Bill Crawford’s Flightlab Blog

I wrote last month about my days as a skywriter. The Flightlab column in the Atlantic Flyer wasn’t intended for personal trips down memory lane, but if you fly it’s hard not to drag out the anecdotes. Aircraft are wonderfully complex and perverse objects, and the related academic subjects can absorb a lifetime of study. But from student days on it’s the storyline that fascinates us—the personal cycle of good flights and bad, of hopeful ascent and grateful return. Becoming a pilot is expensive and hard, but the result is way cool. We’re gosh darn godlike. So why shouldn’t we write about ourselves?

Just to follow up on the subject of smoke coming out of airplanes, a final story. Jim Thompson was a wonderful aerobatics instructor some years ago at Plymouth Airport. I took my initial aerobatic training from him, as did a collection of scoundrels who later became good friends and flying buddies. My initial training was in my Citabria, which I then sold in preparation for buying a Pitts S1S. You don’t go from a Citabria into a Pitts without a Jim Thompson (or functional equivalent) to guide you along. Jim gave me a five-hour transition in a two-seat Pitts S2B.

When you transition a pilot to a single-seat Pitts, the typical deal is to put him in the front seat of the S2B. The visibility from the front of a two-seat Pitts is about as miserable as that from a single-seater, which is the idea. During my tenure in the front seat, Jim and I did lots of takeoffs and landings, plus the standard aerobatic maneuvers, including normal and accelerated spins.

Jim’s training was always first class, but the guy wasn’t omniscient. The S2B has a steerable tailwheel. You can knock it out of the steering mode by applying full rudder and brake on one side, while adding a healthy blast from the prop. The wheel will castor freely and the airplane will then spin around. When you resume forward motion, the tailwheel returns to the steering detent. A steerable tailwheel allows you to motor along without constantly working the brakes, as you often have to do with a locking tailwheel. I did my checkout with a steerable tailwheel. Trouble is my future S1S had a Haigh locking tailwheel, which I didn’t know from Adam. The difference was that with a steerable rig all you do is push the pedal. With the Haigh, if you want to turn more than a few degrees you have to pull and hold a cable attached to the locking lever, which then releases the tailwheel. Let go of the cable and the wheel relocks once it returns to center. The problem is that if you apply rudder and/or brake before unlocking the tailwheel the sideload on the locking lever prevents its release. Jim didn’t tell me that.

So I end up in Wildwood¸ New Jersey, ready to ferry home my new (used) Pitts S1S, which once belonged to the Peruvian Air Force as part of their formation aerobatic team. I gather they hit the Andes one too many times and had to disband. The aircraft had a smoke tank in the upper wing center section, which the seller had good-naturedly filled with smoke oil. A push-off, push-on switch at the top of the stick controlled the smoke.

I climbed in, thinking I’m way cool, possibly godlike, and started her up. I unlocked the tailwheel before taxiing, and held the cable tight. Everything was fine until I taxied past a hangar and hit a crosswind. The aircraft suddenly began to swing into the wind. I released the tailwheel cable and the aircraft headed straight. Trouble was, it was heading for a parked Cessna 172. I jammed on the rudder before pulling the tailwheel cable. The tailwheel, now under a sideload, wouldn’t unlock! Apparently, my brain-not-functioning warning light came on and my idiot-in-charge system took control. I cracked under the pressure and did a singular thing—I somehow turned on the smoke system. After a second or so, the entire airport disappeared. I could feel the tail rise as I hit the brakes. The story gets embarrassing from this point on.

Greetings from Wichita, where it rained pigs and cows yesterday (April 13, a Friday) and snowed last night. This morning’s forecast was for continued muck, but the sky keeps improving—in the sly, devious way that skies often do.

It took me six days to get the Zlin out here from Plymouth, Massachusetts. That included two nights spent snowed under in Altoona, Pennsylvania, and three nights in St. Louis, where local thunderstorms, alternating with Kansas boomers, kept the VFR Zlin in the hangar. The prize in Wichita is three weeks teaching aerobatics to test pilots at Cessna and Lear, and to corporate pilots at Koch Industries. Read the rest of this entry »

My mother-in-law lives in Phoenix. I probably shouldn’t burden you with her, since you might already have your own dysfunctional albatross to lug around. It’s just that in my family’s case the usual mother-in-law jokes fail to bring relief. We’ll get to flying in a moment. First hear me out. As far as we can tell, the woman’s behavior has suggested off-planet origins since day one. I’m convinced that even now my certifiably extra-terrestrial mother-in-law is signaling to all the other malevolent space aliens who lurk patiently just outside the Oort Cloud. “Get ready, my pets,” she pulses. “Our time soon comes.” I know this sounds mean-spirited and far-fetched, but I assure you that any attempt to account for my mother-in-law that denies the oncoming obliteration of humanity by methane-breathing Cardassians from the Gamma Quadrant just doesn’t cut the ice. She’s proof they’re out there! Read the rest of this entry »

