It's late. The hour is neither
morning nor evening, and the world around me has settled down to rest.
A fresh breeze wafts through the window next to my trusty PC, stirring
the trees into a gentle whisper that sounds as if the city itself is
sighing into some massive, unseen pillow. My children rest comfortably
in their beds, and my wife stretches out on the bed behind me, happy
to stake out what sleeping real-estate she can. It is, in every sense
of the phrase, time to rest…and yet I cannot sleep. I have far, far too
much on my mind.
Tomorrow I finish my Flight Review and once again become a "current private
pilot". It isn’t my first check ride, nor even my first BFR, but it’s
still a special day. Until only four weeks ago, five long years had passed
since I had last logged any "pilot-in-command" time. For half of the
decade I have been grounded, always looking up at the sky, knowing I
had once traveled there as something far more than a passenger, always
wondering if some day I’d ever get to do it again. And now, suddenly,
that day is only a few short hours away.
The trees rustle, and the neighbor’s wind chimes beat a lilting jig in
the evening breeze. The wind is picking up. The air bites into the exposed
skin of my arms as I type at my keyboard. Still, my wife sleeps, oblivious
to the change in environment.
When I could last honestly call myself a pilot, my home field had been
Grand Forks, North Dakota. My stomping grounds had ranged from Alexandria,
MN, to Bismarck, ND. I’d shot touch-and-goes into the tiny grass strip
in Larimore, ND, in a fully-loaded Piper Warrior, and I’d made sixteen
knot crosswind solo departures in a half-fueled 152. I’d snapped the
teeth of my passengers together with enough godawful landings to make
me wonder why I thought I was up to this whole airplane business, and
I’d made them whistle with surprise with just as many greasers into the
same field. I’d taken twelve-year old kids up for their first airplane
ride, ex-girlfriends around the pattern, and sweated under the critical
eye of my 1,400 hour CFII father-in-law watching my every move. I’d even
had my share of genuine scares. On one cold January night, my cockpit
light breaker crapped out when I was inbound to the field. I made a landing
that night on an icy runway with a flashlight in my mouth to read the
airspeed indicator. (For the record, it was one of my better landings.)
On another occasion I’d been so lost during a long cross country in an
unfamiliar airplane that I only found out where I was by dipping a wing
and reading the name of a town off of the top of a water tower. In other
words, I have been a private pilot, and I thank God every night for the
time I’ve had in the cockpit.
My wife stirs, and the wind picks up a bit. Will we get the storms they
were talking about on Channel Nine tonight? Did I secure the deck chair
and tables? Are the cars in the garage, safe from possible hail damage?
I trip down a mental checklist, ensuring that the house is safe. You
get into those kinds of habits, when you grow up with an aircrew father.
I wish I could say that I stopped flying for noble reasons. How much
more satisfying would it be to say "I couldn’t justify the risk I was
taking for my children’s sake." How much more adult would it be to pack
away my logbook, my charts, my ADs and FAR/AIM, all the while saying
"I can’t just do this for the sake of doing it. It’s so impractical."
No, I stopped because I frankly couldn’t afford to fly any more. North
Dakota may be great flying country, what with several thousand square
miles of emergency runway around you, but its economy runs neck-in-neck
with East Timor for the title of "Places Where You’re Likely to Make
Nothing for a Lot of Hard Work." No, I quit back in 1995 because I couldn’t
afford to log even the barest minimum of time to stay current. When I
packed away all of my flying material in a box, I remember wondering
if I’d ever need any of it again.
A reed-thin laugh floats through my bedroom window, followed by a chorus
of "shushes". A quick peak outside reveals two young girls, no more than
seventeen, walking in the darkness. They laugh at some shared humor,
shushing each other too loudly to "be quiet", and go about their business.
I peer up at the darkened sky. If they’re out and about, maybe the weather
isn’t that bad after all.
I remember when I used to be in the business. It scarcely seems possible
anymore that I used to be a RAPCON controller. Oh, sure, if I think about
it I remember the nights in front of the AN/GPN-20, watching the three-second
sweep paint the picture of my workload. I remember gut-wrenching moments
when the words "…declaring an emergency…" piped through my frequency
just as clearly as the time when a C-141 pilot called traffic on a "small
sleigh, eight tiny reindeer, twelve’o’clock, south bound, three miles"
one lonely Christmas Eve. I remember getting my incentive rides in the
RF-4C simulator with the same clarity as I recall transcribing the tapes
of an F-16’s final plunge through the cloud deck into a village three
DME south of the field. The memories are all there, clear as day…yet
they are the memories of a nineteen, twenty, and twenty-one year old
boy. In a very real way, that person has so little to do with me now
that it might as well be a completely separate being. But I still remember
being in the business.
A deep rumble. The floor vibrates, and my swivel-arm white lamp sways
on my desk. Thunder. Maybe there will be a storm after all.
I’m no longer a young man in my twenties. I am no longer a controller,
and glad for that fact. The mid-point of my thirties looms, entirely
too close for comfort. I’m a grown man, now, with all of the trappings
of adulthood. I’ve acquired them almost like checklist items: College
degree? Check. Loving wife? Check. Children? Two, male and female, check
and check. Mortgage payment? Check. Demanding career? Check that damned
thing twice.
