Learning To Fly, 1987-88

 Ice is forming, on the tips of my wings
Unheeded warnings; I thought I thought of everything
No navigator, to find my way home
Unladen, empty, and turned to stone

A soul in tension that's learning to fly
Condition: grounded, but determined to try
Can't keep my eyes from the circling skies
Tongue-tied and twisted; just an earth-bound misfit, I

........ David Gilmour, Pink Floyd, Learning To Fly, 1987

In the summer of 1987 I barely had two loonies to rub together (actually, 'loonie' coins were only just introduced into circulation in 1987 and hardly anyone had seen one yet; but I digress).  I always knew I needed to experience the freedom of flight, and my mother and a sister had in fact taken lessons some years earlier.  Paper airplanes had long fascinated me and I endlessly perfected variations that would fly farther and longer.  Dime store balsa wood airplanes were a favorite for their simplicity and grace.  Long before I'd heard this song written by private pilot David Gilmour, I knew that I'd one day have my own opportunity to begin.  This summer would be my time!

I had an $800 limit on my credit card - I suppose I'm lucky the Bank of Montreal was foolish enough to even issue one to this 'lab rat'.  My University research salary was roughly $1100 per month, but fortunately for the bank, I suppose, I had been taught that credit cards were about convenience and not actually racking up credit.  The cost of flight time (plane, fuel, instructor) was $75/hr, however, so this limit could be reached very, very quickly!  Cramming rent and food into the remaining cash I had each month left little for anything else that year.  The number of training hours I flew each month was dictated solely by the credit available; no earn, no pay, no fly.  So, I 'flew within my means' and dutifully paid the balance in full each month. 

While earthbound between card payments, I engaged in gruesome research experiments (no, not really - well, some - but not all equally gruesome).  My biggest claim to fame during the years I spent at the Pharmacology Lab may have been in taking over the grad student coffee racket.  The honor system has some serious drawbacks - honest intentions do not pay the bills or keep the coffee pot full, and it was time for a radical approach.  In the end I had the thing running like a mob enterprise, and maintained a wide selection of great coffees and fresh creamers on hand (none of that powdered crap), all at a cheaper cost than before!  Geez, where is this going?

Anyway, I would cycle 12km out to the air field and back home again each lesson - neither I nor many of my peers had a car back then.  I had graduated from starving student to lowly lab tech.  The first car that I could call my own came thanks to a $3K down-payment from mom at age 26.  A 1990 Volkswagen Jetta.  Pretty sweet, actually!  Had to sell it before moving from Calgary to the UK, and have always regretted seeing that car go.  Yet again, I digress.

My instructor, Bob, was as patient as they come, and a credit to all pilot instructors.  While putting in such tiresome and nerve-wracking seat-time beside anxious students, he endured for that to which all flight instructors truly aspire, a real captain's seat.  So he suffered through many a sweaty day stuffed into a small Cessna cockpit, the cost of northeast summer humidity.  Classroom sessions addressing necessary topics such as meteorology and theory of flight, were periodically traded for the more highly anticipated hours behind the control column. I don't recall the necessary flight hours threshold in effect then, but after roughly a year, the day finally came for my written exam, flying exam and then solo. 

My solo was quite a turbulent day, by both physical and mental descriptions.  A pass meant successfully navigating a triangle via two distant air fields, returning to one's point of origin.  I departed on this roughly 3 hour solo journey on one of the windiest days on which I had ever flown.  The cross-wind at the small airstrip to which I'd first arrived was pushing 25 knots.  Although I should have flown on, this was my solo test and I was determined to complete it.  Crabbing 30-40 degrees into the wind and adjusting for bursting gusts, I smacked the plane down and stuck the landing.  Good thing this was a solo, as there is no way the passenger seat would have remained unsoiled otherwise!

Blogger in 1990 at Norman Rogers airfield

So I passed, and proudly held my own private pilot's license.  It seems, however, this post is as much a series of semi-related digressions as it is about learning to fly.  Yet, I suppose these semi-relations also reflect the building blocks that lead one to life's eventual flight into adulthood.  Control of a small aircraft is relatively easy - the basics plus a little feel and intuition go a long way.  Maintaining the near 'battle-hardened' concentration and necessary spatial awareness required to hold your own in a busy, controlled airspace is where it gets tricky; especially when the radio crackles incessantly and often unintelligibly inside your headphones.  I would fly on and off for a few years until past migraine aura came up during a routine Aviation Physical, which kept my license from being renewed one year.  Until resolved with a brief trip to a Neurologist, I effectively remain in 'condition: grounded, but determined to try'.

Blogger's Alma Mater, Queen's University, from the air by Paul Helpard