Chile

Flying is like the rest of life in that persistence and patience pay. Remember the last couple of days before your first solo? If you were like me, you were impatient for that achievement, so you kept on trying and trying and trying until it all came together. The rest of one's flying career often follows that pattern. Keep trying and trying and trying and it all comes together and something wonderful happens.

So there I was in Chile on mathematical business. Before leaving I had called a guy who called a guy who called a guy who might have know a guy whom I could fly with while there ("Thank you" to John and Rodrigo), but that wasn't going to work out. The first few days had terrible weather, and the mathematical conference was just excellent, so while I was disappointed about the flying the trip was more than worth it.

But, still, I kept trying. So I called another guy, but he didn't speak English and my Spanish wasn't good enough. A Chilean friend offered to call for me, and got the number of a guy who spoke English who called a guy whom I could fly with! He was based at Temuco, my departure airport, so the plan came together: a one hour flight with Brian out of Temuco in a Cessna 172XP, followed by the first leg home in an Airbus 318.

In the USA we are so focused on GPS and IFR that it almost sounds like an insult to call someone a VFR pilot. But it's a compliment; think of Duane Cole, who flew his clipped-wing Taylorcraft all over the country, VFR only, and never missed a show (although sometimes he departed a day early). And that's what Brian is: a highly-skilled VFR pilot who seems to know the whole country of Chile in detail, from flying to visit his cattle ranches.  He raises an Angus/Hereford mix.

Like Brian's cattle, I'm a hybrid.  IFR and VFR are like my twins, whom I love equally for different reasons.  But the only charts I had available were IFR charts, which the Chilean government posts online. As we discussed where to fly, I was looking at the chart and thinking "120 radial for 42NM", but that was not necessary. Brian knew the way. (The 30 mile visibility was helpful, too!)

The Chilean government has lots more information online, including an equivalent of FlightAware and facsimiles of filed flight plans. I can't tell whether this is openness or control.

Brian's niece had recently married a guy form the US and he asked if they could ride along. Of course! Empty seats on a sightseeing flight ought to be a crime!

So we launched out of Temuco. I was in the right seat, but Brian graciously let me do all the flying, so the net.logbook.police can just back off when they complain that I shouldn't have logged the flight. He looked out the window while I tried to follow the stupid 120 radial; after a couple of minutes we could see the top of Villarica volcano peeking out from above the scattered layer and I forgot about the radial and just headed there.

I don't think the airplane had Mode C, because Brian left the transponder on ON rather than ALT. This was good, because I was all screwed up on Chile's hemispherical rules. Here in the US, FAR 91.159 applies: eastbound cruise altitudes are 500 feet above an odd thousand, and westbound we are 500 feet above an even thousand, at least between 3,000MSL and 18,000MSL. This doesn't make any sense in Chile, which is a long narrow country; you can't go very far to the east or west, so the hemispherical rules have northbound flights at odd thousands plus 500, and southbound flights at evens plus 500. We were headed southeast, so I chose 3,500 MSL, but it should have been 4,500 or 2,500.

No matter; soon we were over higher terrain. Brian does sightseeing flights out of Pucón during the summer, so he guided me through the spectacular terrain. There were a couple of places that made me uncomfortable over Lake Caburgua, because there was really no place to land, but the risk/reward ratio was pretty low. Lake Caburgua is lined with beautiful homes, many of which can only be reached by boat (I didn't think to ask about seaplane until just now; maybe I'll send him an email).

The IFR charts I had don't show the large number of grass strips scattered through the countryside.

Some of them were right next to spectacular fly-fishing streams. I used to own a Taylorcraft, and I would love to have one there to visit these mountain strips.

What about soaring? There was a lot of steady ridge lift near the mountains, and the cumulus clouds were popping that afternoon. The thermals were weak (which is nice on a sightseeing flight with folks in back), but they were there. After we landed at Temuco I noticed that the thermals were cycling quite close to the airport. I don't know if this happens every day, but on that day you could have flown a sailplane all day right nearby.

