Five Days in May

On May 2nd, I had an open booking in the middle of my day.  It was a gorgeous spring morning with light winds, temperatures in the high teens, clear blue skies and unlimited visibility.  I had already taken the Super Decathlon up to do Immelmann turns with a student and didn't have my next lesson - hammerheads - for a little more than two hours. 
With KXD tied up on the line, the Smith sat alone in the shade of the hangar.  I sat a few hundred feet away, watching, and chewing thoughtfully on a protein bar.
The Smith was imploring me to take us out for a quick rip.  There was no mistaking that.  You may think it isn't possible for a machine, in this case a collection of steel tubing, hand-planed wood and doped fabric, to give you a look - but, believe me, it is.  It's the same look a dog gives you when it simply must go for a walk this instant.  The Smith might as well have been sitting by the door, tail wagging, leash hanging from her jaws, whining softly.
With a sigh, I hop off the plywood box meant to house wing covers, engine blankets and tie-down ropes for a Cessna 150, and start walking towards the biplane.  It's a haphazard, circuitous root.  I stop to let the Cessna 170, that old flat 6 Continental clattering, roll by.  I casually wave to the pilot.  On the other side of the taxiway, I chat briefly with another aviator and, once the pleasantries and idle topic of the day are exhausted, promptly forget what the conversation was about.  With each step, my excitement builds.  The whining grows in volume and urgency.

The Smith in her corner of the hangar on May 2nd. (Author's collection)

A few minutes later, I've rolled the Smith out of her corner and into the bright sunlight.  I give her a thorough pre-flight inspection, lingering longer than usual in certain high importance areas.  I've noticed that I'm doing that with increased regularity and I'm fairly certain I know why.  Still, the anticipation prods me onward through a full circle of the bipe and her underside.  Everything is at it should be.
Not too long after, with the Lycoming growling in my ears, we're sprinting down the runway.  I've hardly touched the rudder pedals on this particular roll - save for periodic taps on the right pedal.  I've eased off on the forward stick so that the Smith adopts a slightly tail low attitude as we approach flying speed.  As I've planned, she calmly breaks ground of her own accord and we begin rising gently into the sky above Rockcliffe.
I haven't decided where we'll go or what we'll do.  I just felt like going up to have a look around, just for the fun of it.  The Smith and I consider the concrete carpet of Gatineau, the hills and the flat lands beyond as our destination but her little wings keep pulling us around onto an easterly heading.  Holding the leash, I let the biplane set the pace. 
We crawl along above the Ottawa River, chat a little with the flight service station at Gatineau, and keep pushing on to the east.  At Masson-Angers, we turn left to follow the Du Lievre River north past Beauchampville on the left bank and Buckingham on the right.
Beyond these small towns, the landscape settles into a narrow ribbon of puzzle-piece farmers fields centered on the river and flanked for miles by a sea of granite cloaked in green.  The river, once used move lumber downstream to the Ottawa, meanders north-north-west to the small town of Notre-Dame-de-la-Salette.
There's something about this town.  We noticed it last season when we first flew out this way and loitered overhead for a little while.  We felt it again on our next visit but couldn't quite identify the allure.  It might be that the little town, known as Portland until the mid 1960s, is the only outpost for 15 or 20 miles in any direction.  It's beautiful but lonely up here and perhaps, this tiny speck of civilization soothes that feeling.  It might be how the town is nestled tightly around a set of crossroads nuzzled up to the river's eastern shore...or the way the sunlight glints off the steel grey roof of the church. 

A house destroyed the 1908 landslide in Notre-Dame-de-la-Salette. (Collection Bastien)

 

The feeling is also one of inexplicable sadness.  It washed over us each time we orbited overhead, on days much like this one - when we had absolutely no reason to feel this way. 

After our second trip out here, the feeling persisted and I did some research.  Notre-Dame-de-la-Salette has many reasons to be sad.  More than a century ago, in the early morning hours of April 26th, a landslide swept down the western shore of the river - taking 3 houses with it and killing 6 people.  With the river blocked by mud and debris, huge blocks of ice were carried across the town, destroying a dozen houses and 25 other buildings.  In the end, 34 people were killed, roughly ten per cent of the town's population - many of them in their beds. 

Two additional landslides, in 1900 and 1912, as well as a 1903 fire, ravaged this river town.

The scene of devastation after the 1908 Notre-Dame-de-la-Salette. (Collection Bastien)

And maybe that's what we feel, what makes the air heavy - that lingering echo of catastrophe, careening off the nearby hills, swirling around the town and rising gently into the sky above.

