Chapter 36

Haley’s turn:

Almost two hours of the blur of that eight-foot propeller in front of me. There’s the airfield. Radio’s on the Unicom frequency.

I punched the button, made the call to announce myself at the destination.

Now the guy who’s going to give me the test has probably given hundreds of them, but I bet he’s never done one in a Stearman. Compared to our little Cessna 152, this thing is HUGE, but Haley’s got it under control. Landing’s easy, even if it isn’t our grass strip. Besides, we’re getting paved soon.

Anyway, I’m making my way to the FBO office, cutting gentle S-curves so I can see both sides of my taxi path. I get to the apron in front of the FBO, spot the fuel pump, don’t see anybody telling me where to park, so I pivot on a wheel, point the nose toward the runway, and do a shutdown.

By the time I’m climbing down, there’s a guy walking out of the office.

“Are you Mike Mitchell?” I ask.

“Yes, ma’am. And you’re Haley Simon, right?”

“Yessir.”

“Matt warned me. I started believing when I heard your engine.”

“She’s beautiful, isn’t she?” I said.

He patted the taut doped fabric of the fuselage. “She sure is. It’s been years ... Didn’t know if I’d ever get into one again.”

“Well, here you go,” I said. “We got all day. Let’s start with a full tank, though.”

He helped me refuel. Fortunately they had a tall enough ladder. After that, we went inside for the verbal part of the test.

I got this stuff. It’s just another set of facts, after all, on the surface. That they have a life or death import, that’s always at the back of my mind, though. As an academic exercise, though – piece of cake.

He’s looking through my logbook now. “Yeah, Matt told me you had some time logged as a student in a turboprop.”

“Cindy.”

“He told me about her, too. Sounds like quite the lady.”

“Oh, she’s legendary,” I said. “Made the news for flying a couple of times.”

“And she signed you off for this thing last week?”

“Yessir,” I said. “Most of my hours are in the little Cessna, but I LOVE this thing.”

“Okay, I see the sign-off. And you’ve done twelve hours since then...”

“Yessir,” I said. “I was really comfortable with the 152, and I wanted to be comfortable with this one. Got kinda spoilt with the flaps on the 152. But this thing’ll side-slip radically, and it glides like a brick anyway.”

“You seem to know your flight envelope. Come show me.”

We did the preflight. “I’m going to forgo the visual fuel check since I just pulled the nozzle out of ‘er. Now, here’s a neat thing about that fuel gauge...” I explained to him the ‘wiggle the wing’ trick. “Doesn’t work quite as good on a full tank because she doesn’t slosh as much, but if you watch real close – wiggle the bead, the gauge is working.”

The rest of the checks are easy – fewer moving parts than the little Cessna – but just MUCH bigger.

He took his phone out. “I gotta have pictures of this,” he said.

Yeah, it’s kind of hilariously incongruent. I took pictures of him, too. Gave him my email address. Had him take pictures of me with my phone.

Then it finally comes down to this.

“I fly from the back seat,” I said. “There’s a little mirror so you can see the anguish on my face.” I giggled. “And make sure I have my hood on for the instrument part.”

I went through the start-up routine, speaking each step as I performed it. “Two complete revolutions with the starter, mags off. Checking for hydraulic lock.” I added, “at home we usually pull the prop through by hand for two revolutions after she’s been setting overnight.”

Then she starts. Neat little cloud of fragrant blue smoke that says, “You have just started a bit of aviation history.” The engine’s there on the nose, no cowling to mitigate the sounds, and radial engines just sound busy, even when idling.

Taxiing, careful S-curves. Engine run-up, verbalizing each step, what I’m doing, what I’m looking for.

Radio call. No answer. Pivot around, visually checking for traffic, then out on the runway.

“Any particular choice of take-off regimen?”

“It’s a Stearman, girl. Not much difference between ‘em.”

“I know. Got used to it, but I can keep the tail low – soft field technique...”

“Make yourself happy.”

“I know all about flaps. Cessna 152’s got good flaps. I’m familiar...”

And we’re in the air, climbing.

“Okay,” he said. “You showed me your flight planning. Take me to Shreveport Downtown.”

He’s looking for accuracy at holding altitude and heading, and he’s looking for proper radio communications, approach control, then tower.

Twenty minutes gets us there, I get one touch and go, then we head back to his home airfield.

I know it’s coming. I’m cruising along, just under a hundred miles an hour at four thousand five hundred feet, trimmed out just fine on a course of just a little west of due south. Life is good.

