Remembering Flying with My Daughter

So I have 3 daughters, but in this post, I am going to share a little story of flying with my youngest daughter Erin. It is particularly interesting timing since she is now grown up and will be flying to Baghdad in 3 days.

I started bringing Erin flying when she was a baby. Of all my kids, Erin seemed to like flying the most, so she got to sit in the right sit whenever she flew. She wanted to not just fly in the airplane, but she wanted to "fly" the airplane. So over time, I would teach her the various elements of flying. Quickly she learned how to fly straight and level, and to follow a course. Well, it was almost flying a course! I would tell her to fly to that big mountain, and she would fly to that big mountain. As we got closer, I would give her another visual point to fly towards, such as that odd shaped lake. This was actually quite a feat if you realize that she was 5 years old at the time.

But the story doesn't end here. When others would fly with us, they noticed that Erin would periodically lower the nose of the airplane into a short descent and then recover the lost altitude. I just thought this was 5 year old flying technique. My passengers thought a 5 year old should not be flying and never enjoyed this technique. I asked Erin why she did this one day, and she answered "Because I'm too short to see over the instrument panel, and I lower the nose so I can see the place you asked me to fly to." I thought this was quite ingenious of a 5 year old pilot and I had not taught her to do that, which I thought was way cool. Several years later, I wonder how she solved this problem in a car?

Anyway, after lots of complaints from passengers, Erin developed a new technique (by now she was 6 years old), and instead of putting the plane into a shallow dive, she kicked the rudder pedals which made the airplane yaw to the left so she could look out her window to see the big mountain or odd shaped lake that she was flying towards. More innovative techniques, but still grumbling passengers over a 6 year old flying them to Nantucket that day.

Go fly little girl!

A proud Dad

I.F.R. Flying

Well, I bet you thought this post was going to be about IFR, Instrument Flying Rules, as opposed to VFR, Visual Flying Rules. Actually both types of flying "rule", although I do all of my flying VFR. I do that for one reason. I fly to enjoy the view and to get to somewhere fun.

Anyway, this story is about I.F.R. which I did with my Dad early in my flying life. I.F.R. stands for I Follow Roads (or Rivers). On this day, my Dad wanted to know what it would be like if we turned all of our navigational aids off and just followed the roads to our destination. We departed Manchester NH, climbed to 3500' and got on Route 3 heading south. My Dad thought it was fun to be going south in the northbound lane, so we did that all the way into Massachusetts. We turned right onto I-495 and just enjoyed the ride. We were enroute to Bradley field near Hartford CT. I planned to fly I-495 to the Mass Turnpike, turn west (in the eastbound lanes of course). Well, we are flying down the Mass Pike as the locals call it, fat dumb and happy. What a great day to fly.

About this time, I feel like we are aboiut 15 miles out from Bradley, so I call the tower. They tell me to expect a straight in for runway 27. Everything is A-OK. Life is good. We continue flying but the airport does not come into sight as expected. Then the radio calls become a little crackly. I switch radios, but it's still crackly. Finally, we see the airport and call the tower. He says that he does not have us in sight, on the crackly radio. I continue and see the runway is 24, not 27 as I thought, so I call and tell the tower, 3 miles out for 24. He comes back and says, what color is the runway? Thinking that is an odd question, I respond, "black". He says, our runway is white (concrete), and it's runway 27, not 24.

Well it seems that Dad and I mistakenly exited the Mass Pike on I-84 and found our way to an airport somewhere in Connecticutt, but that was certainly not Bradley Field. We decided to land since we were hungry, and decided that we would not go to Bradley that day since we didn't want to get teased by the controllers. Since this field was uncontrolled, we felt like nobody would know our mistake. Well as we pulled up to the little terminal, an older guy comes out and welcomes us to "the new Bradley airport", and then started laughing at us.

We flew home with our navigation aids turned on.

Smokey Flying

So I live in California where there are 343 phenomenal flying days per year. The other 22 are rainy or foggy. But this summer is different. It's nasty flying everyday, due to the 1500+ wildfires. It's really quite frustrating since I can see that the day is perfect with blue sky, and if it weren't for the smoke, unlimited visibility, or as we pilots refer to it as "Severe Clear".

Suffering from a withdrawl of flying, due to the smoke, I grabbed my trusty co-pilot and wife, and pulled 22Q out of the hangar. It was a wonderful day with no clouds and a light wind. But I knew the smoke was thick. But addiction being what it is, and knowing that it was safe to fly, we strapped on the airplane, and started our taxi. As we started to climb, we could see and smell smoke. The visibility was 5-6 miles but everything was in a Stephen King haze. We had no horizon to fly against, so I had to rely on my instruments to keep the wings level. It's odd that our inner ear misleads us while flying. If we relied solely on our sense of balance in a no-horizon situation, we would crash. It's simply not accurate, but on this day, our instruments were reliable and we flew onto Santa Paula, near the coast of Central/Southern California. This disorientation, by the way, is probably what did John Kennedy in at Nantucket, but that is another story.

Flying in smoke is not as much fun as not flying in smoke. You can't see very far, and sometimes you can only see a small area downwards. On this day the visibility was definitely deteriorating due to our proximity to fires and by now it was down to about 4 miles. There are TFRs for fires, which means Temporary Flight Restrictions. These are setup by the FAA for a number of reasons, one of which is fires, in order to give the aerial fire fighters a safe area to combat fires. On this day, we witnessed fires in their early stages, maybe before the authorities even knew about them. We avoided them nonetheless for safety reasons and also because breathing smoke is less fun than flying in smoke.

Usually flying to the destination is as much, or more, fun than actually being at your destination. On this smokey day, it was nice to land safely at Santa Paula and to visit our best friends who also flew to Santa Paula to have lunch with us. The reward of flying today was in flying in crappy weather in a safe manner. It is taxing, but very rewarding. I must be vigilant of everything around me, including other airplanes, but also rely on my instruments if there is no horizon. Without a horizon, I also have to navigate much more closely. I cannot see for miles and identify landmarks to mark my progress, but need to identify landmarks in a much smaller radius. Thank goodness for GPS which guides you to your destination, but like any electronics, they are a tool and cannot always be relied upon.

Anyway, flying in California is always wonderful, except during wildfire season.