RANDOM THOUGHTS FROM THE BACK SEAT...... By Jeff Orchard

"THE WALL"

On a cool morning in early May in 1965, with a light drizzle falling, I was strapped into the front seat of a Schweizer 2-22 and dragged kicking and screaming into the sky. Mind you, the kicking and screaming were not obvious to the casual observer, but I was scared to death of flying in a craft without an engine. My flight instructor, Roy McMaster patiently answered all the usual questions. "What happens if the wind stops? How does the rope get disconnected from the towplane? Does the glider fall very far after we release? Are we going to stall? When we land, will we hit very hard?"

I came to the Gliderport with some experience, a few hours in a tiny little float plane that my friend's father gave lessons in up in Maine. I already knew that if you pushed the stick forward, the nose would drop. As we climbed on tow with Roy at the controls, the glider was rock steady directly behind the towplane. The stick didn't move very much, and I figured that the tow was going to be the easiest part to learn, after all the rope was pulling us up and keeping us in place, right? The first real scare came when Roy told me to release the rope by pulling the knob right in front of me. In my haste to do it right, I reset the trim, and opened the spoilers and the air vent before I got the right knob. BANG! Omigod, we're going to die, that sure sounded like the spar......no, wait, the wings are still there, but where did the towplane go?

All pilots can tell a similar story, the first time that they actually get to drive an airplane around is so new and different that fear seems to be a natural part of flying. Will it stay together if I get too steep, will I accidentally tip it over? Stalls? You want me to stall? Can't we do it the next time? We're too low to do a stall, aren't we? Only 2100 feet of altitude, that's too low, right? We won't have enough time to recover. Let's wait and do it next time. I promise. That fear is a good thing. It keeps us on our toes and keeps a wide path open between our sensory apparatus and our brains. Pretty soon we realize that the wings are going to stay on even in a 60 degree bank, and that wonder of wonders, the stalls are just a little bit fun. We can relax a bit, and begin the task of remembering how to fly.

In the beginning, we learn fast. Turns, stalls, straight and level flight, even the tow loses its challenge. After twenty flights we can do it all, maybe not with a lot of finesse, but we can do it. The instructor stops saying sarcastically " The other left" while we practice our turns, we can find the airport and we know which way the wind is blowing. But something else happens, too. In my case, patterns and landings got difficult. With some it's slips or steep turns, but it's always something. On one flight, everything seems to fall into place, and the glider meets the ground at the required speed and spot, with a classic roll-out, wings level until you stop. You feel great, all is right with the world and you can't wait to solo. On the very next flight, everything goes to hell, and the instructor rips the stick out of your hand during the turn onto final, and after a short wild ride, gets it on the ground in one piece. Bathed in sweat, you are about to ask what you did wrong when the instructor starts in. "You were too low, the turn was much too steep, and what was all that action with the spoilers? When I see the birds getting the heck out of the trees at the end of the runway, it's time for me to take over. I just saved your life, buddy." You walk to your car with your tail between your legs, drive home in a black cloud, and are determined to quit doing this. What was I thinking, I'll never be able to do this. I'm not meant to be off the ground, I was foolish to ever think I could fly. Your better half asks you pleasantly how your flight went and you yell back that you are quitting, and never to say the word "fly" in your presence again. He/she in turn senses the mood of the day and yells at the kid, who kicks the dog, who bites the cat, who craps on the carpet. After a few hours or days, you begin to think a little more rationally about the situation, and realize that you have a lot of time and money invested in aviation, and you show up at the airfield a week or two later to try again. And you get yelled at again. This time it is far more humiliating because you had worked on yourself, promised yourself that it was going to be a perfect flight, and you blew it. And worse yet, you don't know why. Everything was going so well...... You quit, you walk away and vow to never come back. Some of your flying friends call to find out where you've been and you make excuses, no money, no time, constipated cat, the instructors yell too much. When you have to fly commercially on business, you don't even glance into the cockpit or at the pilot as you board. Too painful for a quitter....

I got to that point after 60 or so flights and in the middle of the flying season in 1966, I ran far and fast. I couldn't land a frigging glider twice in a row to save my soul. The instructors all stopped talking when I would walk nearby. I knew that in spite of my love for flying, that I would never get it. I would never be a pilot. Aviation was no longer a part of my life, and I walked away, discouraged, angry, and blaming everyone else but me. I hit the WALL. Hard. My self-esteem disappeared and many things in my life were affected by the state of mind that it left me in. Including the cat.