When Flying magazine arrives each month, I turn to Peter Garrison’s column, “Technicalities,” first. If you like the wonky part of aviation—lift-over-drag ratios, laminar bubbles, and maybe the area rule if you need to go fast—Garrison is dependably interesting and informed. And he’s a wry fellow. I’m such a groupie that I actually rip “Technicalities” out each month and stash it for future reference in a file marked “Garrison.” My theory is that after reading the rest of the issue I can then safely toss the magazine and get on with life. I’ll bet psychologists have a name for this behavior, however, because the entire process, from evisceration upon arrival until a magazine’s belated farewell into the dumpster, still takes around five years. Magazines about flying are just inordinately hard to dispose of, violated or not, don’t you think? Read the rest of this entry »

There was a time—most of human history, actually—when people did not regard safety as a formal, conscientious practice, maybe because they didn’t think it would do much good. Not so long ago, most sober folk thought that tragic accidents were a form of judgment, an indication that God was getting annoyed. The Pilgrim Fathers—fairly sober founders of my home base, Plymouth Airport—believed that if you fell off the Mayflower the hand of the Almighty probably gave the shove. Spiritual intervention has supplied a convenient explanation down the ages, and I’ve come to suspect that the Evil One is indeed the reason my hangar door still leaks. But such arguments are not yet accepted by the National Transportation Safety Board, which so far has resisted any pressure to include “God’s wrath” among the contributing factors listed at the end of accident reports. The NTSB will say “slippery deck,” and leave it at that. Let’s hope the NTSB refuses to cave. Read the rest of this entry »

We usually anticipate a pilot’s ability by their hours flown, and we figure the more the time the deeper the skills. Of course, there must be a law of diminishing returns: The first one or two-thousand hours right after earning your wings are going to be full of challenges. But for a seen-it-all veteran with thousands of hours already, another thousand down the road may not produce much that’s new, other than seniority, unless the type of flying changes in a significant way. Read the rest of this entry »

It was a Tuesday morning at AirVenture, this past hot July. More specifically, it was Ben Bailey’s birthday. Ben, his wife Michelle, and I had flown out three days earlier in their Cirrus. We’d launched from Plymouth in the soup, dodged the red blotches on the miraculous radar downlink, and ended up, one pit-stop later, well ahead of sunset at Menominee, Michigan, just north of the Wisconsin border. Next day we drove down to Appleton and the comfortable Raddison Hotel. On previous AirVenture trips I’ve always stayed at the University of Wisconsin-Oshkosh dorms, world famous for threadbare towels, scratchy sheets, and zero cross ventilation. This life was better.
Read the rest of this entry »

One of the peculiarities of flight training is that it’s mostly procedural. You learn to do lists of things. That’s a simplification, of course, but not so far off. One obvious fact about procedures is that they’re experienced in sequence. The stages of flight are managed a task at a time. An instructor knows a student is catching on when procedures happen without prompting, and begin to be accomplished with smoothness and authority—as if the tasks weren’t separate at all, but part of a confident flow.
Read the rest of this entry »

Holding top rudder in a steep turn, to keep the nose up, is usually a no-no. But it’s one of flying’s great temptations, and has a time-honored history of abuse. Top rudder means that the pilot is trying to use the side of the fuselage to generate lift. Most fuselages are not particularly efficient that way, and produce lots of drag in the process. But top rudder can be warranted. In aerobatic competition, pilots are supposed to make their turns at no less than 60-degrees of bank. Usually you rack it over a little more to make sure the judges believe you. A 70-degree-bank turn requires a 2.9-g pull if done at constant altitude and with coordinated rudder. That’s not really a problem in an aerobatic aircraft if you’re going fast enough, but at low speed you may not have the energy necessary to pull the required g. And the induced drag from that g is going to slow you down even more. In this situation, the wing needs help from the fuselage. So you add some top rudder.
Read the rest of this entry »

I think that flight instructors should have calm and reassuring demeanors. From a marketing standpoint, at least, they should know when they’re coming across as lunatics. I appreciate all that, but the rain is driving me nuts. One can’t fly aerobatics when the ceiling is perpetually 300 feet. I’m grounded, grumpy, and headed for lunacy. Please, let the rain stop!
Read the rest of this entry »