After a few more lazy spins around the village, we point our nose west and follow it through the hills to Poltimore, then south to Val-des-Monts before picking up a valley and taking it west to Wakefield. 
Here, we turn south again to follow the Gatineau River home.

At this point, I became aware of a faint headache.  It was after 1 in the afternoon and the sun was strong and high in the sky.  Sunlight leaked through the propeller's disk, bounced off the Smith's nose and into my eyes.  I hardly ever wore sunglasses when flying and I'd likely been squinting for most of the flight.  In order to take advantage of the warm air on my face, I'd left my goggles on my forehead and now the pressure points were burning and seemed to be centered on my temples.  All this conspired to force my mind from the business of flying to the urgency of landing.
The circuit is not our best.  We're pushed out long and wide by the busy Saturday afternoon circuit. The final approach features more power adjustment and speed chasing than I'd normally deem acceptable.  And yet, I pursue the approach.  I'm sore and flushed from the sun.  My head is pounding and my eyes itch.  I just want to put the little ship down.
We rush over the perimeter fence and into the flare.  I could bail out of the approach here but I don't.  Instead, I bring the power off, the plane settles onto the pavement and skips back into the air.  We slide sideways for a few feet and touch down a second time before galloping at once into air again.  I see the edge of the runway hovering into view as my hands and feet work to wrestle the biplane to the ground. 
An instant later, the little ship, tired of flight, sags to earth and the wheels chirp as I manage to finally horse the biplane into running straight. 
We roll clear of the runway at Bravo taxiway.  My mouth is dry and tastes of ash.  My heart beat is crashing around inside my cavernous head. 
I am an idiot.
The Smith's only reply is the admonishing rumble of the Lycoming at slow idle and the swishing sound of the prop. 
"A good approach is a good landing," I hear my Dad say, as clear as though he were standing next to me, leaning up against the cockpit rim and shouting advice into my ear.
He's right.  That was a lousy approach.  I had plenty of reasons and many chances to break off and set up again but I chose to press the approach and then tried to save the landing.  I broke every rule I incessantly hammered into the heads of my students.  In fact, and ironically, I'd echoed my Dad just this morning.
I tucked the Smith into the corner of the hangar, laid an apologetic hand on her cowl and went back to the Decathlon and hammerheads. 
The hammerhead is perhaps the most exciting and most difficult maneuver in the basic aerobatic repertoire.  It involves a brisk pull to the vertical - until the wing cleanly cuts the distant horizon in half.  One must lean on the right rudder to stay straight during the pull and, once the desired angle is achieved, slight forward pressure on the stick is required to keep the machine from slowly rotating onto her back.  At this point, it's a waiting game.  As the ship climbs the vertical line, gravity inevitably takes over and her heavenward progress slows and will eventually stop.  The slipstream tightens around the airframe and gives the pilot a buffet, a trembling of the stick similar to what's experienced during run-up when the machine is stationary with the engine at high power. This is the only real cue the aviator is afforded. At this point, some four to five seconds after the hitting the vertical line, the pilot must add left rudder to begin the pivot, right stick to hold the wing down and slight forward pressure to keep the cut even.  If executed properly, the aircraft pivots through 180 degrees and travels earthward again.
There's a lot going on in the hammerhead, most of it counterintuitive - and it all happens more or less at once.  In the novice, there's a terrific desire, fueled by borderline panic, to stuff everything into a corner and then get frustrated about the unpleasant result.  With experience, however, time slows down, the process crystallizes and the hammerhead grows into the sweet maneuver it really is.  Of course, time doesn't really slow.  The sand in the hourglass keeps flowing at the same rate but patience and experience make it much easier to count the grains.
"Patience is a virtue," my dad used to say.  He used to say it all the time.  He kept saying it after he'd passed. 
When my wife and I had settled on a venue for our wedding - a building that my dad had built, in fact - we were faced with only two available dates, one in May and one in October.  Given it was already March, I was pushing heavily for October.  Mel wanted May.  After some discussion, she relented.
"Patience is a virtue," she said. 
I wept.  My wife had met my father once, and only for a few minutes.  After I had calmed down enough to question her about the phrase, she admitted she never really used it and didn't know why she had at that particular moment. 
I did, however...and we were married in October.
Over the next week, I flew the Smith four more times.  For the first two flights, I flew only circuits - at first stop-and-go landings and then touch-and-goes.  I concentrated on the fundamentals of speed, energy management and power above all else.  Keeping her straight while blind out the front had become almost second nature.  I went around a few times - once because of traffic on the runway and twice because I just didn't like the approach.  On one or two occasions, I rolled out to a slow walking pace, taxied off and went back out again so that I could simulate full stop landings.  I sank myself into sharpening my skills in the most critical phases of flight, shoehorning the tutelage into short intervals made even shorter by the biplane's faster approach speed. 
The circuit flights were relatively short - no more than 25 or 30 minutes.  This kind of flying in the Smith was just as taxing as the time I'd spent in the Pitts - the only difference being I still had lessons to teach in the Super D.  The physical workload was significant but mentally, it was a marathon.  I'd emerge from the cockpit sweating from exertion but grinning in triumph.
The second pair of flights involved circuits bookending a short jaunt out of the airport's zone.  The goal here was to give me a break and an opportunity to just relax and fly the biplane.
With each flight, I became increasingly aware that I had been hurrying the airplane, forcing things to happen before they naturally should.  The May 2nd flight in the midday sun was a perfect example; I was tired, uncomfortable and anxious to land so that I could uncoil myself from the airplane, get some water, shade and rest.  The unplanned extension of the circuit exacerbated that impatience and I then punched through every warning sign in an effort to put the airplane down.
The Smith was teaching me to be patient again.  If I did things just so, she would reward me with a gentle touch down and a well-behaved roll out. 
It really was that simple.  Good things do come to those who wait.

