Old Bold Pilots

'There are old pilots

And there are bold pilots

But there are no old, bold pilots."

-Col. Patrick Bowman, USAF

99 combat missions, WW2

151 combat missions, Vietnam War

Actually got in a shooting dust-up, with fatalities, fighting the Soviets

So last night I tried to kill myself.

Well, "tried" may be an understatement.

But a cascade of bad assumptions and questionable decisions drives the narrative into that gray area between carelessness and willfulness, what we in the law refer to as "gross negligence".

Why? In the military we used to call it "get-home-itis", a condition that has left pieces of broken airplanes and pilots strewn across the countryside for over a century now.

After four days in Panama City, I'd had enough of fourteen hour workdays, evenings spent slurping down solitary plates of noodles dolled up with some combination of oils and spices to make tonight's linguini seem different from last night's (Hey, it's Thai Night because of the steaming aroma of siracha sauce!) while watching the Braves on the big screen. I wanted to go back to New York, to have P snoring on the next pillow and feel all was right with the world again.

This morning was originally scheduled for a mediation in a case I'm trying in October--one of four in the space of five weeks--but at the last minute the other side's adjuster pulled up lame and had to cancel. My plan all week had been to fly home last night so I'd be here right about now for the Zoom session, trying to beat some bad weather forecast to show up in a few hours up here. But with the cancellation, I could've just worked a normal day, driven over to Wyldswood to commune with the livestock, then made a well-rested journey beginning in the predawn stillness this morning to avoid the scourge of afternoon thunderstorms.

It would've been a good plan. But that's not what I did.

Rather, seeing blue skies above as I pulled into Perry, I started inputting proposed flight plans into my Foreflight app, and saw that with basically calm winds I could go high, up to 17,000 feet, and make it to KELM in a little over four hours. The weather here was forecast to be VFR, so the fact that I'd burn 82 of my 98 gallons of gas on this exercise was no worry. A few lines of pretty nasty thunderstorms lay draped across Virginia and the Shenandoah, but the westerlies would surely push those storms out of the way before I arrived a couple hours later.

So I pushed, the "file flight plan" button on the iPad, and hopped into the Mighty Columbia for the trip.

I'm superstitious as hell, and took it as not a good sign when the plane started up, then the engine quit as I was taxiing to the gas pump to top off. Did she have a premonition? The Continental sputtered and hesitated before and after the fueling, then finally decided I couldn't take a hint and started humming in anticipation of the flight.

I climbed out of KFPY under clear blue skies, with the faintest hint of towering cumulus along the northern horizon. Passing about 14,000 feet, the number four and six cylinder heads started climbing to a dangerously high temperature. I'd seen this one before-during the summer months the density altitude rises dramatically on hot days, and things that should only happen above 18,000 feet start happening a lot lower. Like vapor lock, which is preceded by cylinder head overheat. Thankfully, the Columbia has a vapor suppress button that swiftly addresses the problem, if you know how to recognize it, and soon the gauges were all back in the green.

I leveled off at 17,000 feet, checked that the oxygen was flowing through the cannula as advertised, and settled into reading my novel about the French Revolution on my iPad. The winds were actually a little more favorable than advertised, and the flight computer forecast a landing at Elmira with 20 gallons in the tanks, which equates to about an hour and fifteen in reserve.

I took this pic as I flew past Greensboro, North Carolina, admiring a lovely sunset. When flying is good, it is oh so good.

But a couple minutes after snapping this photo, my attention turned to the flashing of lightning ahead. The Nexrad showed the same nasty line of storms I'd observed on the ground in Perry, still hanging around about seventy miles ahead. At a groundspeed of about 210 miles an hour, that's not particularly far. And another equally strong line of thunderstorms had formed about fifty miles to the west, the whole mass drifting east at about twenty knots.

The radar showed what amounted to a canyon between the squall lines, maybe twenty miles across, if I maneuvered to the northwest and then jinked back due north for another forty or fifty miles. No problemo.

Washington Center obliged when I asked to maneuver for weather. There were a bunch of us out here--your dumbass author and many airliners--all dealing with the same thing.

As I was threading the needle between the storms, lightning illuminating thunderheads that extended all the way to the tropopause, like a monster's outline momentarily illuminated in a horror movie, I was reminded of something I've known a long time: storm development is both a horizontal and a vertical matter, and a new one was forming in that gap I'd improvidently decided to shoot.

There's a reason we used to call those gaps "sucker holes" in the Air Force.

