Smoke on the Water: On Flying

My blood is still surging on the topic of flight. Of all of the passions I've held in this life, flight is the one least fulfilled for me, and perhaps the one most longed for.

To date, I've logged 21.25 hours of dual-instruction time. Yes, I soloed, but I didn't progress much further than that. This was back in 1980. Anyway, the first one-point-five hours of airtime I logged was in the ubictuous Cessna 152. Oh, how I hated that airplane.

It was just too aerodyamically stable. Yes, all flight is challenging, but I truly thought that a chimpanzee could fly that plane. Just let go of the controls and it'd mush back into coordinated and stable flight. (okay, the trim had to be dialed in, I know). Point is though, the FBO also had a few Grumman Tigers and Cheetahs in the training pool.

Bliss. I'd found my home in the air. The Cheetah was powered by the exact same powerplant as the Cessna. Speed, ceiling, range, fuel-burn and rate of climb were either the same, or differed insigificantly.

What mattered though, was the feel of the yoke in my hands. The Grumman was a Fiat Spyder. The Cessna was the family station wagon. It's what what's called a "short-coupled" aircraft. And where the Cessna was a high-winged barge with car-like doors, the Grumman was low-winged. More importantly, it sported a sliding bubble-canopy. A side-by-side two-seater, you had to slide the canopy back and clamber in over the fuselage sill. It sure felt like an airplane was supposed to feel.

Anyway, I was taking lessons at the old Westside Airpark just outside of the limits of the Medina Annex of Lackand AFB, San Antonio. It's gone now, just another strip mall or trailer park. *sigh*

But wow, what a challenge. The unevenly paved, lumpy runway was but fifteen hundered feet or so in length. It seemed that the Grumman's stubby wingtips were roughly the width of the pavement. Any real airport has taxiways far wider than this. Yeah, it goes without saying; Plenty of trees on the (prevailing wind), approach end of the runway. Made for some steep glideslopes on final! Thankfully, just a pasture and maybe a few cows or a horse to clear on departure.

There was no "tower". Traffic contorl was on Unicom, the airborne equivalent of a bunch of very well behaved truckers on CB radios. It got the job done though. Assholes on Unicom somehow became personally acquainted with their friendly FAA inspector.

With an upbringing of derring-do on tricked out, pre-BMX bicycles, and scads of fun running dirtbikes in up on the Mira Mesa flats and out on the Mojave Desert in California, the Grumman felt like an old friend to me. A twitchy, noisy, backstabbing bitch of an airplane, and 100% fun to fly. That FAA "DO NOT SPIN" placard on the panel was not mere decoration.

Sadly, the first wife, her quest for the almighty house and the budgetary requirements therof ended those lessons. Other dreams have been dreamt, lived, realized and cherished. I am not bitter.

Later, in 1982, I did get to ride in the cockpit jump-seat of a very old Douglas DC-9, en route from Houston, TX, to San Jose, Costa Rica. But that's a tale for another time.

The dream of flight, for me, is not dead though. It is merely dormant. Before I die, I will hold in my sweaty palm an FAA Pilot's License, with my name inscribed theron. I will have to start over, from scratch, but that's just fine with me. Too much time has lapsed, my logged hours mean nothing, now.

And I may have to win the lottery to make it happen, but.......

I will fly.