Fluency

My full-time employment at the Rockcliffe Flying Club remained on my own terms.  I set myself up to work Wednesday through to Sunday in order to keep myself available for the higher trafficked weekends.  The aerobatic program competed annually with the petulant nature of April weather, with its undulating temperatures and sporadic rain showers that often came unannounced with the fury of a monsoon.  May usually brought stability in the weather and a more or less constant stream of returning and new aerobatic students.  In the short term, I planned to fill the gaping holes in my schedule with short jaunts in the Smith.

I had plenty of opportunity in the days following our first flight of 2015.  The Smith and I launched on the 16th, 17th and 18th with the goal of recapturing the modicum of comfort and skill we'd built during the previous season.

On the 16th, we went east instead of west - racing along the south shore of the Ottawa River and across the urban sprawl of Orleans spilling out of the nation's capital.  Once the ferry crossing at Cumberland disappeared under the left wing, we turned right to a heading of roughly south-east.  Here, Orleans breathed her last gasps of suburbanization and the expanse of field and forest reigned.  Here and there, a small town or hamlet crowded the intersection of two county roads that, remarkably, ran straight and true for miles until fading into the dull, grey blur of the horizon.

I picked up a rare winding asphalt road, crossed a small patch of fields, then a forest that had sprung a cell phone tower from its pine canopy.  Just beyond, was J.P. and Maria's farm with the cliché red barn and its incongruous slabs of solar panels.  I guided the Smith through a few left hand orbits until someone emerged from the house and stood in the dirt courtyard, shielding their eyes with one hand while waving with the other.  The Smith and I went around the patch a few more times before waggling our wings and sweeping southward to crisscross the countryside.

I love this part of Ontario because it has remained largely unchanged since the days when we first took to the skies.  You could, as they did in aviation's infancy, take off or land from any of the fields spread around us - provided they were reasonably flat, devoid of ditches and you took care to avoid fences, trees or livestock.  Later, when the literal flying fields became aerodromes and then airports, the purpose-built installations at Rockcliffe and Pendleton were carved out of the wilderness or born from repurposed land.  Airplanes too became more specialized, more sophisticated - and they flew higher and faster behind engines of increasing power.  Still, they remained essentially the same - wings for lift, a tail for control and stability, a compartment to carry the aviator and an engine to provide thrust.

Rockcliffe's face had changed drastically over the years.  Her three runways had been whittled down to just the single strip - one being erased entirely while the other now serves as a taxiway.  Her expansive military hangars are gone, leaving only the faint footprint of their foundations and the occasional iron tie-down ring.  The song of the Merlin and the bass rumble of the old radials has long since faded only to be replaced by a chorus of small Lycomings and Continentals with the occasional refrain of a Kinner and Jacobs thrown in.  Purists decry this aging as the tearing down of national monuments while most are simply glad the old field exists at all.

Further east, and actually not far from where we are now, is the former RCAF Station Pendleton.  During the second world war, it hosted No. 10 Elementary Flight Training School (EFTS) where trainee pilots were given 50 hours on the Tiger Moth or the Finch.  The field remains largely as it did more than 75 years ago.  It retains its characteristic triangular arrangement of runways and most of the buildings from that era, however, the asphalt is in such bad shape that the tow planes and gliders mostly use the grass.

