One sunny afternoon in Irving, TX, I scheduled a crosscountry flight and reserved a plane.  I did everything the way you are supposed to do, not the way it was done at the Old Red Baron flying Club (See my first post.).  I called the Flight Service Station (FSS) and got the weather for my flight.  I was going to fly to Oak Grove Airport and then on to Waco and back to Greater Southwest Airport (GSW).  FSS indicated the weather was good, so I topped off the tanks and headed for Oak Grove which was south west of GSW.  As I flew along, I noticed it was getting a bit dark to the west of me.  The further I flew, the darker it got and the more concerned I became.  I landed at Oak Grove and had the FBO sign my logbook and then decided to call FSS again.  I asked the operator if the weather had changed since I filed my flight plan.  Indeed it had he said and further indicated there were thunder storms in the area.  I asked if I could bake it back.  He asked where I was returning and when I said GSW, he said you can make that but you couldn't make Meacham (An airport on the west side of Fort Worth.)  I amended my flight plan and headed back.  It got darker and darker and I saw flashes of lightning off to the west.  At this point, I was getting scared.  I began flying the needle. An aircraft has an instrument called a VOR receiver.  As it happened, there was a VOR transmitter at the end of the GSW runway so all I had to do was keep the needle centered and it would take me right to the end of the runway.

Well, it continued to get darker with more flashes of lightning and I had just about decided to set down at one of the many airstrips in the area and wait the storm.  I looked ahead just about then and saw the big Eiffel Tower structure at Six Flags Over Texas.  I knew this to be 3 miles from the end of the runway.  I immediately called the tower and received clearance for a straight-in approach.  I made one of my best landings ever and taxied to the school tiedown area.  I got the aircraft tied down and ran for the building.  It started raining before I got inside and I got drenched.  It rained for 3 days.  My instructor told me how proud he was that I had sense enough to recognize a potentially bad situation and return.  Sense indeed!  that was good old fashioned fear.

This didn't happen to me but it did happen to a good friend of mine.  He was beginning a training flight out of Addison Airport in Dallas.  He was cleared to takeoff by the tower and began his takeoff roll.  All of a sudden he hears this loud banging on the fuselage on the right side of the aircraft.  A quick glance indicated the engine was functioning well, but he decided discretion might be the better part of valor so he pulled off the runway at the next intersection.  He checked the fuel, shook the wing up and down..nothing jumped out at him.  He then did a walk-around of the aircraft and saw the problem.  When the right side door was closed, the seatbelt was left dangling and the door closed (They don't fit as tightly as does a car door.) leaving a portion of the belt outside and thus banging against the fuselage as speed increased.  Steve told me that he opened the door and slipped the belt inside and closed the door.  Rather than admit the problem to the tower, he called ground control and asked permission to taxi to the FBO.  He decided to forego his flying that day rather than suffer the embarrassment of admitting the problem.

What does this have to do with models you ask?  Well, nothing but it does have something to do with flying.

Rick Takes To The Air

My name is Rick and I always wanted to fly.  I was living in Irving, Texas, when I was able to talk my beautiful wife into letting me take flying lessons.  I found out the government would pay for most of the lessons since I was a veteran so I bought the requisite flight computer and the ground instruction training course.

The Red Baron Flying Club

I joined the Red Baron Flying Club since someone told me that was the least expensive way to fly.  Lessons were at Red Bird Airport in Dallas.  I called, made an appointment, went out and met the individual that was to be my flight instructor,  In FAA parlance, he is called a Certified Flight Instructor (CFI).  Lessons were an hour long and in a Piper Tri-Pacer.  The first flight was exhilarating!  When I had 5 lessons, I went out to Red Bird one Saturday morning and was told the plane was unavailable.  One of the other students had made a hard landing and broke the bungee cords.  These are the spring like cords that allow the landing gear to flex when they contact the ground.

