So You Want To Be a Pilot, An Autobiography

Like many pilot wana-be’s, I had an ego.  It was necessary to verbally build my self esteem with my peers at school.  This of course, did not endear them to my thought of how they should think of me.  In fact, I’m pretty certain that most of them did not believe anything I said to them.  After all, I had been talking about airplanes since the 1^st grade.  I was instead to all of them the airport geek…which I did not appreciate at the time. 

It wasn’t until I was a sophomore in high school that I buzzed the high school football field low enough that I could be recognized in the cockpit alone (about 5 feet high at the 50 yard line), while several of my classmates were on the sidelines at practice, that I gained some degree of credibility.  Everyone at school knew about it the next day.   After I did the deed, I was very concerned that I might have been caught breaking minimum altitude laws.  One of my classmates told me that the coach had taken the tail number, and was planning on turning me in.  I went in to confess, hopefully before he made the call to the FAA.  The coach said, “That was you!”  “Yea,” I confessed.  The coach chewed me out for about 2 minutes, after which I promised to never do it again.  He closed the door to the teachers lounge, and I heard a roar of laughter from inside.  By the way, he did not have my tail number, and had no idea it was me until then.

It was several years later that I found out that another classmate of mine who had started flying earlier that year was summoned to the School Superintendents office and ask to explain why he had buzzed the football practice.  He just sat and listened, not letting Superintendent know it was not him.  He is a friend to this day.  I actually got away with that stunt, and I think if I had the choice to make over, I would still buzz the football practice.  Thanks goodness I’ll never be a high school sophomore again.

Another day, I was in the airport café eavesdropping on one of the pilots explaining to another pilot the procedure for performing aileron rolls.  You guessed it…I had to try.  I took off in a Cessna 150 and climbed to what I thought would be a safe altitude at around 3,000 feet.  It scared the hell out me, but I put the nose down to gain some speed, then pulled up the nose according to the instructions, turned the wheel all the way to the left, and closed my eyes.  Of course, I fell out of the top of the roll and split S out the bottom.  I was headed straight down when I opened my eyes.  I looked at the airspeed indicator that now indicated about 40 knots (on the second time around) and the engine RPM was well over the red line and increasing.  I pulled the throttle and started a gentle pull out (so as to not pull the wings off) recovering at about 500 feet.  My heart was really beating now.  But, as frightened as I was by the whole experience, I felt that if I did not try it again now, I might never have the nerve to ever try it again.  I climbed up to the really high altitude of 3500 feet.  I resolved to not close my eyes this time.  Gain some speed, ease the nose up, ailerons full left again.  I had done it, I was over the top rolling back to wings level….only, in my excitement, I did not neutralize the controls….and over I went again, and again I split S out the bottom.  But this time I was an old hand at the recovery….the airspeed only got up to zero….and I recovered at 700 feet.  I had had enough for today.

I once made a small parachute, perhaps the canopy was 30 inches across.  I took it up over my house and threw it out the window at about 400 feet.  I was wearing sunglasses at the time, when I looked back out the open window to see the parachute; the slipstream tore the glasses from my face.  I saw them land in the neighbor’s garden.  He found them there some three month later and returned them to me.