Winds of Life

Flying is really quite simple—all you really have to know is that when you pull back the houses and trees get smaller, and when you push forward the houses and trees get larger; that and a judicious use of the throttles or power control is all that any budding pilot needs to know. I still remember the first time I flew. I spent no more than thirty minutes with the instructor pilot prior to flying and we mostly talked about things related to engine starts and radio calls. As we walked out the door together he casually mentioned the simple flying formula to me. We both laughed. I laughed a nervous laugh, knowing that, in all my ignorance, there certainly had to be more to flying than that. I suppose he was just laughing at me and my nervous attempts at feigned self-confidence. After a few pathetic attempts at radio calls and a smooth taxi, I found myself on the runway, looking at the instructor and expecting him to take the controls and demo the takeoff. I looked at him. He looked at me. I glanced down. “Well,” he said. “Are you going to fly this thing or not?” Feigned self-confidence or pride, I don’t know which, motivated me to push up the throttles and, after reaching the proper airspeed, pull back on the yoke. We were airborne…we were AIRBORNE! It really was that easy.

But things become more difficult after you master the simple formulas. Besides learning how to recover from power-on and power-off stalls, turn around a point, and accomplish emergency landings, one of the most complex puzzles of aviation is navigation. The relatively simple hand-eye coordination needed to pilot an airplane pales in comparison to the mental math gymnastics and intricate interplay between pilot, aeronautical chart, and plotter required to travel from Abilene to San Antonio by Cessna. The many variables of aviation that exist even at takeoff, become much more important once you decide you want to do more than make houses and trees increase or diminish in relative size. Winds aloft, weather patterns, navigational radios, fuel burn, propeller pitch angle, airspeed and groundspeed all conspire to create particularly thorny problems for budding pilots and seasoned aviators alike.