My Worst and Final Crash
I rather quickly bored of flying per se. After I had successfully completed the basic tasks, I considered myself master of them and wasn’t too interested in their refinement. I felt I could take off and land rather well. No matter that on an occasional landing I had to reach out and claw my hand along the ground like an anchor to help slow me down enough not to plow a few rows of corn for a farmer.
One of the attributes I liked most about my dad’s ultralight wasn’t that it was shaped like an elf shoe, but that its glide ratio was 15:1. At the optimal pitch, for every 15 feet it went forward it fell only 1 foot down. Most planes’ glide ratios are less than 10:1. Gliders’ are around 30:1. Other ultralights around 10:1. Just to see, I’ve just now made and thrown a typical paper airplane; it&rsquos glide ratio averaged about 7:1. So, as soon as my pride in my skill at the prosaic elements of flying allowed me, I set to practicing to glide. On a sunny summer day, the upward currents of hot air—a thermals—could help the experienced pilot spend many hours away from the world. Until you’re in a thermal—and even often then—it’s hard to tell where they are or how big they are. Although we are endowed with no natural gifts to live in the air, other animals are. A keen-eyed pilot can push a vulture out of nice thermal and lift himself up on the sun’s warmth.
I had only recently learned to drive, and even more recently taken to driving to the hanger alone to fly. I arrived in the late afternoon, finished a thorough preflight of the plane, and pulled it out to the end of the grass runway. There is a lawn-mower-type of cord the pilot can pull to start the lawn-mower-type of engine from the cockpit, but we never really used that. We all thought it was much easier to stand behind the plane, stretch up like we were offering a gift to a sun god, grab the highest blade of the propeller, and heave it toward the ground. After a flew energetic tries, the cold engine would stammer confusedly as it awoke, clear its throat, and begin its long, angry hum. I climbed into the cockpit, strapped myself in, and firmly pressed the throttle to full as the plane bounced faster along the runway.
I kept the stick forward, giving the plane its head, letting it build speed. The landing gear is fragile—aluminum and hollow plastic wheels like from a kid’s Bigwheel. A plane is meant to fly, and it’s good to get it away from the ground as quickly as one can. Counter-intuitively, this means keeping it on the ground until it’s ready. The plane rattled and hopped along the ground, but as soon as it was ready, I pulled back. The plane reared, and the shuttering stopped. There is a moment that mixes calm with joy as a plane takes to its wing.
Just like when sealed inside those jet-powered cans cramped with people and countless layers of their filth, the take-off and the landing are the most thrilling moments. In the first moments of flight, there’s no regaling in the lift: all is focused on the task and the plane—where I am, what the plane is doing, whether a sheer of wind is waiting just above the trees. Fifty feet or so off, and I can release more and more of myself to the world around, especially the land that diminishes in size as it grows in expanse. Until about 500 feet, everything shrinks away from me, I guess like everything is supposed to be retreating from everything in the universe. After about 500, my connection with the earth—even its contraction—fades. Unless I break through a cloud, this feels as much like utter isolation as I will physically feel. It’s just wind, engine whine, and me.
You’d’ve thought I’d’ve found a Zen there, purer and more needing focus than the woods or a video game. But I had started to tire of that void, and wanted new thrills to lure me there. So, after gaining a couple thousands of feet for my lonely self, I shut the engine off. Just the wind and me, and our slow decent through nothing.
Of course, I had “dead sticked” before, especially on landings. Idling back the engine to its limit as it stuttered over its complaints, I would practice how to land if the engine cut out. Even the most uninstructed pilot knows to fly as if the engine could die at any minute. For those leaden hunks that fall nearly as fast as they fly, this means a sound parachute always at the ready. We had a parachute too, of course—one that unfurled balistically. But for us, this really meant we always knew what was down there, and made sure that a place to land was somewhere within a roughly 45° cone below us. This I did, especially now.
Of course, with the engine off, I noted with pleasure the relative quiet of this vacant, vast surrounding. But I also quickly noticed that the air speed indicator wasn’t working. I’m sure it was working just before I shut the engine off. And it’s a simple thing—pretty much just a needle pushed right by wind pressure—and I’m sure designed for reliability. But no matter; it was out. I’m sure I sighed, probably cursed quietly, and curled my lips in. I do know that I kept flying. Learning the feel of un-powered flight, how the plane responded and turned, amazing at either how steeply downwards 15:1 actually is or (more likely) how unable was I to attain that Platonic angle.