The tower spoke Spanish, although Brian says that they can speak English if they have to. I found them pretty easy to understand. There was no ATIS; Tower or Ground gave us the wind and weather and runway in use, and that part was all very familiar. There was no big red sign at the hold short point, but the hold short markings were the same. I could get used to flying there very quickly.

From a practical perspective, another country on one's resume is some kind of asset, but that's not the point, is it? I met Brian, his wife, his niece and her husband, and some of the folks at the Aero Club. We all had a wonderful afternoon. flying in spectacular scenery on a beautiful day. What else could you ask for?

Oh, I know: can I have another try at that landing?

Who's Got The Touch?

What is it about flying that feels so good? We've both puzzled over this for years, right?

I appreciate a pretty mountain valley, breaking out of an ILS at minimums, sunrise over the Tetons, and the other wonderful sights we see from the air. Circling with other gliders is a beautiful, dynamic (and dangerous: there was a fatal mid-air in Texas in August) delight for the eyes.

I appreciate the wonderful people I've met through flying, and even the not-so-wonderful ones (I remember thinking "Now I know why your wife divorced you" while one difficult student flew.) I wouldn't give that up for anything.

Instead I wonder about how flying feels.

The aeronautical engineer wannabe in me has a rational reply: Flying straight and level means that you don't feel anything. It's no different from sitting in the living room. There are no accelerations or forces. In gliders there is little vibration. No, there is nothing to feel about flying.

Baloney.

Some kind of feeling is coming back to us through the stick or yoke. No, that's not right, you don't even have to have your hand on the controls. Once, back in the pre-9/11 days, I was jumpseating (that is, riding in the cockpit) in a Boeing 737 from San Francisco to San Diego. The 73 was familiar, as were both airports, and I was focused on the transportation (and being in San Diego for Spring Break!), not flying.

We taxied to runway 1L, all very familiar, while the captain and first officer ran their checklists. "United blah-blah-blah turn left heading two-niner-zero, runway one left, clear for takeoff." Oh this is just too boring and routine. Yawn.

The captain advanced the power levers. Wait, there's no flight director; she's staring at a plain attitude indicator. Is this a mistake? Should I say something? I decide to keep my peace. We start to roll. "V1," says the FO, then quickly, "Rotate!"

And then I knew: she had the touch. As I looked out the side window at the familiar GA parking area, although from an unfamiliar angle, I felt that this airplane was in the hands of a master. The rest of the flight went the same way.

So what is this "touch" that you can feel even from the jumpseat? I think it's related to another touch, the healing touch. I've felt this from a few physicians. My childrens's pediatrician is a former big-10 quarterback. Once as I left his office with one my children he patted me on the shoulder to wish me well. He has the touch! He can heal just by "laying on hands." Send your children to this guy.

Most of us don't have this touch. That does not mean that we cannot be good pilots, and it does not mean that we cannot fly smoothly; it just means that we have to to work harder at it.  And it means that we have to find joy in that work.

But what kind of work? I had a recent revelation about this. I have practiced Tai Chi Ch'uan, the Chinese martial art, for many years. I don't make a big deal of this, and many people have no idea that I do it. Tai Chi has improved my balance and proprioception, and I am at least a little more relaxed. I've also made good friends through Tai Chi.

The center of Tai Chi practice is the form. Different schools have slightly different forms, but no matter the specifics the form is essential. One of the too many things we try to be aware of in practicing the form is what one teacher calls "The Tai Chi ball": At certain points, your hands (relaxed into the beautiful lady's wrist position) face each other. You can feel something there, which of course you cannot see. That's the Tai Chi ball. Some days it's large, some days it's smaller, some days it's vibrating. But there's nothing there!

In Aikido there is a similar concept of the unbendable arm: Imagine water shooting out your fingers to a point across the room, and suddenly your arm becomes infinitely strong. I use this during the trickier balance portions of tehe Tai Chi form, shooting water to the ceiling and using that to hold myself upright. I once described this to a teacher as "cheating", but she just shrugged.

