20 Minutes You Will Never Get Back

In case you ever wondered what I do with a huge part of my time in a day:

About 40 years ago I worked with a fellow who flew small private planes. I was in his office one day and saw a picture of him piloting one of his planes - a Citabria.

One afternoon, he stopped my office and asked it I wanted to go up with him. Well, duh, yes!!!!

When we got to the airport we walked into a hangar and he threw me a parachute. Wait - I have been in small planes before and never needed a parachute. He saw the confusion on my face and casually mentioned he was a stunt pilot - nope, never came up.

Well, I have been shot off and landed on a carrier so what can this little plane do to me. Yikes, hammer-head stalls and aileron rolls and things a plane should not do are fun and I am glad he took me up.

Oh, the picture on his wall, he is actually upside down as the horizon in the image was wrong side up. Pays to look closely, sometimes.

I would barf. And love every minute of it.

Circuits, many is the hour I spent on 'circuits and bumps', more like bounces sometimes. Nice video. Better equipped Cessna than I ever flew. One had a problem where the plastic surround on the instrument panel would come off and fall onto the yokes. Then there was the 172 whose flaps only lowered when it felt like it.

As for Michael's Bellanca, I suspect it was the Bellanca Citabria. A very nice aerobatic aeroplane. I was supposed to be checked out on one once but it never happened.

But once I was taking ground school for my Instructor's course. One of my fellow students was a dentist, a rich one, aren't they all? He had a Pitts Special. A tiny biplane with extraordinary manoeuvrability. At lunchtime he went to the hangar to fly. I helped him push it out while joking he should repay me with a flight. 'Sure' he said throwing me a helmet and parachute.

Well the vertical climb after take off was memorable not least because we almost stalled, eliciting a casual comment over the intercom to that effect from our flying dentist. The rest of the flight was a bit of a blur, no literally. I performed a couple of loops and rolls. But I was a passenger for the rest. At one point in the middle of an impromptu aerobatic display over the field. I felt like I was going to die. But I didn't mind. We pulled plus 5g and minus 2g.

At one point my head smacked off the canopy. For weeks later I had a sore shoulder.

On landing my head was still spinning and my appetite for lunch had gone.

But I was elated.

Ground school was rather dull after that.

In addition to the parachute, Jim also handed me a barf bag. Fortunately, I never get motion sickness. He had me in the front seat and gave me the stick to fly that little plane around - JOY! If it had not gotten dark earlier, he would have let me land the plane - GULP!

Another friend I have worked for bought a SR-20 in the mid-aughts and then upgraded to a SR-22. I remember flying back from SAC to SJC one evening the passenger door popped open with me sitting there.

Bill, who was really a good conscientious pilot, had a brief moment of panic and since we were virtually over the Sacrament Executive Airport, he did a quick dive to get us down on the tarmac. How he did that maneuver cost him a trip to the tower to explain why he declared an emergency and then didn't follow the towers land instructions. Oh, well.

Oops, there have been accidents when doors pop open in flight not because of the door itself but because the pilot loses control trying to close it in flight. Better to land and sort it like your friend did.

My scary door moment was when me and the boss and I had to fly somewhere. A couple of the skydivers asked if we could drop them off so to speak. When they left I had to get out of my seat and close the door, no parachute no attachment. I was shaking. Just the thought of it now is scary.

I didn't realise the mic was THAT bad. I am digging out a better one before next time.