Blog

By Ralph McCormick ©

Why is it that we can always remember our first car, our first love, our first good night kiss, our first… well you get the picture.  If you have soloed an airplane that is one ‘first’ you will never forget.  I can still remember that hot summer day I soloed.   It had to be summer; I was sweating like crazy (actually it was in December).  I can remember the fear that I had to over come before I could solo.  As a child, I had grown up with a mother that said, “You fly, you die.”  With that statement ingrained into my brain, why wouldn’t I have a fear of flying? 

I learned to fly in the ‘infamous’ Cessna 150.  Flying that small plane with two adults, you learn the aircraft’s limitations and yours.  Every decision came around so fast…  all the flight choices that I now make without even thinking, I had to concentrate, quietly debate (with myself) was it right or wrong?  Each decision and move I made while in the left seat took me longer because I was going through this self-imposed doubt.  Right, wrong?  Left, right?  Unstable air turbulence that I never had experienced before had to be dealt with and understood.  Flying was a completely different world for me.

Flying was something I had wanted to do ever since I was a child.  Why?  I have no idea.  I have a theory, however.  There are those of us who have always looked up when a plane flew overhead.  There are those people who drive by the airport, just to look.  Those who buy flying magazines….  My theory is that those of us who fit that format, had mothers who were visited by flying Aliens from another planet about nine months before we were born.  What else could be the common factor? 

Flying is not something that you can force someone to do.  Flying is an event in one’s life where they want to soar the blue sky on “laughter silvered wings.”  It, most definitely, comes from within.  I am not sure that any amount of force could have made me “drag” myself back to the airport for another lesson knowing that sooner or later I would have to “climb and join the tumbling mirth of sun-split clouds” ALONE.  As I said, no one could have forced me to do it.  It was a force applied to me, by me.  Perhaps, to some flying came easy…. I must confess that it didn’t come easy for me. 

When the instructor climbed out of the Cessna 150 and said. “Let me see your student’s license…  I need to sign it…  they like to have some sort of identification on the body.”  I knew it was time to solo and confront my mother’s fatalistic statement, “you fly, you die”.  The instructor just confirmed it.  I now realized that is why he always got out of the plane after a lesson and said, “Well, we’ve cheated death, again.”  He had heard my mother’s statement.

It was now my turn to join that one percent of the population who “have wheeled and soared and swung high in the sunlit silence, chasing the shouting wind along”.  One percent?  Ninety-nine percent of the population had never done what I was about to do.  I was about to experience one of the greatest ‘first’ of my life, a day to be remembered ‘till the day I die, my first solo in an airplane.

That event seems distant today, 20 years later, yet still fresh.  I taxied out to the short 3,000 feet of asphalt.  I was told to do three take-offs and landings.  One, two, three…  Sure, nothing to it!  Well, yes there is a lot to it…. as far as I was concerned at the time.  My first take off went very well…  up then turn left, keep climbing, then left turn again into…. downwind (?) or whatever it is.  then to left-base… then to final… power back and down that baby comes..  I am not sure why “final” is called “final”….  It has such a “FINAL” sound to it.  My glide down final to a fairly nice, uneventful touchdown… or so it seemed.

That was one landing… Now for the second.  I took off and followed the same left turns to get me to final…  This time on final, I had problems.. the runway kept moving from side to side.. I know it must have been the runway moving, because I was holding everything steady in the Cessna 150.  I got to a position above the runway and decided to ‘flare’…  too high… too high… Nooooooooo…  I was 30 feet above the runway and the southerly wind, from my right, pushed the plane off to the left of the runway.  How did that happen?  Did that runway actually move?  I am now over the fence that runs parallel with the runway…  I must have been pushed 75 feet away from the runway. 

My mind clearly screams… GO AROUND….  GO AROUND!  Power in…  engine sputters… oh no!!!  I forgot never push the throttle in fast, the engine just floods.  I am just feet above the fence. I pull the throttle out and S-L-O-W-L-Y push forward… the engine comes alive with power. Thank God!!!  I would live another day.. or maybe just ten minutes.  I had two landings to go. Now this aborted landing extended my airborne time even longer.  I hate that.  I was a basket case….  a bad basket case. 

I am now flustered. I started to climb and climb so slowly.  The little Cessna didn’t seem to have that climb power. It had to be the “heat” of that December day.  I heard some chatter on the radio.  Couldn’t make out what they were saying…  actually, I don’t really care.. There is a problem on board and I had to figure it out.  I was now the pilot in command…  I used that word command loosely.  In fact, I used the word pilot very loosely.  I was the only one in the plane that would die if I don’t solve the problem.  All of the sudden I look down from about four hundred struggling feet above mother earth and then glance over the instruments and knobs…  CARB HEAT…  IT’S OUT!!!    WRONG…  needs to be, IN…  I pushed it in and the little Cessna lurched forward…  About that time, I finally heard what the people on the radio were saying, “Push the carb heat in.”  I calmly responded as if I had discovered it a long time ago, “Roger.. not a problem.. I have it in.”  By just seconds, my friend.. by seconds..

That stupid mistake really got me.  I make that first left turn and I can see the runway off my left shoulder.  To this day, I get “cold chill bumps” when I recall that vision.  I looked back and said, “Dear Lord, please help me get this thing back to that little spot down there.”  That prayer didn’t take long.  As anyone who has soloed knows, things are happening fast or so it seems.  It seems as bad as a fighter pilot in actual fire under combat situations.  Of course, that is the opinion of a 10-hour student pilot. 

I still have two more landings to go to be considered a student pilot who has soloed. or would I then be called a “pilot”?  Most of the “pattern” went pretty smooth. Just like I had been taught… left turn.. left turn.. left turn.. and pull power … aim for the short black runway in front of me.  Nothing to it..  I started to flare, of course, way high.  With only one in the Cessna 150, everything was different. That loss of his 180 pounds made a big difference.  BAM..  Number two landing could be called a controlled “crash” landing.  The student pilot survived. 

There was only one more landing to go.  It was just as bad as the other two.  I survived another BAM. BAM. landing.  I knew that I could stay on the ground after the third one..  That was all I wanted to do that day.  I had screwed up so many things on the first two; I just wanted to get that thing on the ground, safely.  With two, three bounces. I had made it.  I taxied back to the FBO and received cheers from those who were watching.  They were cheering because I hadn’t completely totaled our only rental plane on the field. 

Those were still tough times.  So was my first kiss…  I think I might have been sweating the same, both times.  Next month the entire bottom falls out of my flying career.  As painful as it is to tell you about it, I am going to ‘fess’ up.

And so it goes….

Some quotes were from High Flight… by John Gillespie Magee Jr.