Many martial arts have forms that one tries to master, always falling short. Some days I practice the Tai Chi form, some days I practice the ILS. Are these so different? One friend, a straight-arrow farm boy who now captains an RJ, once remarked that he flew a lot better when he didn't let his shoulders tense up. Musicians say the same thing.

And the connection between martial arts and Chinese calligraphy go back for centuries. My friend's relaxed his shoulders before hand-flying an ILS in 1/4 mile visibility (yes, I was in the airplane), and the great calligraphers have to reach that same state in order to draw that expressive line.

The point? Flying can be an art like any other. And while we need to master the technicalities, we also need to master the art. As the current cliche goes, "right brain - left brain." Or "yin-yang." Take your pick.

Dave English uses his site hikoudo.com to explore the Zen of Flying. It's worth a look.

Poker Run

It was time for some end-of-summer fun flying, and my EAA chapter decided to celebrate with a Poker Run. Despite more years in aviation than I care to admit (remember, I have that AOPA 25 year pin, and didn't join AOPA the minute I started), I had never done one.

Here's how it worked. One of the chapter members flew around to five local airports in his gorgeous RV-10A, depositing envelopes containing playing cards at each. (The fact that his airplane is gorgeous is completely irrelevant to the Poker Run, but still worthy of mention.) Then other members like me flew to each of the airports, picking up an envelope at each. We all met at Tom's hangar in the end, had lunch, told lies, and played our poker hands.

I took one of my students along. At the end he offered to pay his share of the expenses, but I told him that he had given me so much flying that I was happy to return the favor. I had him make a generous donation to the lunch kitty, though.

The weather was much better than it appeared in the photo. The overcast was pretty high (16000 MSL, as I recall), which meant smooth air and lots of hands-off flying. You might enjoy looking up some of the airports on Airnav.com: Blackfoot (U02), Soda Springs (U78), Alpine (46U), St. Anthony (U12), and Rigby (U56). While Alpine is listed as being in Wyoming, the runway crosses the Idaho border. Blackfoot is a nice airport, and I routinely endorse students for solo practice there.

Soda Springs is more difficult. The threshold starts at the highway, and was the site of a bizarre (no injuries) accident a few years ago. (See the NTSB report.) A Canadian twin on short final to Soda lost its landing gear when it hit a truck. The airplane still flew OK, and they finally landed in the grass next to the runway in Pocatello. I happened to be there to watch. They landed with the door open and ran away from the airplane for all their lives. There was no fire.

Alpine is narrow, and has close terrain.

After these two, my student remarked that he understood why I did not send solo students to these airports. St. Anthony and Rigby are more straightforward.

Rigby is south of St. Anthony, and the wind was from the south, so a lot of pilots departed St. Anthony on runway 22 and landed straight in on runway 19 in Rigby. I disapproved, and flew a pattern, but I was in a tough situation. I don't want to be the nasty old instructor telling everyone their business on a fun Saturday flight, but I don't want anyone to do anything dangerous. Everyone was making good radio calls and accurate position reports. So, was it dangerous? It's hard to say. I will say that it was annoying to see an airplane two miles ahead at my altitude, 12 o'clock, saying that he was on final. He must have slowed down early, because I passed 1000' above him as he touched down. So, flying the pattern cost me no time.

As for the poker, my hand was so bad that I won. I didn't know that we were playing high-low. Of course I had already played that game in the pattern.

Brain vs. Muscle

In flight instruction you just don't know what's going to work. The same thing is true in classroom instruction, but in flight instruction there is so much more intimacy. It's possible and even, I hope, likely, that in my classroom career I have said or done things that really helped students understand, but in a room with 32 faces it's easy to look at the wrong one, and miss the "Aha!" across the room.

