I've given you a modicum of insight into the character of the pilots whom I habitually hang with, and the people you're likely to meet at an airport.
But thus far I've said nothing about the character of the airplanes.
And trust me, airplanes have a lot of character.
Every car on the road has its idiosyncracies. A unique temperament, a spark of hauteur or rebellion or jocularity, a private set of pet peeves. Dare we suggest...a personality?
Airplanes are like that, too. Only their personalities are more noticeable, existing as they do in three dimensions, rather than a motorcar's mere two.
Some airplanes hate to climb.
Some can't grab the air fast enough.
Some planes refuse to come down.
Some drop like rocks.
Some planes wobble a bit on turbulent days.
Some of them wobble a lot.
Some birds cough and sputter at low throttle and mixture settings.
Some of them run smooth as butter on any power setting.
Maybe the radio won't come on unless you flip the switch just right. Maybe you have to drop the nose a little bit to raise the gear. Maybe you have to pump the priming handle just one more time, or pull the mixture just a little farther out, or keep the key on IGNITION and your hand on the throttle and sit there sweating for ten seconds while the prop rotates aimlessly and the electrical system buzzes and every naughty word your mother ever scolded you for saying streaks through your head before the engine finally starts.
Every plane is different.
The fun part is figuring out those differences.
My company retains two Mooneys (E-models, circa 1966-67) for chase operations out here in the Mojave Desert. Sit back and I'll tell you a little bit about them.
N214SH: We call her "Sierra Hotel" for short. She was our flagship airplane, a mostly standard Mooney M20E. She's got an autopilot (doesn't work), manually-operated landing gear (Johnson bar, very reliable) and we've had a few extra gauges put in to watch our engine temperature. Like most Mooneys, she's maneuverable, fuel-efficient, fast, and tough. Mooney airframes are built to withstand 3.8 Gs, which comes in handy when the thermals are kicking up over the desert. Unfortunately, in regards to the type of flying we do, the Mooney airframe has some drawbacks. The wings are so wide and stiff that they catch every little molecule of air that blows under them, so the effects of thermals and turbulence are magnified twofold.
Having said that Sierra Hotel is "mostly standard," I should explain what that means. In hot weather, she don't climb too well. In cold weather, she climbs like a homesick angel. She'll cruise at about 120 miles per hour, and can do up to 180 if we're descending into Apple Valley from 10,000 feet. She does her job quite well, if not exactly flashily.
N3480X: Our second airplane, direct from Colorado. Nicknamed "X-Ray," it had recently had its engine replaced when we took possession. X-Ray is...a little different from Sierra Hotel. She has speed-mods. The windshield is swept back for a more aerodynamic profile, the propeller is scimitar-shaped, and the controls are just...well, tighter. X-Ray is a precision instrument, built to move. She cruises at slightly higher velocities than Sierra Hotel, and is somewhat more agile in the air. I got my first taste of this when Mr. Mooney threw X-Ray into a two-G three-sixty the first day we took her out on a mission. Once I'd retrieved my stomach and peeled my eyeballs off the back of my throat, I had to admit that X-Ray was something more of a "hot rod" than Sierra Hotel.
And now for the pet peeves.
Hot rod though she may be, X-Ray's comm panel is set up inconveniently. You can listen to the first radio (Comm 1) and the second radio (Comm 2) at the same time. You can also talk on Comm 2 and monitor Comm 1 in the background. But for some reason, when you transmit on Comm 1, Comm 2 cuts out. So we have to leave the knob on Comm 2 while we're in the air, constantly, and switch to Comm 1 whenever we want to talk on it (and hope that the people on Comm 2 don't say anything important while that's going on). It's a bit of a pain, to be honest. Sierra Hotel has no such problems. Comm 1 and Comm 2 can be monitored and transmitted on indiscriminately.
Sierra Hotel's ventilation system is terrible, though. X-Ray's used to be the same way, but in desperation we've pried the ventilation hatch open with strong steel wire and now we have the whole slipstream blowing through the vents on us. Given X-Ray's better climb profile, the Green Machine is the preferred vehicle for chase operations, even if seasoned pilots like Dawg and JM-2 are more comfortable in Sierra Hotel.
Did I say "Green Machine"?
Haha, I haven't told you about paint jobs yet, have I?
Airplanes come in...a variety of colors. Obviously you can't go completely crazy with the skin on your old bird. There are FAA regulations regarding color and placement of registration numbers and so forth. But there is some wiggle room. And often, pilots choose to wiggle in the wrong direction.