I can see the pale triangular smudge of Pendleton, neatly framed by the forest, hovering just over the nose.  It's well camouflaged and, if you're not purposely looking for it, easy to miss.  I quickly tune my radio to Pendleton's frequency and listen in.  Silence.  Well, outside of the blast of the slipstream and the growl of the engine.

My eyes strain to pick out any traffic loitering about the old airport.  No joy - and it's not surprising either.  It's lunchtime on a Thursday.  I'm very much alone in the sky's basement.  In fact, it's likely that I'm the only pilot flying around these parts.  At least the only pilot not getting paid to fly.

I smile in spite of myself.  I suppose this is one of the perks of being more or less unemployed.

About ten minutes later, still smiling over my how great misfortune led to me frolicking in the skies while everyone else worked, I am crossing the field at Rockcliffe and about to join the circuit.  There's only one airplane in the circuit, a rental flight in one of the club's Cessna 172s, and I've been listening to him plod around the pattern for the last several minutes as I flew inbound.  As I'm about to make my overhead call, he comes up on the frequency to say he's turning base.

This is good news.  As Andrew Boyd taught me during my apprenticeship in the Pitts, "flying these things is easy, it's fitting into the circuit and landing that's hard."  With that in mind, I fly a circuit similar to the one flown by the ride-hopping WACO.  It consists of a descending, U-shaped base to final at 85 miles per hour and carrying 1700 RPM until the flare.  In the Pitts, I flew a similar profile to a slant final, before making that final adjustment to line up with the runway as I crossed the threshold.  I can see well enough straight ahead over the nose in the Smith to render the slant final unnecessary.

The whole thing, from the end of downwind to touchdown takes about 25 seconds.

Still, given the 172 is on base for a touch and go and I'm overhead, this should work out nicely.

The only issue is that the 172 isn't where I expect it to be.

After squinting hard at what I would expect to be the terrain above which one normally flies a base leg, I catch a glimpse of the white trainer turning final somewhere past Beacon Hill.  The accompanying radio call confirms it.

My groan is instantly swept away by the wind, leaving only a despondent rumble in my chest.  I power back and trim for 70 miles per hour, which is the slowest speed I care to cruise at.  This is 10 miles per hour faster than the Smith's stalling speed and only slightly faster than the 172 final approach speed.

And so we come to every biplane pilot's rub. Two wings means double the lift but also double the drag.  These things can't glide worth a damn.  Rockcliffe affords little when it comes to off-airport landing sites so once you're in the pattern, the preference is to stay close enough to the field that you can make it should the engine quit.  The trouble is, you can't fly slow enough to avoid being pushed way out by a slower airplane flying a wider circuit.  The end result is that we end up wallowing around the pattern, holding our altitude until final and then increasing speed to 85 miles per hour for the approach.

It isn't dangerous or difficult, really - just backwards.

The end result is, by the time we're crossing the perimeter fence, we're a little faster than we should be.  I know I can carry a lighter power setting into the round out and bleed off the excess by being patient in the flare. 

I let the cushion of air beneath us flatten a shade earlier than I'd aimed for and the little ship skips back into the air.  It's an unpleasant feeling - hanging a few feet above the asphalt with the power at idle and the scenery rushing past in a frenetic blur.  I know we're floating more than a meter above the runway - I can feel it in my seat and in how the wings feel heavy.  I won't break it if I drop the Smith from this height but it will be a wild ride down the runway. 

This is the Smith talking to me.  Like any language, it fades with disuse.  After 5 months away, I'm only just starting to remember some of the words.

Instinctively, the left hand moves forward and the engine responds.  The wings, light again and invigorated by thrust, stop the Smith from settling.  With the lightest of pressure from my right wrist, we rise into the sky again and set up for another go.

Breaking 700 total time and 25 in the Smith on 18 April 2015.  I'm holding a sign displaying the numbers.  (Author's Collection)

On the 17th, we flew north-west to the drag strip at Luskville with the intention of racing against cars but there weren't any.  On the 18th, we flew a short patrol up the Gatineau River to Wakefield.  When we returned to Rockcliffe, I'd surpassed 700 hours total time and 25 in the Smith.
My time in the Smith represented 3.5 per cent of my total flying time over 13 years.  When I reflected on the simple mathematics, it dawned on me that the meaningfulness and impact of that time, barely a day, had quietly defined my flying life.