What a fascinating glimpse into some of the factors that pilots of small planes have to deal with! I'll never fly such an aircraft myself, but I can do so vicariously through you.
We're having a good summer at The Commons, almost back to pre-pandemic levels for gallery and rentals.
Nancy, thank you! We remember with such fondness our times of flying into Eastport airport to see you and your friends. Glad to hear that the Commons is up and thriving. Jim and Deb.
Your narration and graphics are better weather-flying counsel than some of the training materials in our industry. The beauty of the experience never gets old. Nicely done! An ICON A5 amphibious water-flying experience awaits you and Deb when the time is right.
Bruce, thank you. (For onlookers: I wrote about Bruce, for the first of many times, in the New York Times Magazine back in 1999, when he had a now-largely-realized vision for transforming the air travel system.)
Yes, we can't wait to try the A5. Will be in touch about this.
You reminded me of a XC when I was a student pilot back in Oregon. After I'd been heading east over The Gorge for some time T-storms forced me to re-write my plan "on the fly". Next thing you know I'm pretty much lost over Oregon's high desert. I used the three Cs: climb, call, confess. A voice on the radio reassured me that my dead reckoning was near perfect, I just had a ways to go, put me right into Redmond. The rest of that flight involved another series of dramatic views and interesting clouds, and once back over Willamette Valley, ducking under solid overcast to follow I5 back home. All that training brought to bear in one memorable flight.
Ah, thank you. During the two years we lived in Seattle, I flew out of BFI, and went to the same areas you are describing. Virtually always there was bad weather over the Cascades. Then the interior and "high desert." Glad to hear your story.
Also was glad to have Boeing Field, BFI, as my base for instrument training in the 1990s. The virtues, apart from a tower and two runways: Almost always an overcast, so you could get "actual" instrument conditions; but virtually never thunderstorms, at least compared with the East Coast.
“Termination Shock,” by Neal Stephenson: An Excerpt :
...As Papa had explained to her long ago, there was a reason he had become a pilot. It was that when he was at the controls he had not merely the opportunity but the sacred obligation to focus solely on the machine that was keeping him and his passengers alive.
...Always fascinating to her was this slow inexorable zooming in. Twenty minutes ago she’d have found it difficult to pick out the greater Waco metropolitan area below the black-blue vault of the stratosphere, but now as they dropped through a hundred meters of altitude she could see, in the backyards of houses, blue swimming pools..
....Houston’s air was too hot to support airplanes. Oh, the queen’s jet could have landed there, given that, during the flight from Schiphol, it had converted ten thousand kilograms of fuel into carbon dioxide and dumped it into the atmosphere. Refueled, though, it could not safely take off until the heat wave broke. And what was going to break it was a hurricane.
...She felt a sense of freedom and clarity of mind while at the controls of an airplane during the descent and the preparations for landing. It was all a matter of operating the controls so as to keep certain numbers within certain ranges.
...At the same time they needed to pass vertically downward through the entire troposphere—the shell of air surrounding the earth, where weather happened—until the number on the altimeter matched whatever the altitude of Waco was. Again there were known procedures for achieving that, all of which needed to mesh with the series of turns dictated by those harried Texan air traffic controllers. The operation of the jet’s controls toward the systematic achievement of those objectives, the terse, pithy, but utterly calm exchanges with Johan and with the voices on the radio, all combined to put her into a state of being that the Dutch referred to as normal with the accent on the second syllable. A different thing altogether from the English “NORMal.”
In the distant past, kings had shown the world that they meant it by strapping on a sword and riding into war, putting their lives on the line. Getting behind the controls of a plane and pointing it at a runway was as close as one could reasonably come in the modern world to the same public blood oath.
I flew into Telluride, CO, in a small plane many years ago. It was like flying into the heavens, or Mt. Olympus - absolutely and stunningly beautiful. Thank you for bringing back that memory. Glad you had a great flight.
Telluride is a place I have chosen *not* to fly into, in our little plane. It is *so* high-altitude — I believe the highest airport elevation in the US — and with so many mountains around it. Deb and I really enjoyed being in the city of Telluride, for an 'Original Thinkers' conference there a few years ago. But we went commercial to some place in the vicinity! (I think Montrose.)
Great to read this, Jim. I've never flown, but I've flown "in", and always had great confidence in pilots and controllers. having toured throughout the world and flown hundreds and hundreds of times. Any shakiness I felt usually disappeared when I realized it wasn't my anxiety that was keeping the plane in the air! I even got so I enjoyed flying "among" the clouds. One of my coolest flying memories was seeing you and Deb fly in to the tiny Chester airport!
Greetings, Jim and Deb,
What a fascinating glimpse into some of the factors that pilots of small planes have to deal with! I'll never fly such an aircraft myself, but I can do so vicariously through you.
We're having a good summer at The Commons, almost back to pre-pandemic levels for gallery and rentals.