And the engine dies. Well, it doesn’t die, because first thing I do is put a hand on the throttle, but in my ear I hear, “You lost your engine.”

“Okay. Fly the plane first.” I trim up for glide. “Second, make the Mayday call. 121.5. I’m still on the departure freq, so I’ll tell them first, and switch the transponder to 7700 and squawk emergency.”

No comment.

“And now I’m looking ... Where do I put this thing?” I said. “Look, there’s Bluebird Hill. Easy shot.”

“Not bad. Put us there.”

I wing over in a gentle turn, set my course, make a Unicom call to announce my location and intentions. It’s an uncontrolled field. Oh, this is just gonna be cute.

“Three-sixty overhead for Runway one-eight,” I say into the intercom.

“What?”

“Three-sixty overhead. I’m a thousand over the threshold, runway heading. Left break.”

She’s a sweet old girl. Utterly predictable. I break left, easy, wide turn. Check the altitude, play the downwind just a little long, break left again, hold the turn until ... ten feet high over the threshold, then the wheels touch.

“And then we clear the active as best we can and evacuate to await emergency services.”

“Damn, girl!”

“I have been taught by Doctor Cynthia Richards, sir. I hope to be worthy.”

“Just damn!”

“That was a bit of luck,” I said. “I usually have to slip to drop a bit of altitude.”

“Wheel us around and take us back,” he said. “Just damn!”

Back up to forty-five hundred feet.

“Put your hood on. I got the stick.”

I donned the practice hood. Now I can’t see out of the cockpit. Deena’s chinstrap mod works to keep it in place.

“Hooded up.”

“Okay, when I say so, it’s yours.”

I felt us swing to the side, wing dropping.

“Your plane.”

“Needle. Ball. Airspeed,” I repeated the mantra out loud. Had us leveled up in a trice. “Now think about how best to get back VFR.”

“Let’s do another one.”

Different attitude, same result. This time I put us back on heading.

Closer to the field we went through the stall regimen. “I can do spins, too.”

“Not part of the private test,” he said, “But if you want to...”

Nose up, power back, feel the stick kind of buck, kick the rudder over hard. Nose is down, world’s turning left. Right rudder, power, then it’s just another dive. Nose back up...

“Good. Let’s get to twelve hundred feet and you can show me turns about a point.”

Short field landing. Nose high, carrying power, over the spot, chop the power, set the wheels down, then brake.

“Pilatus has beta mode,” I said. “She stops fast!”

Another landing. This time I show off my skills with slipping the plane sideways to bleed off altitude.

Finally, “Take me to the office.”

“You can fly ‘er a bit if you want. Old time’s sake.”

“I’d love that. You don’t mind?”

“Absolutely not. Have fun.”

“Lemme get some altitude. I’m a bit rusty.”

“FYI,” I said, “When you buckled in, you put on a parachute harness. You know, just in case...”

He laughed. “Nice to know ... My skills are rusty.”

Rusty, maybe, but the old girl danced her dance among the sparse clouds – Immelmans, chandelles, then... “Are you up for a loop or roll?”

“Go for it,” I said. “My next goal is some aerobatic training. Hanna Bertrand’s won trophies. She’s gonna teach me.”

He laughed. “Figures. Okay. Loop. One-twenty ... uh hundred and five knots, that’s a good entry speed for loops and rolls.”

He did us one of each. “Now, on the roll, you ‘member how you had to constantly change your bank for turns about a point?”

“Yessir.”

“To do a roll right, you do the same thing with the nose of your plane, keeping it on the same spot on the horizon. Three axes of control...”

He showed me, then “Okay. YOU try...”

You’re not supposed to squeal at your flight examiner.

He helped me top off the tank after we landed. Signed off my logbook, including an hour of basic aerobatics.

I called Bill from Mike’s office.

“Hey, babe! How’d you do?”

“You need to pick me up at the Greyhound bus station. Mister Mike said that under no circumstances should I ever be allowed near the controls of an airplane again.” I punched the speaker button so Bill could hear Mike’s sputtering.

“Damn, Bill,” he said. “I ain’t had fun like today since the hogs ate my brother.”

“She’s something, is all I can say,” Bill said. “So you turned ‘er loose?”

“Yep,” Mike said. “Showed ‘er how to loop and roll, too.”

“Shame on you. You’re not just an addict, you’re a pusher.”