Mr. Mooney's personal Mooney (not one of our company planes) used to belong to a dentist. I find this nothing short of hilarious, seeing as how Mr. Mooney's personal Mooney is stark white with a turquoise stripe running down the side. It looks like a giant tube of toothpaste sitting on the tarmac. Apparently this dentist let his wife pick the color scheme, which is always a sound course of action in my book.
One of the pilots who flies out of Apple Valley (an acquaintance of JM-2's; I'll call him "Mack") flies a Cessna 172 with large red and yellow patches overlying a white undercoat. Mack nicknamed his plane "Carls Junior," acknowledging the paint job's blatant similarity to ketchup and mustard.
I've seen airplanes the color of boiled asparagus. Neutral colors and pastels mixed without remorse. Shamelessly cheerful shades of royal blue, lime green, banana yellow, and cherry red, often in some gag-inducing combo.
N3480X is no exception. You can almost immediately tell that the plane was a product of the late 1960s, for its color scheme is a sort of light tan, underscored by slate grey and forest green stripes down the sides and on the wings.
Tan, grey, and green. Who let that plane out of the hangar?
Sierra Hotel's color scheme is far more dignified. Its upper half and wings are white. The lower portions are light grey, and the two primary colors are separated by a thin maroon stripe running down the side. Maroon is also the chief color on the tail, giving the airplane a sort of roguish air. As an added bonus, the paint scheme closely matches our company colors.
Every plane has its quirks, from the way it looks to the way it flies. As with human beings, I've learned not to trust my eyes, and look past the surface. A plane spattered in incongruous hues and beaten with an ugly stick still might be the best-flying machine at the airport. Likewise, the immaculate white stallion parked by the ramp might be the most clumsy, awkward, tricky beast you've ever flown.
Beauty is only (aluminum) skin deep.
Well, except for this. This is just "plane" awesome...
re·frac·tion [rɪˈfrækʃən]. n.
1. Physics.
the change of direction of a ray of light, sound, heat, or the like, in passing obliquely from one medium into another in which its wave velocity is different.
2. Ophthalmology.
a. the ability of the eye to refract light that enters it so as to form an image on the retina. b. the determining of the refractive condition of the eye.
3. Astronomy.
a. Also called astronomical refraction. the amount, in angular measure, by which the altitude of a celestial body is increased by the refraction of its light in the earth's atmosphere, being zero at the zenith and a maximum at the horizon. b. the observed altered location, as seen from the earth, of another planet or the like due to diffraction by the atmosphere.
Here are some more tidbits about the job:
I have three bosses. They work and fly out of Apple Valley, but they all live elsewhere, like Nevada and southern Oregon. So they commute down here one week out of the month and fly with me, and rotate.
I'll call my first boss (the one I worked with last week) Mr. Mooney. That's not his real name, of course. It's the name of the plane we fly. His plane. It's a 1961 Mooney M20B. Doesn't look much different from any other small single-engine plane. Low wings, four seats, two-bladed propeller, and so on. It's radically different from the Cessna 172M I've been flying, though. There aren't any self-esteem issues among flying machines. Some airplanes are just better than others, period. And when they are, they say so, loudly. The Mooney M20 is what's known as a complex, high-performance airplane. In aviation parlance, "complex" equates with "bells 'n' whistles." Complex airplanes have extra goodies like retractable landing gear, specialized flaps, and variable-pitch propellers. If you want to know what a variable-pitch propeller is, you'll have to ask somebody else. I'm not really sure. I spent about 20 minutes this morning quizzing my second boss, Spud, what exactly the hell a variable-pitch propeller does. He explained it to me as best he could, he being a former Air Force jet pilot and me a dribbling halfwit student with only 40 flight-hours. I'm afraid I didn't understand most of it. The propeller hub is filled with oil, and has counterweights in it, which can be adjusted to tilt the blades about 30 degrees or so, to increase their efficiency in flight, which reduces unnecessary drag and saves fuel. That part I was okay with. But then we got into a big hairy discussion about mixture controls, and the vacuum pump, and manifold pressure...and visions of tiny dancing daisies began to spring unbidden to my mind. My brain, tired of jumping around trying to catch all the stuff that was flying over my head, was attempting to activate the screen saver. I found it most irritating, particularly when I was trying to comprehend how manifold pressure relates to throttle settings, and...
"High-performance" means that you have more than 150 horses under the cowl.