Another stir of thunder, this time deeper, more sustained. A storm is
brewing. Only a matter of time before the kids want to crawl into our
bed with us. Oh, well. My wife could use the company.
I am a Web Administrator. Somehow, through my travels, I had acquired
a smattering of knowledge with Unix, web serves, and the Internet. Through
a course that would make even Ulysses’ journey home seem direct, I found
myself in another career. Somehow I acquired a staff of five very talented
guys, a huge e-commerce web site to support, and a pager that vibrated
so often that one could reasonably wonder why I didn’t just strap the
damned thing to my crotch for a free thrill every few minutes. How strange
it is to think that I ended up with a career because I couldn’t afford
to fly anymore. I do what I do because a long time ago I needed to make
flight simulators work on my PC.
A deep bass rumble. My coffee cup rattles and my wife stirs. Getting
closer now.
I’d always loved simulators. When I was seventeen my father got me a
copy of SubLogic’s "Flight Simulator 2" for the Commodore 64. I read
the two manuals – thick for their time – cover to cover. I practiced
the maneuvers as recommended, with one joystick as my yoke and the other
as a throttle. When I could fly the sim reasonably well, I moved on to
point-to-point VOR navigation. When that became second nature I lowered
the ceiling and started flying ILS approaches. A year passed, and I was
still passionate for my sim. I’d read Kershner’s books cover-to-cover,
and could quote axioms ("pitch then power"…"On approach, throttle controls
you altitude, pitch controls you airspeed…", "Headwork means remembering
to put your landing gear down…") with the best of them. By now I had
written myself scenarios to fly. "This vaccine has to be delivered to
Boeing Field…" I had written for my friend and I to "fly" in an early
Autumn evening, "…or else thousands will die. But all you have is the
hangar queen to ride down, so you’d better do your best." I’d crank down
the "reliability" to a gut-wrenching forty percent and launch the little
simulated Piper Archer into down-to-the-minimums IMC while my friend
handled the E6B and tuned the nav stack. We only got there half the time
(the engine was invariably one of the first things to go) but on those
occasions when we broke out of the clouds on course and on glidepath,
it didn’t matter that we were only flying an 8 bit, 1 MHz machine. We
had accomplished something.
I shiver. It’s cold. I close the window and wrap a blanket around my
shoulders. Could Summer be gone so soon?
Simulators have been in my life since that day. In the late eighties
FS2 turned to F-15 Strike Eagle, then to the first version of Stealth
Fighter. In 1991 I bought my first PC and soon after picked up a little
title called "Falcon 3.0". The first time I launched a sortie with a
flight of four and listened to the calls on the "frequency", my jaw dropped
open. Sure, it was buggy, and a resource hog, but it was nevertheless
a masterpiece. Of course, the fact that it was a resource hog meant that
I ended up learning all sorts of arcane insights into EMM386.SYS, memory
managers, and TSRs. I learned to write small batch files to switch between
multiple AUTOEXEC.BATs and CONFIG.SYSs in order to use my PC for school
as well as to "log time". Before long I found myself using those "tricks"
to help everyone from students to my co-workers get their computers tuned
properly. Often payment came in a case of Diet Coke. Occasionally, I
actually received cash. I realized then that there was a possible future
to this business…but not for me. I mean, who was I kidding? I only knew
what I knew about computers because I liked playing flight sims. Who
in their right mind would hire me on that basis?
"Dad?" My son rubs sleep-weary eyes at my bedroom doorway. "Can I sleep
in you bed?" I nod and smile. He staggers towards the covers.
When I had finally started flight training, there was no doubt that the
simulators were an enormous asset. Oh, there was a downside – I’d developed
some very, very bad habits on my own, and nearly scared my first instructor
to death when I managed to put a 150 on her tail during an approach-to-landing
stall – but, as a whole, I felt better prepared than the other students
who started with me. My instructors agreed, and adjusted accordingly.
My background as a controller, combined with my sim study, led my instructors
to push me very hard indeed. My first ever dual cross-country was flown
entirely at night, from Grand Forks, to Bemidji, to Alexandria, to Fargo,
and back to Grand Forks. My first solo, to Devil’s Lake, had me depart
with winds at sixteen knots, gusting to twenty-six. My instructor wanted
me to stay within fifty feet of altitude at all times, and he wanted
me to fly through my own wake when I rolled out of steep turns. One by
one, I met his challenges. I won’t say that the sims taught me how to
fly – far from it! – but they gave me the knowledge and confidence to
successfully start leaning how to fly. When I finally took my checkride
I only had a whopping 50.5 hours in my log book, spread over four years.
I passed the first time.
My eyes feel heavy. It’s almost three AM. I’m due out at the field at
one, but I can’t settle quite yet. At least the thunder has stopped.
The wind is dying down to a whisper again.