The instructor met with me and apologized.  He told me that he was going to have me solo that day.  At this point, I had not made a single landing with my hands and feet.  His hands were always on the yoke and the rudder pedals.  I realized that was a disaster in the making.  I was no more ready to solo than Sarah Palin is to become president.  I decided right then I was going to become an ex-member of the Red Baron Flying Club.  If I was to learn to fly, it would be done the right way, in a professional instructor.

Letting my fingers do the walking through the yellow pages, I found a flight training school at Amon Carter Airport.  I called and set up a meeting, went out and met with the gentleman who was going to be my instructor.  He told me I would need to get a flight physical and a student license and we would get started.  After getting the requirements accomplished and buying a log book and I was all set.  We started all over as if I had never seen a plane.  The first day, I learned to check the fuel to ensure it had no contaminants such as water in it.  This was accomplished by opening a petcock under the wing and catching about half a glass of the fuel, then what to look for.  I also learned that different types of avaiation gas were different colors, so that had to be checked.

Finally, we climbed into a shiny Cessna 150 high wing plane.  It was supposed to hold 4 persons but they would have to be small with no legs.  My instructor had me get out the pre-takeoff check list and we went through that with him showing me what to look for .  We never did that at the Red Baron!  We did the engine start-up and contacted ground control and received permission to taxi to the FBO (Fixed Base Operator) where you buy fuel and oil.  Here I learned to top the tanks of.  On the Cessna 150, the tanks were in the wing with gravity flow between the two tanks.  We then contacted the tower for permission to taxi to the active runway and take off.

The instructor had me follow him by lightly placing my hands on the yoke (In the olden days and in modern fighter planes, it is a "stick".)  and my feet on the rudder pedals.  The 150 has what is called a steerable nose wheel done with the feet.  It has what is called heel and toe brakes and the nose wheel is controlled by these same rudder pedals while on the ground.  After getting clearance from the tower, we began our take off roll with my instructor pointing out you had to add a lot of pressure on the right rudder pedal to avoid slewing to the right due to torque from the engine.  We lifted off and away we went.  I felt far more safe and secure than I did with Ye Old Red Baron Flying Club.

We had a designated practice area for practicing various manuevers required for a flying lessons.  We did what seemed like endless turns around a point, where you selected a point off a wing and began doing turns around that point.  The purpose of this was to show how wind drift affects a plane.  Another manuever was "Esses" across a road where you cross back and forth over a road in a pattern similar to an "S".  Mine were more like 5's than S'es.  Another manuever was flying in 360 degree cicles, the point being to maintain your altitude.  I remember doing that one day and the instructor said "that one was perfect".  I had hit my own turbulence on the next turn!

I was taught stall recovery.  A stall is what happens when you are at such an angle of attack the wings lose lift and you fall off and head downwards.  It's scary because to recover you must lower the nose which seems backwards because you are going down nose first.  It works though but I had one problem, during the approach to a stall I let the nose wander due to trying to control with the ailerons.  The instructor told me I really needed to stop that since it could cause you to spin.  Sure enough, my plane went into a spin one day and he let me do a three turn spin before recovering for me.  Recovery from a spin is essentially as recovery from a stall.  You add power and lower the nose.

During my 10th hour, we were shooting touch and go landings (You come down, let the wheels touch and then go to takeoff power and go back around.)  when my instructor told the tower the upcoming landing would be a full stop.  After I landed and turned off the runway and was headed to the plane parking area, he told me to let him out at the tower.  When I did this, he told me to take it around for 3 more landings.  It didn't dawn on me what this meant.  I contacted the tower, got the proper permissions and began my takeoff roll.  The plane lifted off a good bit quicker than with two persons aboard.  I made the authorized turn and began the downwind landing for the first touch and go.  All of a sudden, I realized the right seat was empty and I would have to get this machine back on the ground safely,  The key word being safely.  To make a long story short I my three landings were "greasers" or painted on, they were so smooth.

There is more to my flying saga but I will leave that for another time and story.