One-on-one teaching is more satisfying. Take this evening: I was helping my 10-year-old son with his math homework, and for some reason there was something that just didn't make sense to him. I tried several explanations, really groping around trying to see what worked, and when I found something that worked his face lost that frustrated look and he actually said, "Oh! I get it!"

The difference between Math and Flying is that flying involves more muscle memory. Here are there examples from flight instruction in which I got a little lucky and said or did the right thing at the right time, and had the joy of watching someone jump the gap.

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A new glider student was having a lot of trouble flying formation with the tow plane. He was overcontrolling. We made wider and wider swings behind the poor bewildered tow pilot until I would have to take over. This is not unusual. My words and demonstrations just weren't getting through, even though I thought that they were brilliant. (It doesn't matter what the teacher says, it matters what the student hears.)

Almost in desperation, I suggested that he hold the stick closer to its base. I was trying to reduce his lever arm, which might or might not stop him from overcontrolling. It did! He got into position behind the tow plane and stayed there.

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A power student was struggling in the traffic pattern. He did OK when I made the radio calls, but he was getting ready to solo and I soon would not be there to help. Each time he thumbed the push-to-talk switch he would climb or descend or slow down or speed up or do something that he shouldn't have done.

This is not unusual, either. I had to find a solution. Sometimes I have done this on the ground, having the student mimic the actions in the pattern while telling a story. But that wasn't working.

He asked me to fly a pattern so he could watch. OK, I thought, but I try not to do a lot of flying while teaching. (More on this later.) So I flew a pattern.

"You key the mike with your forefinger," he said.

"I do?" I was unaware of this.

"I'm going to try that, too."

So on the next pattern he used his forefinger rather than his thumb to key the mike. Do not ask me to explain the neural pathways, or wrist physiology, or vagal response, but ... it worked! From then on his patterns were fine.

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A glider transition pilot was having a devil of a time with slips. As you probably know, a slip is when you use opposite bank and rudder to make the plane fly a little sideways. This increases the drag substantially, so you can lose a lot of altitude. This is so common in gliders, where we tend to approach the landing with extra energy, that it is required on the flight test.

This student already had a power license with a tailwheel endorsement, so I knew that he had done slips before. Maybe I didn't bear down enough, thinking that this was just a matter of checking off the box before sending him for a flight test, but he just couldn't do it. I explained, I waved my hands sideways through the air, I coaxed, cajoled, and encouraged, but it just wasn't taking.

Remember: I am a blogger. I like words.

On our second session of slips, I gave up on words and said, "Do you want to see me do one?" I don't like to fly while instructing; we are there for the student to fly. In this case the student was already a pilot, so I was even more reluctant to take his flying away from him.

So we told the tow pilot to take us to pattern altitude and I took the controls and did a slip. Not even a great one, really a barely adequate slip.

"I think I've got it!" he exclaimed. We did another pattern tow and now he did a slip and did a pretty good job if it, too.

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The unifying thread in these three stories is that words are not enough to teach an activity. We don't learn baseball, piano, driving with a clutch, how to draw blood, or a gazillion other physical skills by words alone. In medicine, the rule is "see one do one teach one:" the words come last, not first.

In other words, Do what I do, not what I say.

Identifiers

One of those pesky insurance forms sent me to my logbook, and I noticed something about last month's flight in the Diamond Star: the checkout instructor had entered the airport identifier as KLGB, rather than just LGB.  This is embarassing: I always write the full aircraft identifier in my and my students' logbooks.  Why not write the full airport identifier?  

I've had the privilege of flying many aircraft whose registration marks did not begin with 'N'.  I lived in Canada for a year, so flew a bunch of different airplanes.  My favourite [sic] was C-GGGZ, and I tried to avoid C-GOIS, because "Oscar India Sierra" is too much of a tongue-twister for a Bostonian.  

In England, I flew a Tiger Moth, G-AHIZ, surviving an open cockpit in January.  I didn't have a car, so I bicycled to the airport.  I ate an apple before bicycling back to town.

