Random Thoughts From the Back Seat By Jeff Orchard
I started flying when I was six years old. It was July third, 1953 and the occasion was my birthday. I remember having a boat cushion under me and another behind me in a Piper PA-11 on floats. My most vivid memory is of looking down on Meddybemps Maine and seeing my Aunt Charlotte waving up at me from outside her general store. We were probably four or five hundred feet in the air, and every thing looked sooo small. The flight was a weather delayed present from my Aunt Joy, and it gave me a tremendous desire to fly. The pilot was Ed Ketchen, a local resident and respected bush pilot, and his enthusiasm for flying was infectious. He looked like he was having fun, a lot of fun, sitting there with a gigantic smile beaming out from behind the biggest, neatest pair of aviator's sunglasses you could imagine. At one point he said "It's all yours", and I plowed around the sky scarcely daring to move the controls. I was sure that a fiery death was imminent many times, especially when the wing "dipped" a little bit and a gentle correction from Ed was suggested.
We did land safely, and I bounced around for several days afterward vowing to become the best Air Force pilot that ever lived. Over the next ten years, I washed the plane many times, collected a 2-cent deposit on all the Orange Crush and RC Cola bottles that I could find in the water off the town dock, and did odd jobs for any one that would hire me, to get five dollars together for a half-hour lesson in that PA-11 with Ed. I still have my original logbook. The entries are all 15 minutes here, 35 minutes there, medium turns, straight-and-level flight, the dreaded stall and landings, landings, landings. The logbook shows 14 hours over a ten year span. I submit, friends, that this is no way to learn how to fly. I forgot more between flights than I learned in the air. Ed Ketchen still made each flight fun and informative, and I was still hooked. I finally got an opportunity to continue my aviation education when my family moved to New Hampshire, and went on to become a flight instructor in sailplanes at the Salem NH Gliderport.
Now that I have been teaching people to remember how to fly for over 30 years, I have a few things to say about flight instruction, and how the process takes place. In my "career" as an aviator, I have had the benefit of learning from some of the best pilots around. Along with Ed, Jim Doyle, Don Brasseur, Roy Mc Master, Wally Scott and Terry Sweeney all offered me new insights into the world of the air. You may be surprised to learn however, that it has been my students who have taught me more about air and the learning process than anyone else. Each time I get off the ground, something new happens that gives me more meaning to the realm of flight. Perseverance was demonstrated by the young man who got really airsick every time he left the ground. He did get a license, and it was only after countless short flights that we were able to stay in the air for more than a half hour at a time. He eventually overcame his almost disabling affliction by recognizing that flying was fun, and that a moderate amount of discomfort was what he had to "pay" to learn. Today, he is an accomplished pilot and hasn't had a bout of airsickness since his second solo flight.
I see many students who look at learning how to fly as a job. They are the ones that come to the field with every book and map about flying that they own in a large briefcase, and they can be found in the corner reading about regulations and procedures right up until they get in the glider. During their lessons, they berate themselves mercilessly if they don't "get it" on the first try. They also tend to analyze a flight to death during and after the lesson. Books are great, maps are invaluable, but both of them are best assimilated near a warm fire on a cold winter night. Otherwise, they should be used as a reference, to explain or clarify what happened during the lesson.
What every student should know is that they can learn far more by just listening to the "hanger talk" that goes on all around them at the airport. Experience is the best teacher, even if it is someone else's. You just have to be smart enough to listen. Don't waste your time reading books at the airport, get the benefit of many years of experience by talking to other pilots and asking questions when you don't understand.
Above all, remember that no one is forcing you to learn and there is no shame in taking a few extra lessons to solo. One of the best kept secrets is that I took 62 lessons to solo. I was discouraged more than once, and even quit in disgust for a whole year, but as I look back now, I know that I'm a better pilot because I had the benefit of an instructor far longer than most. It took one special instructor to show me that flying is fun and that the only reason I should be doing it is to have fun and learn. Thank you, Don Brasseur.
Your education really begins after you solo, so sit back, tighten the shoulder harness, and make all your big mistakes while we're with you. More later........