More later, Nancy
Nancy, thank you! We remember with such fondness our times of flying into Eastport airport to see you and your friends. Glad to hear that the Commons is up and thriving. Jim and Deb.
Your narration and graphics are better weather-flying counsel than some of the training materials in our industry. The beauty of the experience never gets old. Nicely done! An ICON A5 amphibious water-flying experience awaits you and Deb when the time is right.
Bruce, thank you. (For onlookers: I wrote about Bruce, for the first of many times, in the New York Times Magazine back in 1999, when he had a now-largely-realized vision for transforming the air travel system.)
Yes, we can't wait to try the A5. Will be in touch about this.
Great piece. Loved Langewiesche's "Inside the Sky," too. (although the storm flying--on purpose!--yeesh.)
Thanks! Yes, I do agree about the people who fly *on purpose* into these storms.
You reminded me of a XC when I was a student pilot back in Oregon. After I'd been heading east over The Gorge for some time T-storms forced me to re-write my plan "on the fly". Next thing you know I'm pretty much lost over Oregon's high desert. I used the three Cs: climb, call, confess. A voice on the radio reassured me that my dead reckoning was near perfect, I just had a ways to go, put me right into Redmond. The rest of that flight involved another series of dramatic views and interesting clouds, and once back over Willamette Valley, ducking under solid overcast to follow I5 back home. All that training brought to bear in one memorable flight.
Ah, thank you. During the two years we lived in Seattle, I flew out of BFI, and went to the same areas you are describing. Virtually always there was bad weather over the Cascades. Then the interior and "high desert." Glad to hear your story.
Also was glad to have Boeing Field, BFI, as my base for instrument training in the 1990s. The virtues, apart from a tower and two runways: Almost always an overcast, so you could get "actual" instrument conditions; but virtually never thunderstorms, at least compared with the East Coast.
“Termination Shock,” by Neal Stephenson: An Excerpt :
...As Papa had explained to her long ago, there was a reason he had become a pilot. It was that when he was at the controls he had not merely the opportunity but the sacred obligation to focus solely on the machine that was keeping him and his passengers alive.
...Always fascinating to her was this slow inexorable zooming in. Twenty minutes ago she’d have found it difficult to pick out the greater Waco metropolitan area below the black-blue vault of the stratosphere, but now as they dropped through a hundred meters of altitude she could see, in the backyards of houses, blue swimming pools..
....Houston’s air was too hot to support airplanes. Oh, the queen’s jet could have landed there, given that, during the flight from Schiphol, it had converted ten thousand kilograms of fuel into carbon dioxide and dumped it into the atmosphere. Refueled, though, it could not safely take off until the heat wave broke. And what was going to break it was a hurricane.
...She felt a sense of freedom and clarity of mind while at the controls of an airplane during the descent and the preparations for landing. It was all a matter of operating the controls so as to keep certain numbers within certain ranges.
...At the same time they needed to pass vertically downward through the entire troposphere—the shell of air surrounding the earth, where weather happened—until the number on the altimeter matched whatever the altitude of Waco was. Again there were known procedures for achieving that, all of which needed to mesh with the series of turns dictated by those harried Texan air traffic controllers. The operation of the jet’s controls toward the systematic achievement of those objectives, the terse, pithy, but utterly calm exchanges with Johan and with the voices on the radio, all combined to put her into a state of being that the Dutch referred to as normal with the accent on the second syllable. A different thing altogether from the English “NORMal.”
In the distant past, kings had shown the world that they meant it by strapping on a sword and riding into war, putting their lives on the line. Getting behind the controls of a plane and pointing it at a runway was as close as one could reasonably come in the modern world to the same public blood oath.
https://www.nytimes.com/2021/11/16/books/review/termination-shock-by-neal-stephenson-an-excerpt.html
I flew into Telluride, CO, in a small plane many years ago. It was like flying into the heavens, or Mt. Olympus - absolutely and stunningly beautiful. Thank you for bringing back that memory. Glad you had a great flight.
Telluride is a place I have chosen *not* to fly into, in our little plane. It is *so* high-altitude — I believe the highest airport elevation in the US — and with so many mountains around it. Deb and I really enjoyed being in the city of Telluride, for an 'Original Thinkers' conference there a few years ago. But we went commercial to some place in the vicinity! (I think Montrose.)
Great to read this, Jim. I've never flown, but I've flown "in", and always had great confidence in pilots and controllers. having toured throughout the world and flown hundreds and hundreds of times. Any shakiness I felt usually disappeared when I realized it wasn't my anxiety that was keeping the plane in the air! I even got so I enjoyed flying "among" the clouds. One of my coolest flying memories was seeing you and Deb fly in to the tiny Chester airport!
Phil, thank you! Deb and I will never forget coming right over "downtown" Chester to land at your airport and see you.
I live for the day when I'm standing at the Homer airport watching you and Deb bring your Cirrus in on short final.
Like your writing and your flying. It's nice to get away from the deluge of stories about the former guy.
Thank you!