I toured the Mediterranean coast in Archer F-GGMH with an instructor who spoke little English. My French is pretty good, but a whole day of French so exhausted me that I fell behind the airplane.   I ate couscous at an Algerian restaurant that night.  

My wife and I took a memorable overnight trip in an Australian Skyhawk, VH-LIO, visiting out-of-the-way places in Queensland as well as Lizard Island in the Great Barrier Reef.  None of these were accessible by road, especially the island: no airplane would have meant no visit.  In Cooktown we ate giant crabs and crocodile ravioli, and were kept awake by a couple fighting outside our hotel room.  She had caught him with another woman and we were both afraid that she might hurt him (I have never heard such anger, or such cowering) and afraid to interfere for the sake of our own safety.  

Most recently, I got to fly a Wilga, HS-SSR, in Thailand.  That's the picture in my profile.  I was so excited that I skipped lunch, and later ate street food in Bangkok.  (No, I did not get sick.)

When I've flown overseas, in Alaska, or in Hawai'i, I have written the full airport identifier.  From now on I will  use it for all of my flying, whether cross-country,  a session of Lazy 8s, or instrument approaches.  If nothing else, using KSLC instead of SLC or KBOI instead of BOI will remind me that I hope to fly in exotic places again.

There is one big exception: what do I use if I land out in a glider?

Smoke in the Cockpit (almost)

Dennis has had some bad luck with the flying schedule. First we took off into what was supposed to have been a 1500 foot ceiling, which would have been plenty for ground reference maneuvers, but in fact the ceiling was at about 500 feet, so we flew the one pattern and called it good. I suppose that the ceiling was 1500 at the ASOS station behind us.

A few days later, we pulled the airplane out of the hangar after a quick check of the radar, because the forecast called for snow showers. There was one big shower that was clearly going to pass east of the field. By the time we got the doors open and the airplane pulled out, though, the sky to the southwest had become dark and swirly. We watched a little as the storm approached with the airport boresighted, and I made the decision to lickety-split put the airplane away. The line crew was tied up playing tiddlywinks, so I just muscled it in as the snow started to fly, big sideways flakes getting into my ears.    Now the radar showed that the shower really had passed to the east, but had expanded while it did so.

Today the weather was way better than forecast and the airplane was available, so I called Dennis and we hustled out the field. We had briefed this flight several times, so we got in the air pretty quickly. We started with a climb under the hood, then some turns and a good stretch of straight-and-level, which went pretty well. The most annoying part was a new loud buzz in the intercom until we passed the localizer antenna. You know the kind of buzz: It's the "alternator failure" buzz.  I made a mental note.

We're still exanding his stall envelope.  We did clearing turns and the first stall went pretty well, although he almost got a secondary stall.  But it didn't smell right. Something on the ground, I thought. since we were downwind of a town. A couple of more stalls; the smell reappeared when the power was pulled back. I did not like the smell but he didn't smell it yet. Whatever it was was coming from the airplane. I turned off the landing light, and then the heat, but as soon as the power went to idle the smell came back. We turned back to the airport and landed.

There was no smoke. I have seen smoke in a 172 cockpit, thankfully on the ground just before takeoff, and was pleased not to see it again. But I sure was looking for it!

So Dennis has had more than the usual exposure to what the FAA calls "Aeronautical Decision Making": several instances of weather worse than advertised and a genuine "system and equipment malfunction." We had a good discussion about instruments and systems and what you lose when you turn off the master, with the added sensory input of the burn in the back of our throats from the ozone.

Flying the Diamond Star

Spring Break means having fun, so we packed up the kids and headed to Southern California and four days of sunshine. This was particularly welcome after this winter's heavy snow (by the end, I needed to be careful to aim the snowblower exhaust toward the low spots in the snow banks). We had the usual fun (beaches, nice meals, the Getty Center...), but one day was reserved for my kind of fun: flying something new. In this case, something new meant the Diamond DA-40 Diamond Star.

