Flying

I always liked flying and got my pilot license at about 30 years old.

I had the good fortune to own an S35 V-Tail Beech Bonanza for several years. My marriage at the time was not good, but I couldn’t afford both my Bonanza and a divorce, and I chose the Bonanza until after about 20 years of marriage, the divorce became more important, and I sold the Bonanza.

I had lots of fun with the S35, including several “interesting” experiences.

On one night flight to my home airport (Republic on Long Island) after dinner on Nantucket, I flew through a region of light snow. Every time the plane’s strobes went off, it looked like we were immersed in a lattice of white dots.

For some years I owned a quarter of an island in Lake George NY which I used as a summer home. The house had an addition that my mother stayed in for the summer. One weekend, my mother and I had a “disagreement” related to my then wife. The result was that my mother decided that she wasn’t wanted and decided to return to her home in Florida. She insisted that I fly her back to New York, where she could get a flight back to Florida. She and I were not on speaking terms prior to the flight. The weather was not good, and I filed an instrument flight plan. It was before radar was available and the controllers could not warn us of storms. We were in clouds the whole way down to Long Island. As we passed Albany, we flew into a thunderstorm. Within 30 seconds, we were the best of friends.

I have always been somewhat afraid of heights, which shows up as a fear of structural failure. So, the higher I fly, the more structure I need to avoid anxiety. The anxiety begins at about 3,000 ft. in a small plane. But I liked flying enough to put up with the anxiety. I also liked instrument flying. Flying in “weather” meant I could not see the ground, so there was little or no anxiety. Besides, there is nothing more exhilarating than breaking out of the clouds at 200 ft and seeing the runway threshold right where it is supposed to be.

I like soaring (gliders), too. One time I went to Colorado Springs to do high altitude soaring. I stayed at the flight school for a week and soared near Pikes Peak. The idea was to get into “mountain wave” so that you could achieve a large altitude gain. We carried a recording barograph which recorded altitude versus time. The altitude gain was measured from the time you released from the tow plane to the maximum altitude reached. The way you knew the release point was by “notching the barograph” by diving a few hundred feet after release.

Naturally, I expected to be a bit anxious at high altitude. An ex-airline pilot named George checked us out and showed us, by example, how to notch the barograph. We flew in a Schweizer 2-32 sailplane for the demonstration.

As I checked out the 2-32, I noticed how massive it was compared to the other sailplanes and even to my Bonanza. The wing spar was so large that I figured the structure was more than adequate to alleviate most of my structural failure anxiety. After all, what’s a little dive?

Immediately after release, George showed me how to notch the barograph. He pushed the stick forward until we were headed straight down. In fact, so far forward that we were slightly inverted and pulling negative Gs. It occurred to me, at that point, that the wing spar was irrelevant, it was a matter of two seat belt bolts and the Plexiglas canopy.

That trip was fun. I reached over 28,000 ft.

I used to go to business meetings at nice places. One place was the Camelback Inn in Scottsdale, Arizona. The first thing I would do there is go out to the local glider port and get checked out. Then, during the meeting’s recreation times, I would offer to take attendees soaring as long as they paid the cost. That way, I got free sailplane time.

One of the attendees, a Finance Professor from the University of Virginia, had a wife, Shirley. She signed on, and she and her husband went out to the glider port with me.

Shirley and I flew in a Schweizer 2-33 sailplane. We took off and released from the towplane in good lift. Despite the location being in the desert, we were “lucky” enough to have really strong lift – as it turned out because a large thermal (our thermal) was turning into a large storm (Storm? Desert? Huh?). We got quite far from the glider port and those on the ground lost sight of us. We found out later that it stormed at the glider port and Shirley’s husband feared losing his wife.

Shirley and I did not get into the rain but were in the rising air that later developed into the storm. It was going up fast. As we approached cloud base I took steps to avoid being sucked up into the cloud (you cannot control an aircraft in clouds without the proper instruments.). I ended up having to dive the sailplane with full spoilers and slipping it to stay out of the clouds. However, just before doing that, as we flew in and out of some cloud wisps, I asked Shirley if she would like to touch a cloud. She said yes, so I opened the canopy and let her reach out and touch the cloud. Really cool!

Another time, after taking off and climbing through about 1,000 ft. in my Bonanza, I had a midair collision – with a seagull. It splashed on the leading edge of the left wing just like when an insect splashes on an automobile windshield. It put a dent big enough so that I had to replace the entire leading edge wing skin.

I also used to fly to Chicago Business School seminars. These flights were usually between Republic airport on Long Island and Meiggs Field on Chicago’s lakefront. Jack Treynor came along on several of these flights. On one return flight to Long Island, Jack and I arrived at the airport to find that it was socked in by a thick fog. You could only see about 50 ft. on the ground. Also, there were tall condos just north and east of the Meiggs runway. “Fortunately,” for us, the regulations allowed takeoffs in conditions like this for private flights. We found our way out to the north-south runway threshold (South end), got our clearance, and took off. Moments later, we broke out of the fog layer and had a wonderful view of Chicago’s skyscrapers sticking out of the fog bank, including the condos that we flew by on our right. Really cool again!