly for a living, I’d be more inclined to shoving one of Wally’s ag pilots aside. That big Air Tractor ten feet off the ground, that’s a rush ... Of course, I AM degreed ... Maybe the military ... F-15’s ... Nahhhhh!

“No, ma’am,” I answered. “I’m happily employed as, well, an engineer. A physicist. And I do a lot of flying for our company.”

“Eighteen...” she repeated.

“Yes, ma’am. I sort of pushed ahead of the normal timeline.”

“Must be nice,” she said.

“I like it. It’s all fun.”

She smiled. “Well, do what you got to do. I’ve got accounting to get to.”

I went across the room, parked myself at one of the desks put there for flight planning, and opened my computer. In a minute I was hot spotted to my phone and getting into some papers from Los Alamos.

I was trying to wrap my head around the energy requirements for a fusion experiment when I heard the door open. A male voice said “Hi, Shirley ... Who’s the pilot of that 402 out there?”

My ears perked up.

Shirley pointed. “She is. In the corner over there.”

I looked up. The guy was sixty-ish, probably fifty pounds overweight, greying and balding, dressed in slacks and a white shirt decorated with epaulets that one sees on airline pilots, so I’m guessing ‘pilot’. And he’s walking over toward me.

“Hi. I’m Luigi Haugen. You can call me Geno.”

“Hi, Mister Geno,” I said. “I’m Cindy Richards. You were asking about my 402?”

“YOUR 402? You’re really the pilot?”

“Yessir. The plane belongs to my company. I’m one of the two people we have who can fly ‘er. I get most of the hours.”

“You look kinda young.”

“I am. Eighteen. Got my multi-engine last summer. My commercial two months ago. My instrument ticket last month.”

“402’s a nice plane. I flew one a few hundred hours as a charter pilot and for a little non-sched airline between Florida and the Bahamas.”

“Really?” I replied. “I’ve got a bit over a hundred hours in ‘er.”

“You know the secrets, right? Loading. Fuel capacity.”

“Oh, yes ... We tote a few technicians, a few hundred pounds of equipment and luggage around the countryside all the time. She can be a pig if it’s hot and she’s heavy. The only time I lost an engine, though...”

“You lost an engine?”

“Oh, yeah ... Got rather dicey for a bit, but everything came out just fine.”

We chatted a bit more before I asked him what he was flying these days.

“That Citation out there.”

Okay, Cindy, sometimes a squeal is the proper reaction. I squealed “REALLY?”

“Yep. I work for an executive charter company. That’s one of the planes. We had to get a radio swapped out, so here we are.”

“Uh ... curiosity. Can you let me into the cockpit?”

I’m talking with a guy who loves what he’s doing. “Sure! Come on!”

I stood up. “Mizz Shirley, can I leave my computer here for a bit? I wanna see Mister Geno’s Citation.”

“Sure, hon,” she said.

Walking out to the plane I asked, “How do you reconcile a given name of Luigi with a surname of Haugen?”

“Mom was all about loving Italian culture. Dad just let ‘er name me Luigi, then nicknamed me Geno.”

He opened the Airstair entrance, then stood back. “You go first. I’m sure you can find your way to the cockpit.”

I bounded up the stair and into the cockpit. He was a bit slow, but followed me. “Wowwww,” I said. “I’ve seen pictures...”

He smiled. “Go ahead. Sit in the left seat.”

I did. I thought my 402 was rather luxurious, but this thing – the passenger compartment was PLUSH, all leather, and they didn’t stop spending money when they got to the cockpit door. I sat down. Wiggled.

“Hang on,” he said, sliding into the right seat. “Let’s power up the panel.” His fingers flicked a few switches and my piloting experience entered the twenty-first century. This thing didn’t have the old, discrete analog round faces of the instruments I normally flew with. Glass cockpit, they call it. I was oooohing and ahhhhing when I heard the familiar sound of a six-cylinder Continental piston engine outside.

“That’s my husband,” I told Geno.

“Pilot, too?”

“Oh, yes ... He’s the one that got me started.”

“Sit here. I suppose he’d wanna see this, too.”

“You betcha,” I said. Geno left. I fumbled around until I discovered the seat adjustment and moved my seat to somewhere I could fly from. ‘Cindy, ‘ I told myself, ‘this is really nice... ‘

“She’s in there,” Geno’s voice said.

“Probably drooling all over everything,” came Dan’s voice.

“Am NOT,” I called out. “But baby, this is NICE!”

“Go ahead, Dan,” Geno said. “Take the right seat.”

Dan laughed. “You’re not trying to SELL me this thing, are you?”

“I gotta GET me one a’these!” I squealed at Dan.

“Noooooo, baby, the company’s NOT gonna buy you a biz jet...”

“No, I can’t sell it anyway, but Dan, when I found out she was flying the 402, we talked, and she said she wanted to see inside this thing.”

“She’s notorious, Geno,” Dan said. “She’s flown a T-6 (Auth note: A World War II advanced trainer) and an Extra and a Pitts S-2...”