After I got my ticket, I flew as much as I could. I had intended to start
my instrument rating, but I ended up buying a new car for the family
instead. When that was stabilized and just as I’d saved enough to start
again, I found out I was going to become a father. One by one, events
lined up to slow down my flying. Soon, my coveted ticket was reduced
to being used for nothing more than joyrides and hundred dollar hamburger
runs. It seemed an incredibly inglorious reason to fly. After all, I
could drive for a hamburger. Flying somewhere, I reasoned, demanded something
more. By the time my money for flying officially ran out, I was almost
relieved.
A patter of little feet. My daughter rubs her eyes and just points at
the bed. I nod. She climbs in, trailing a Barbie behind her.
Of course, I wasn’t relieved. I was frustrated. I took out my frustrations
by flying the new breed of simulators coming down the pipeline. Flight
Simulator 95 became Flight Simulator 98, the first to run with a 3D card
and amazing accelerated graphics. Falcon 3.0 gave up the ghost, and was
replaced by Air Warrior, then Warbirds, then Combat Flight Simulator.
Finally, Falcon 4.0 came out, and was quickly followed by Flight Simulator
2000. My computers increased in power along with the titles. A 4MB accelerator
became a 16 MB accelerator. A 120 MHz Pentium became a 565 MHz Pentium
II. My flimsy thrustmaster joystick, throttle, and rudder pedals were
replaced by a robust force feedback all-in-one unit. I even found myself
flying online with others, and – in an odd twist – once again found myself
controlling traffic through SATCO. Occasionally, I’d wonder whether the
money spent on keeping up with the sims wouldn’t be better spent on getting
current again, but I always found an excuse. "Not quite yet," I’d say.
"Let’s buy a new car first." A new car became a new wardrobe, and a new
wardrobe became a new house. And so it went.
A low drone fills the air. I get up from my seat and look out the window.
Red and green position lights greet my stare, accompanied almost immediately
by the glow of a landing light. I can’t make out the shape, but it sure
as hell sounds like a Lycombing engine above me. Probably someone flying
a Cessna in for a weekend in the cities. I envy him the journey.
The image strikes a chord. One day, a little over a month ago, I found
myself on my new deck looking up at a 152 flying overhead. My home lies
on the approach path to Crystal Airport, and as such general aviation
traffic is almost constant. I noted the way he bobbed in the wind, and
marveled at the way the sunlight gleamed off of the aluminum wings. So
much prettier than in any simulator. Instinctively I started to count
the reasons why I wasn’t flying…and much to my surprise, I couldn’t find
any. The next day I drove out to Crystal Shamrock and struck up a conversation
with an instructor. After a half an hour of a bull session, we agreed
that I’d probably need another five hours of dual to "get back up to
speed". With that he offered to go up and fly me right there and then.
I couldn’t log it as PIC time – my third class medical had long since
expired – but at least I could get some stick time and log it as dual.
He didn’t have to offer twice. We went out to the 152 and I went through
the ritual as I had before, albeit more cautiously. I had a lot of questions,
and he answered everyone. We taxied (just as easy as I remembered!) to
the active, my "instructor" acting more and more as a passenger with
each moment, and when the "cleared for takeoff" call was made, I grinned
ear-to-ear when I eased the throttle to the firewall.
The Lycombing’s drawl fades in the distance. He’s heading into the barn
now, ready for some rest. As I should be getting. But I can still hear
it in the air around me.
I logged 1.1 hours that day. When I finished the instructor looked up
at me and shook his head.
"Are you sure it’s been five years?" he asked.
I nodded. "Absolutely."
He pursed his lips, and his eyebrows lifted. "Wow." Then he nodded. "Okay.
Well, you need one, maybe two more flights. That’s it." He then reminded
me to get my medical and get back to him ASAP so we could finish up,
but I could barely hear him. Unlike some of my pilot brethren, I like
getting my ego stroked by the others in my field.
Of course, my work dominated the last three weeks of my life. When I
could finally tear myself away, I went in, got my oil checked and my
tires kicked, and I walked out with a Third Class Medical Certificate.
I called my instructor and he uttered a phrase I won’t soon forget. "Ah,
we’ll get you done tomorrow. Just come out, we’ll do some Class C work,
a little more review, and you’ll be good to go." I thanked him and hung
up. When I told my wife she smiled. "What are you going to do with it
this time?" she asked.
I had a couple of stock answers prepared. I’ve used them on my boss,
on my co-workers, on my mother-in-law and my parents. "I want to fly
for the CAP," I could have said, which is indeed true. "I want to start
my instrument ticket so we can fly instead of drive to Grand Forks with
the kids," is another, equally true – though far more preposterous –
response. But both of those answers are justifications. My wife deserves
the truth.
"I’ll fly," I answered.
She just smiled.
"Honey?" My wife asks, her voice thick with fatigue.
I turn from the keyboard. My wife is propping her head up with one hand,
her hair falling in golden curls upon the sheets.
"Yeah, hon?" I answer.
"You need to get some sleep, sweetie," she says. "You get to fly tomorrow,
remember?"
I smile and kiss her hand.
"Yeah," I say, reaching for the master switch on my system. "I get to
fly."