Still, I had plenty of air to fly through, many turns to try, many dips and even climbs to make. Thermals to find and winds to ride like tides.
All this time, I also kept a steady eye on my engine temperature. As anyone who’s started a car on a cold day or a lawn mower after the grass has been left to grow too long will know, a cold engine is a lot harder to start than a hot. Long before I lost too much height to end my dead sticking, my engine cooled in the thin air. Before I let it get too cool, I gave the ignition cord a strong, long pull to bring the engine back to life.
It didn’t start. I refelcted upon the fact that I didn’t know if I had ever in fact started it with the cord. Or if I’d seen anyone use it. I’m sure someone (well, not me, but someone) had tried it and found it to work. I’d think it’d be the sort of thing my dad’d do. I sighed, tested my grip on the handle, grabbed my wrist with my other hand (joystick held between my knees), and gave it another, harder pull. The engine coughed as the propellor hopped. But that was it. One cough. Some hop. No power. I tried again, and repeatedly again, more and more furiously. I stopped only to rearrange the stick between my legs like uncomfortable underwear that fell forward instead of riding up. I pumped the cord, lurching forward, twisting sideways, and gritting my teeth. Still no.
Well, if I couldn’t start it then when adrenaline inflmaed arms, shoulders, and back with all I could give and the engine was warm, then I wasn’t going to start it now my arms were hot and throbbing and the engine was cold and still. So, I sighed again, and settled into the flight. I still had some air to fall through and would fly it about the same with or without power, so I kept track of my chosen landing spot (a different bit of farm field left unplanted than the one I lifted off from), and went back to flying.
Bill Henry, the most avid and thus eventually best flier amoung us had spoken about another master flier who was asked the three most important things to keep in mind while flying. The question’s suspiciously similar to the famous question asked of Conrad Hilton (wasn’t it him?), and the answer is just as suspiciously the same: “Air speed, air speed, air speed.” Whether or not some guy was actually asked and really said this, he’s right, you know. And I really wish the air speed indicator worked.
Or at least had broken when my dad was flying. Years later, with wet sneakers on a cold bar stool’s rungs, an air filter sucking up smoke and blowing flavorless air into an American Legion, one of those VFWs, or some K of C, back hunched into the only position that’s comfortable to assume at a bar, when my dad was drunk but not nearly as drunk as he’d be after I left and he drove home to his hard stuff, he’d growl about my stupidity on that flight. Eventually I told him about the air speed indicator, eventually I’d forgotten I’d told him and he’d tell me he knew, and eventually he’d stopped saying that it may have been a scary flight but he’s the one who had to fly it back damaged to the original air strip and land it again. And he’s right.
But I was cool then. A little pissed, a bit embarrassed at myself, but mostly simply attending to the task at hand. I judged my rate of decent, lined myself up into a landing pattern, and made my turns as efficiently as I could. In fact, I made my landing pattern turns a bit too well; when I made my final turn and gazed upon that one approach I had to the ground, I saw I was too high. I should have nosed down to loose some height at the expense of speed, but I didn’t know—couldn’t know—how much speed I had to gain or loose. I drifted forward, killing height by banking the plane one way while turning the rudders the other, effectively falling sideways out of the air without actually going sideways. I lost almost enough altitude while keeping nearly enough speed before I ran out of runway, but in the end I lost too much airspeed and still hadn’t landed. The plane lost its lift as suddenly as a person faints, and crashed into the ground.
In fact, I think I only fell about five feet, but I honestly don’t know. I wasn’t hurt and the fiberglass plane body wasn’t cracked, but the landing gear was ruined.
I didn’t live with my dad, and I don’t remember him showing too much anger then. Maybe he should have. Gone through the whole of it, just gotten it all out and then let it drop as surely as the plane did. Then again, maybe I should have been a bit less cocky, a bit more frightened by the fall. I’ve never told him all the details, and I doubt it matters. It wasn’t my best moment, and the plane wrecked, it was his and my last flights.
