Pictures Aloft

This one is for Miss D. and Jenny:No Farting Unicorns involved with this photo :-)

Aviation - Webster's compact dictionary states is defined as "the operation of aircraft". That doesn't even begin to touch on it. Yes, that's the basics of it, getting from point A to B for most people, but more than that, it's a grab bag of adventure, a fascination through history. It is a leap, for better or worse, that people take into the unknown.

Even when we pilots aren't flying we tend to hover around the airport, like moths to a flame, just showing up to have a cup of coffee and grasp the collective knowledge of those that have gone before us, taking in the stories, the tall tales, the wisdom. The knowledge that is passed on, from veteran pilot to youngster, from instructor to student is partly a flame, the warmth of awareness of what we recognized in each other, the pulse of blood within the hand that reaches out and offers to share the knowledge and wonder.

I remember when I was first learning to fly a tailwheel airplane. The pilots all hung out together, and in odd moments and at odd times, with no prior planning, all showed up at the airfield to just sit and trade stories, waiting for the clouds to clear. I was the youngest person there, it seems that the yearning for such a planes as these grows with maturing, sprouting as you discover what is in you that means something. Like any other passion, flying these airplanes is a passion often accompanied by a preference for that which surrounds its winged form, which in its absence still speaks fondly of it, in hallowed tones and animated stories.


I was privileged to join them. To learn from them. For there's just something about flying one of the old classics, like the Cub. You'll freeze in her, you'll sweat like a sumo wrestler in her, dodge seagulls, balloons and summer rainclouds in her. There's no glass, no EICAS, no autopilot; simply a pure seat of a pants adventure that hearkens back to simpler times in far away places unchanged over time.

From these pilots I learned the technical aspects of things. But I also learned so much more. For flying has a way of slipping out of its technical boundaries. Certainly one has to learn from their peers about lift and weight and thrust and drag (when I taught a ground school at the local Community College I drew a little dress on the cartoon man that represented drag on the Four Forces of Flight poster). There's mechanics and weather and navigation, There's an extensive and complex science to it. And there's many an airman who treats it simply as that, an efficient mode of transportation. The same sort of pilot that may buy every toy and bell and whistle for their four seat plane, lest they get bored on a long flight.

But that's just not in the nature of this airman. It's probably the reason I love old trains and old tools. Give me a simple Cub, a stick and a few instruments. In this simple code of life, quiet and remoteness stand guard over courage heightened by solitude. This is my own compass north, the self in isolation; honor, resolve, emotion, thought and reason held in until they are amplified within me, becoming music to a life open to possibility.


For I'm in that other group, for whom aviation now is no longer a means to a living, or a call to duty. Aviation is simply magic; a reflection off of a brilliant white cloud that shines in my eyes. I hear the sound of the engine, and in the back of my mind can explain how it works, about compression, and bypass ratio and fuel nozzles. But also in my mind is simply the pure sound of it, the throb and hum of the motor, and with that sound, that deep, throaty rumble that lets the heart mend.

I could explain how the center of pressure relates to Mach tuck. I can tell you that a JT12 engine sounds like a mighty eagle unless it's night and over the water and then it sounds like a stuttering sparrow. I could explain continuity assumption and boundary layer. But right now all I want to tell you is what it is like to be here, suspended above rivers and streams, blue and green and hard edged ridge tops, thinking about nothing but the improbability of being up here at all, the sheer brilliance of being aloft. I saw the shadow of my craft passing over a town far south of my home, a flock of Canadian Geese in formation below me, honking their encouragement. A few scattered showers gives way to clear and I remain silent, reading the signs of the sky, a poem composed of cursive contrails and feather-like exclamation points of white and amber light.

Operation of an aircraft - yes it is. It's also something that has shaped my life, no matter where my career took me, remaining always in my waking thoughts and sleep, a siren call that resonates somewhere in my private self. The being and cadence of the sky is more than Mr. Webster's definition, it's more than transport for those that hear the sky's calling. When we look down at the world it's like looking at an alien world, a place where we work and lay our head, filled with people we love, but still always somewhat foreign. For we're only truly at home harnessing the rumbled roar of an engine, the wind in our hair.