In 1968, I was driving down route 28 in Salem and saw a glider on tow on a bright blue day with vacuum cleaner clouds all over the sky. I found myself making all the turns onto the right back roads and was soon driving down the dirt road that led to the runway. I stopped on a little hill overlooking the airfield and got out of the car to watch for awhile. It was too much. I drove down and walked sheepishly into the operations building. Don Brasseur was teaching that day and he asked me if I was there to fly. I said I really wanted to but had made up my mind that I wasn't aviator material and that I wasn't ready to waste more money on an unproductive enterprise. He wanted to hear the story so I unloaded on him. It was a sad tale, loaded with self pity. As the song says, " There were incidents and accidents, hints and allegations". All the while we were inching toward the flight line and before I could protest, I was once again strapped into the glider and was on tow at a thousand feet. After release Don asked me if I ever got a student license. I told him that I still had one because I had anticipated soloing a year and a half before. He also asked me if I was having fun, did I feel any pressure to solo, did I know that you could do mild aerobatics in a 2-33. I answered yes, no, no. He took the controls and gave me a demonstration of some of the things that he thought were fun. I was astounded and hooked all over again. At about 2000 feet he gave me the controls back and said that I had to get the glider on the ground all by myself, it didn't have to be pretty, but I had to end up on the runway right side up. And he told me that he wasn't going to say a word until I got it on the ground. All my questions were answered by dead silence, it was as though I was alone in the glider. And I put it down just as slick as can be. And it felt great. And the challenge was fun. And I wanted to do it again and again. Don wasn't busy so we took two more silent flights, just patterns. We walked the glider back to the line, and I was in heaven.

Something had clicked, this was really fun, and the last thing on my mind was soloing. I just wanted to fly again soon so that I could have more fun. I wanted to try lazy eights, and find out what happens when you move the stick in a big circle. I wanted to solve all the problems that presented themselves in the traffic pattern, and I didn't care if there was someone in the back seat or not. I just wanted to fly! Don said "one more, get in and do it just like the last one, and pretend that I'm just being quiet in the back seat". It took a moment for the full impact of what he was saying to set in. There was no doubt in my mind, however, as he buckled the harness around air in the back seat and threw the cushions aside. He signed my student license and just walked away. And after a mild case of the jitters passed, it was just like every other time. Cockpit check. Ready to hook up. Wings level. Rope tight. Go. As I left the ground, I was thinking, there's only one way to get back, and nobody to do it but me. As the tow rope snaked away after release, it reminded me of an umbilical cord being cut. I was on my own, sweaty palms and all...born again.

The moral of this story? Solo is a stage in learning to fly, not a goal. You won't solo until your instructor thinks you are ready to, and generally if you are anticipating solo, you're going to make mistakes and beat yourself up unmercifully when it doesn't happen when you think it should. Let me make this easy on you. It's not your call. Your job is to relax, enjoy, and soak up skills. You are spending time and money to do this and you might as well be smiling while you do. Your instructor will toss you out of the nest when your wings are working. And then you can really begin to learn how to fly. In 30-something years of teaching, I have seen literally hundreds of students come and go, some were quick learners and some never did. Of all of those hundreds, there were only two that I considered hopeless, and I finally told them so. There were many others, including some that you probably know, who hit the wall, and with a little patience, and a lot of hard work, are good pilots today. It is normal to reach a plateau during training, where progress slows down and sometimes seems nonexistent. The learning curve is steep in the beginning when everything is new, and flattens during the repetitive "fine tuning" stage. Sometimes the curve actually dips a bit, and that is when most people hit the wall. If you know it is out there, and are prepared for it, you can deal with it just by acknowledging it and driving on through.

After my first solo, my flying progressed rapidly. Within 2 months, I was a private pilot giving rides to friends to build time for a commercial license. A few weeks after I got my commercial, I passed all the tests for an instructor's certificate, and the rest as they say, is history. Looking back, I think the reason that I was able to progress so rapidly was that I had the benefit of several good flight instructors for about twice as long as the typical student does. Even though I was discouraged and didn't think I was making any progress at all, I must have been learning. When I stopped beating on myself and forgot about solo and started having fun, I took a giant step. The bottom line is that if you aren't having fun, you're doing it all wrong. If at first, you don't succeed,............

UPDATE... My Yaw string article had the desired effect. I've gotten a wide range of comments about it, and John McCoy spent many lunch hours analyzing the mechanics of the problem. He sent me a detailed report of his findings, and suggested that we perform an experiment to determine what is real. Knowing that GBSC has many very talented members with wide ranging skills, I make this request. We need to construct a three-axis accelerometer that can be mounted at the CG of a glider complete with a readout on the instrument panel. With such a device, it will be possible to analyze the motion of the glider relative to what the yaw string is telling us. Any takers?