fly: August 2007 Archives

I know three people who made it as far as soloing an airplane, but then stopped their instruction and to this day haven't gotten their license. Each had a surprisingly similar explanation: work and/or life got very busy, lessons got delayed, and... well, that was that. This is no doubt a good reason to stop training for one's private pilot license. You need your head in the game to stay safe and thrive in the cockpit. But it piqued my curiosity that of these three people, all three stopped at roughly the same point in their training. I respect each of these guys and know each of them to be thorough and disciplined in their various professions, so I had no reason to believe I'd be immune to whatever got them. I had a persistent fear that when I reached the same milestone, I, too, would abandon my pursuit.

This morning I completed my second solo flight, meaning I'm more or less at the point that I've worried about. And sure enough, I now think I understand the intense desire to quit. It's not a single thought process or emotion, but rather a set of feelings that are battling themselves viciously. The outcome is that solo flight during one's pilot training is anticlimactic, exhausting, and unenjoyable, and when that sort of experience competes with the rest of your life... well, that's that.

Why anticlimactic? Read any old-timer's account of his first solo. You'll go misty-eyed; it sounds like the most romantic experience one can have without anyone else helping. And yes, it's a great accomplishment, but it's quick, and afterward, all you feel you've proven is that you're not abnormally susceptible to panic attacks during times of stress. Granted, my flying club doesn't have much of a tradition of shirt-cutting or the like, but I don't think that would have made a difference. It's just a repetition of what you've been learning for weeks or months, but this time without your CFI in the right seat. That's the point, of course; your solo should be anticlimactic and uneventful. You can't win; either your hundredth flare is just like the first 99, in which case it really doesn't matter that it was your first solo flare, or your hundredth flare turns out to be "special," and you get to pay for a prop strike. In probability terms, your solo has negative expected value.

At this point you've completed an amazing, spectacular rite of passage that by definition must be a letdown. And now they hand you the keys and tell you it's OK to take the plane out by yourself again. But you can't take anyone with you, you can't actually go anywhere useful (your first solo endorsement usually allows you to take off from and land at exactly one specific airport), you can't go near or even over clouds, and even if you were allowed to use any of the cool navigation equipment in the plane, there's no reason to, because you aren't permitted to go far enough from your home airport to get lost. This pretty much means you get to take off, fly in circles for 30 minutes, and land.

By describing these solo flights as mundane, I don't mean to make them sound easy; in fact, they're terrifying. Did I preflight the plane correctly? Did I somehow drain all the oil when I brushed the fuselage, thereby dooming myself to attempt The Impossible Turn shortly after takeoff? Did I leave the flaps down? Did I just decapitate an entire class of children on a field trip when I started the engine? Am I about to retract the landing gear while still on the runway in my non-RG Cessna 172? Am I taxiing to the wrong end of the runway? Will I decide today that P-factor pulls to the right? Will theoretically possible but never-before-observed infinite low-hill updraft suck my plane up to Flight Level 1000? Wait a minute, am I in Bravo airspace right now? If I turn back into Echo airspace, will SFO Tower's Sidewinder missles that are surely screaming toward me also turn back? Am I about to intercept a wayward skydiver? Is Tower screaming "CESSNA DESCEND NOW" at me, but I've foolishly just switched to ATIS? Or worse than any of these fates, does somebody in the control tower think I'm an idiot???

A choice is before me: either take two hours out of my day to practice squelching my inner voice that's screaming in terror, or stay at work and write a few more unit tests. I admit, it's a tough decision. I'll continue flying in the hope that my gut reaction to a solo flight becomes "yeah! woohoo! let's go!" rather than "err, yeah, that's substantial risk for insufficient upside, I'd rather not." Meanwhile, nowhere on my checklist does it say to have fun, and I sure as hell am not straying from my checklist.

Although it's important for a retail business to fulfill orders correctly, in some ways it's even more important for them to do a good job of fixing fulfillment problems. I'd like to award the first-ever Sowbug.org Gold Star For Excellent Customer Service to mypilotstore.com for their fine handling of a mixup.

I ordered a Garmin GPSMAP 96C (this is a GPS device but for an airplane instead of a car), and when the UPS tracking info arrived, I scheduled a flight accordingly so that I could take it out for a spin. Unfortunately, on Friday a box arrived with a 96 in it, not a 96C. Although the differences between these models are only cosmetic, I definitely wanted the 96C, and I couldn't fairly use the 96 over the weekend and then return it, because then the seller couldn't legitimately sell it as new after that. So I was stuck.

I cynically emailed the retailer, expecting to get a "mailbox full" bounce or at best a reply some time the following week. Instead, less than 20 minutes later I got a shipment notification from UPS, as well as an apologetic email from the retailer explaining that they'd just overnighted the correct model (not just overnighted but with Saturday delivery). They included a shipment label for me to return the other device.

Sure enough, Saturday morning the box arrived, and all was well again in the universe.

One of the big fears of shopping with an Internet store is what happens when something goes wrong. I have no such fear with these guys. I regret that mypilotstore.com sells only aviation supplies; I'd be willing to buy anything from them.