Flight of the Forgotten. Mark A. Vance

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СКАЧАТЬ I did at this very moment. Leaning forward and carefully releasing the parking brake, I began taxiing the little Cessna to the run-up area. Suddenly, I wasn’t alone anymore at all.

      “We’ve both been waiting for this moment for some time. Come on. You can do it. You’ll be fine. All you have to do is concentrate.” Buster said to me as I stared in shock at the ghostly figure beside me. “There’s a first time for everything. No need to worry. I’m here for you.” he insisted. “It’s just a step on the way. You want to be a jet pilot someday, don’t you?” he prompted as I kept staring at him for several seconds.

      “I want to be a jet pilot.” I echoed.

      “Well, then?” he said as I began to recover from the initial shock of his presence and started running up the engine.

      “I’m just here to help. Don’t be afraid of me. It’s going to be fine.” he said reassuringly as I nodded and tried to follow the checklist carefully.

      When I finally finished and taxied onto the runway for takeoff, the sensation of having him beside me as I pushed the throttle forward is still very real to me. It was after all, my first solo flight, a monumental event in any aviator’s life and one I was sharing with my lost uncle. I wasn’t old enough to drive a car and yet here I was the pilot in command of an airplane. As we raced down the runway, I pulled back carefully on the control wheel and felt the tiny Cessna trainer lift off and begin climbing. I can still remember thinking, “Okay, now I have to get this thing back on the ground. My life depends on it.”

      “I’m right here.” my uncle reminded. “Nothing is going to happen. Concentrate … concentrate.” he encouraged as we circled the pattern for my first landing.

      “Carry a little extra power on this one. Keep the nose up. Easy … easy.” he encouraged as the tiny trainer touched smoothly and I applied full power for the touch and go.

      “Not bad.” he remarked as we climbed back into the air.

      Minutes later, after my second successful landing, I was feeling completely at ease and actually enjoying myself as he and I flew around the pattern together again and again.

      “I’ll always be here whenever you’re flying.” Buster said reassuringly as he continued coaching and guiding me. “You have nothing to fear in an airplane.” he said, as I nodded in understanding.

      Minutes later, when I finally made the last landing, I brought the little Cessna to a smooth stop and began taxiing over to my instructor.

      “This is where I leave you now.” my uncle said softly. “Remember, you’re going to be a jet pilot someday.” he reminded before vanishing from sight.

      When I reached my flight instructor, the man was grinning from ear to ear. Opening the cockpit door, he exclaimed, “Congratulations!” and shook my hand firmly as he climbed back inside the cockpit. I then taxied the tiny Cessna to the parking area, shut the engine down and thought about what had just happened. Buster had been with me the entire time, coaching me, encouraging me, directing me. It wasn’t really like a solo flight at all. With my lost uncle in the right seat, I had just flown around the pattern five times.

      “Can I give you a lift?” my flight instructor asked as we tied the airplane down and finished the necessary paperwork.

      “Sure, if I can throw my bike in the back.”

      “Your bike? Oh, that’s right. You don’t start driver’s training until next summer.” he teased as we began walking toward the parking lot. I remember glancing back repeatedly at that little Cessna that day, wondering if the life I’d chosen was part of some larger plan involving Buster himself. He’d just said he would always be there whenever I was flying.

      February 17, 1977, Seaplane Charter from New Orleans to Lake Charles, Louisiana

      They say that people who fly the “bush” are either the world’s best pilots or the world’s craziest. I guess at the time I thought of myself as a little of both. There are countless stories to tell, but this particular charter flight to Lake Charles was undoubtedly the most memorable of my “bush” flying career. The big oil companies I flew for regularly pumped liquid gold out of the ground and often allowed safety to become secondary to getting freight back and forth to their precious oil rigs. It was something we all accepted as part of the job, but when my ground crew started strapping drilling pipe with explosive heads to the floats of my seaplane one day, I began wondering about the whole program.

      Ignoring my instincts, I kept reminding myself of the “build up those flying hours” motto I lived by and the countless number of other pilots ready to take my place and my job if I balked at going. So, decked out in my Mae West and leather flying jacket, I took off with my single passenger for Lake Charles, Louisiana, in a Cessna 180, overloaded with explosives and drilling equipment and badly out of trim. “Piece of cake.” I told myself for the first forty minutes. However, as I approached the Atchafalaya Swamp, the weather ahead suddenly deteriorated. Within minutes, I was forced to fly lower and lower to stay out of the clouds, eventually down to within 200 feet of the ground, deviating around rain showers that suddenly seemed to be everywhere. “Oh well, all part of the job.” I told myself. “Flight time is flight time.”

      It wasn’t long, however, before that thinking soon evaporated, and I found my small Cessna surrounded by thunderstorms and lightning, rocking wildly from side to side in turbulence. Lightning and explosives were not exactly a harmless combination. I can still remember how strong the static electricity felt in the air that day. Between the static electricity and the lightning bolts dancing around me, the hair on the back of my neck was standing at full attention.

      Seaplane flying is done entirely visually, without navaids or weather radar. Many seaplanes don’t have a radio, navaids or anything more sophisticated than a wet-compass to guide them. On occasion, I had used that wet compass for hours at a time, surrounded by water as I thought that surely it must have been like that for Lindbergh so many years before. Today though, I wasn’t over the open water like Lindbergh. I was dangerously low over an inland swamp, where drilling rigs dotted the landscape, rising to over 100 feet in the air. No problem if you were high enough, but because of the weather, I no longer was.

      As the clouds thickened around me and the visibility continued to worsen, it wasn’t long before I had to descend again to maintain visual contact with the ground.

      That was another thing about seaplanes. The gyros didn’t work well enough to give you proper attitude reference inside the clouds. It was an invitation to a graveyard spiral if you got caught for any length of time inside the clouds and had claimed many “bush” pilots lives over the years. So, with the rain beating heavily on my windshield and the lightning dancing around me, I eased the tiny Cessna down even further. Soon we were flying within 100 feet of the ground, and I prayed that the course I’d chosen wouldn’t bring me face to face with the superstructure of an oil rig.

      As the visibility ahead decreased to almost zero, I slowed the tiny Cessna to just above a stall. That, I reasoned, would give me time to react to anything that suddenly appeared ahead. Hopefully, my flight path was unobstructed, but if not I could at least react to what I saw in time. With lightning striking the ground all around me, the little Cessna was now rocking like a canoe in white-water rapids. Within minutes, I was losing visual contact with the ground again, forced to fly even lower, eventually leveling the tiny Cessna just 30 feet above the ground. At 30 feet, everything below you is dangerous. Boats, drilling rigs, trees-almost anything can be lethal if you hit it in an airplane.

      My biggest СКАЧАТЬ