The school sent me their checkout form and my heart sank. It was about 10 pages long, and included lots of questions that could be answered "painted on the airplane". (This metaphor is still appropriate with the Diamond Star's Garmin G1000 panel, because all of the engine displays indicate minimum, maximum, and normal operating values.) Typical aviation test: make it hard by making the questions hard, rather than making the material hard. Limitations are serious matters (although I once had a Chief Pilot who told me to "forget about" the Seneca's maximum zero fuel weight limitation), and should be studied. But there was no question about glide performance (ugg -- 8.8:1), which is the kind of thing that people need to know right now. Nor was there any reasonable flight planning information.

The Diamond Star POH is available online, so I suppose having the quiz helped guide me through it.

The situation at the airfield was completely different. A professional instructor (former regional airline pilot) met me and walked me through a lot of the G1000 stuff. This is important, and a large part of why I wanted to fly the aircraft: every flight instructor needs to understand these systems, and while I have plenty of time flying the Collins EFIS in King Airs, the G1000 is different. After this, we sat down at a genuine G1000 simulator, where I got to press the actual buttons and twist the actual knobs. Most of it was easy, based on past experience with various GPS and FMS systems, but there are always a few tricks.

An instructor also has to understand the stick-and-rudder basics; I'm counting on my tailwheel and glider experience to keep me sharp in this way. But that leads to a question: the DA40 POH lists Vx and Vy at 66 knots (maximum gross weight), and this does not make sense aerodynamically.

The airplane was nice. The wingspan looks short, with little winglets. Steve asked if I had ever flown a composite airplane, and I felt pretty dumb. Composites have been around general aviation for at least 20 years, and except for one flight in a Grob in Australia, all of my composite time is in gliders.

The seats were very comfortable, and the big canopy moved easily (it must be counterweighted?). It i hinged forward of the cockpit (the glider I am looking at has its canopy hinged aft of the glider, which might make it exit the aircraft if it came open in flight). There is plenty of visibility, and the ventilation is good.

The nose wheel casters, so you steer with brakes, like a Grumann Tiger. The engine controls feel really good, and it is easy to set power. The stick (yes, it has a stick) is held by the left hand, and I remarked that I had never flown a stick with my left hand before, but it became natural very quickly.

Maneuvering the airplane is easy, although there is a little more breakout force than I like. The G1000 is hard to learn, and for a while I was behind the airplane, more flying it out of the corner of my eye while staring at the wrong screen.

The G1000 supports a traffic display, and a pleasant voice said "traffic" when someone got close. We were dodging GA aircraft, airliners, Lears, and helicopters, and the display really did make it easier to see them.

My big complaint was that there is no place for a chart. A kneeboard would interfere with the stick. The cockpit is too tight for a built-in chart table. This is the big advantage of a side stick, and it seems odd to me that Diamond would have made this so difficult. It's OK in the G1000 versions, but the older ones didn't have the G1000s and then what did you do? Maybe you could lay them on the console?

Student Joy

I flew with my student and friend Dennis the other day.  He has about six hours now and is having the usual trouble relaxing in the cockpit.  There were a few low level bumps, which bothered him, but even though the air smoothed out when we reached altitude I could see that he was still a little anxious.

We did steep turns (his first), and they were good, then we had the planned engine failure.  "What are you going to do?", I asked.  "I forget!", he said, but recovered and set up a good glide and picked a good field.

Then it was time for rectangular courses.   I was feeling a little discouraged since there was little or no wind.  I toyed with the idea of forgetting the whole thing and going home.  But I figured that there would be some training value in the maneuver, so I reluctantly pointed out a farm that took up a whole section, and Dennis started flying a rectangle around it.  I was busy pointing out landmarks and turnpoints and the like, and he was busy looking outside the airplane.  That's when it struck me: his hand was relaxed on the yoke, and we were flying straight and level effortlessly.  Eureka!  He can fly.