Two Friday’s ago I did something that I hadn’t done in 9 years, and before that it had been 10 years prior, I got into an airplane with an instructor, took the controls and left mother earth for a little while.
On the surface this in and of itself is not so unusual or significant, happens every day all over the world, but I have a history with it, and it is a big deal, to me. On February 2, 1992 I took my first flight lesson in a Cessna 152 at a little airport way out west commonly known as Honolulu International (HNL), you might have heard of it. I had two things against me from the start, one was the cost, a Navy airman does not make enough money to fly very often, two I had a fear of flying. I had the notion that learning to fly would help me overcome this fear. My training progressed very slowly, I could only fly once or twice a month due to the cost. On December 1st, 1992 I had my first solo after accumulating 17.3 hours of instruction over 10 months. During the month of December I flew 7 different days. One of these days included a dual cross country which in Hawaii involves island hopping with flight following and tons of radio work. This was on the 9th we flew from Honolulu International (HNL) to Lanai (LNY) to Molokai (MKK) and back. As we were circling Molokai to slide into the pattern for landing at the airport, we got a surprise that would rack me for years. There are shear cliffs jutting up several hundred feet on the coast, as we came in they were on my left, the off shore trade winds were blowing into then straight up the cliff face. A gust of wind caught the left wing from below and pushed it straight up and then some. At almost pattern altitude there wasn’t much room for recovery, but my instructor grabbed the wheel and with both of us standing on the rudder and turning ailerons to level, it finally came back to level. I swear we were all but upside down at maybe 1500 feet. My instructor saved us, shaken and stirred I landed at Lanai for a few minutes then we headed home. I don’t recall much about the trip back to Oahu. My logbook says I got back in the plane 9 days later and did 1.8 hours of solo time practicing landings, I’m sure I figured getting back on the horse was the cure what ailed me. That was the last entry until 2003 when I had two intro flights with 2 different instructors, as I recall both were young and obnoxious, I didn’t return. Total logged time, 29.0 hours.
My flight Friday was one of those things most people would equate to letting a snake bite you if you were deathly afraid of snakes or taking scuba lessons knowing you were afraid of water and couldn’t swim. I got back into an airplane. A well used but functional Piper Warrior N43181. The flight was as bad as I made it out to be, bumpy, choppy air, what was no more than light to moderate turbulence, to me was a knife in the gut every 30 seconds for 40 minutes in the air. After 15 minutes in the air I was still flying on the same heading as the runway, I hadn’t even tipped the wings. My eyes rarely left the gauges, I was so fixated on maintaining altitude and airspeed nothing else mattered. I finally got us turned 90 degrees to the left then after a few minutes another 90 degree turn to the left and I told Micki the instructor I’d had enough and we flew straight back to the airport. We made a beautiful grass strip landing any carrier pilot would be proud of, straight down, slam it on, hope it sticks… it did, we made it back. I still had my breakfast.
My kudos to Micki Shetterly CFII, I think we broke the ice. My next flight is Tuesday morning. Maybe it won’t take 17 flight hours and 10 months to solo this time.
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