It was pitch black outside, except for the lightning all around, when the first big updraft slammed the plane upward, pressing me down into the seat. The engine surged; my speed fluctuated wildly with the swirls of air through which the little plane coursed. It pitched down. It rolled sideways. I bounced off the ceiling.

Washington Center thought this would be a good time to chide me about my altitude control. "Three Sierra Mike, I show you three hundred feet high. Roanoke altimeter 30.12"

This was not at the top of my list of priorities at the moment. "Center, Three Sierra Mike. I'm in the middle of a cell right now."

"Roger. Try coming left to west. Should take you out of the cell in about ten miles."

That was one long-ass ten miles, a roller coaster ride with the autopilot's altitude warning blaring in my ears, which I'm sure the controller could hear every time I pressed the mike button. I didn't think I was going to die, necessarily, but I was certainly feeling a little stupid right about then.

Finally the crisis passed, the air smoothed out, and I could see lights below and stars above.

I also noticed that the Columbia seemed to be having trouble holding airspeed, slowing down even as I added power.

I've seen this one before, as well. I told Siri to turn on the flashlight on my iPhone and flashed it at the windscreen, which was covered in ice. I turned the beam over my left shoulder and saw ice accumulating along the leading edges of the port wing. It was minus seven celsius outside. If I didn't descend below the freezing layer, right now, I'd soon find myself in a ballistic ice cube corkscrewing into the ground.

Washington Center had already decided I was an idiot, I imagine, so when I told them I needed to descend for icing they quickly stepped me down to 13,000 feet. I activated the wing deicer--basically a system that dribbles antifreeze over your cambers, as well as the propeller heat.

Throughout the descent I shouted to Siri to turn on the flashlight so I could see if the ice was melting, but she went full-Hal from 2001: A Space Odyssey, and started telling me, "Sorry. I can't do that." You bitch, I thought. Then I remembered I carried a penlight in my computer bag, and used it on the way down to monitor the ice, which wasn't getting worse but also wasn't really going away.

Passing 14,000 feet the panel told me the outside air temperature had risen to zero, then +1. Ice turned to water, and the strobes flashed glimpses of the driving rainstorm through which I was now flying. Rainstorms are no big deal. This was progress.

However . . . I was now fifty miles off my flight plan, flying a circuitous route over Morgantown, West Virginia recommended by ATC to get around more storms. I was also 4,000 feet lower than planned, meaning a higher hourly fuel burn rate. The flight computer now said I'd land with sixteen gallons, then fifteen as the winds shifted around in front of me. I pondered whether to drop in somewhere to refuel, which probably would also mean spending the night as it approached 10:30 after getting up before six for work. Fifteen gallons was still over fifty minutes of flying time. I'd press on.

By the Pennsylvania line my luck seemed to be shifting, along with the winds that were now adding eight knots to my groundspeed. The computer recalculated fuels to predict landing with seventeen gallons. The spare lights of the Penn countryside passed below me. I started to relax.

About fifty miles from KELM another little cluster of rain showers grew in my path. New York Center asked if I'd like to deviate left to avoid them. I was about out of gas, and those little showers didn't look like anything special. I chose to plow through them.

To my surprise, the buildups carried some punch, knocking me around again as I descended over the ridge toward the initial approach fix to fly the ILS into Elmira. More showers started to build along the final approach course. A more rested me wouldn't have thought much of it, but I was pretty shagged now. Still, I (or more accurately the autopilot) flew a perfect ILS into the field, popping out of the weather maybe 2,000 feet above the ground. I could almost feel the Columbia sigh with me as the mains squeaked onto the wet runway. Four hours and thirty minutes in the air. A new record for me. I felt like Lindbergh, except no one was there to greet me, and the airport night manager took his time coming to open the gate and let me tramp to the car, leaving me to stand there in the rain while he finished his break.

I've been flying this plane now for three-and-a-half years, and logged maybe 500 hours in that time, the most in any airframe except the Eagle. You get better as a pilot through experience and navigating situations that the older, wiser me won't ever, ever try again. I love P, love working from a beautiful spot, love life up here in the summer. But I definitely need to get better at questioning my motives and my judgment when the universe is crying out for me to go back to Wyldswood and have a cocktail on the porch, rather than tempting the aviation gods and living to tell the tale one more time.

Time for a shower---I noticed when I woke up that I had that awful BO that comes from stress and stimulants instead of honest toil. No one at Wegman's wants to smell that. Today's a catch-up day, for NYU and the countertop people and half a dozen other burning priorities that have gone neglected during a week of depositions and motion practice. Hoping P gets off work at a reasonable time, so we can make it to the Labor Day Weekend festivities this evening up at Canandaigua Lake, and lean into a well-earned three day break.