Mr. Mooney's Mooney (hereafter referred to by its model, Mooney, and its call sign, 17) has about 180 horsepower, retractable landing gear, cowl flaps, a variable-pitch propeller, an electric fuel pump, and a whole bunch of add-ons. It's painted white, with gray and aqua stripes. (The previous owner was a dentist. I assumed the aqua was some kind of toothpaste pitch, but I was mistaken. His wife just liked the color. Mr. Mooney hates it. My other two bosses, Spud and Dawg, continuously rib him about how awful it looks.)
Between Mr. Mooney's ready narration and the mere act of sitting in the plane, I have become rather familiar with Mooneys. They have lots of endearing little quirks. They're much more idiosyncratic than my friendly old Cessna, that's for dang sure.
My workday starts when I drive into the airport and up to Hangar Five. We go in through the little door, unlatch the big door, and open it. Mr. Mooney attaches a towbar to the front wheel, and I get behind the right wing. He pulls and I push. We roll the plane out of the hangar. It's usually nippy in the mornings this time of year. Mr. Mooney manually rotates the propeller a few times, just to loosen up the engine's innards. He makes sure that the master switch in the cockpit is off, though, before he does this. Otherwise the plane could start up unexpectedly, and he could "wind up" without arms.
After we preflight M17, we climb in. We have to actually climb up on the wing to get inside. Mooneys, oddly, have only one door, on the right side. So Mr. Mooney gets in first, slides himself over into the left seat, and then I get in. It's a tight fit. Both of us are about six feet tall, and broad-shouldered. Mr. Mooney scoots up close to the controls, and I sit back. I close and latch the door. It's strange. Forward visibility is more restricted, thanks to the two-part windscreen. The Mooney is a low-wing aircraft, meaning I can't look out the side window and see the ground anymore. There are a few more knobs and switches in the Mooney than I'm used to: controls for the variable-pitch propeller, for example. There's also an enormous gray lever extending up from the middle of the floor, just underneath the control panel. It looks like a thick gearshift. It's called a Johnson bar, and it operates the landing gear. Instead of flipping a tiny switch, Mr. Mooney grasps this bar with his right hand and wrenches it backward and down, latching it to the floor between the seats. I have learned to scrunch myself against the door and keep my elbows and shoulders out of the way, or else. Then the gear goes up. To put it back down, Mr. Mooney reaches down, grabs the bar, and yanks it back up, locking it into place under the control panel. Gear down.
Needless to say, I was rather impressed with this mechanism. I've heard of hand-cranked landing gear, requiring 33 turns of a little metal wheel, but this Johnson bar takes the biscuit. Mr. Mooney tells me it's far more reliable than any switch or button. That's true, I reckon, but neither switches nor buttons require biceps to operate.
The Mooney is a zippy little plane, though, and has enough horsepower to stay well abreast of the UAV. In fact, the UAV doesn't go that fast. In the air, we have to weave behind it to keep ourselves from shooting past. Mr. Mooney starts the engines while I hook up the GPS and the TKAS systems. The GPS is a Garmin 396, a good basic mid-range navigational aid. "TKAS" stands for...um, stands for...uh...
It's a collision avoidance system. It's a squat gray box with a low-bit screen on the front. It's attached with Velcro to a little platform we've rigged up for it, and hooks up to the GPS with a cord. The data from the TKAS is displayed on the GPS as a small black screen, inset over the main display. It has two little concentric circles on it, representing one-mile and three-mile radii from the plane. As we fly, I keep my eyes glued to the GPS, the TKAS, the UAV and the skies nearby, to make sure nothing out there smacks into anything else. I'm an extra set of eyes. In fact, that is my technical job description. I am the observer.
Mr. Mooney and I take off from the Apple Valley airfield and swing west to head to Victorville, about ten miles away. Barely a minute in the air, and we're inside their airspace. Mr. Mooney swings north so we can get behind the UAV—a gray speck on taxiway B—as it takes off to the south.
On the first day, takeoff went perfectly. We followed the UAV out to the test site, a 20-minute flight or so. It was tough to see the little spindly-winged bird until it climbed above the horizon and was silhouetted against the bright sky. Mr. Mooney and I came back to Apple Valley and twiddled our thumbs for six hours until the afternoon flight, when we jumped back into M17, took off for the test site, and caught the UAV as it flew out. (I actually spotted it first; Mr. Mooney congratulated me heartily, saying "I'd earned my pay.") We escorted it back, handed it off to the ground controllers, landed at Apple Valley, and went home.
The second day was a bit weird. It was windy, which meant things were quite bumpy aloft. There were a few minor technical difficulties to sort out, which meant that Mr. Mooney and I had to land at Victorville and spend twenty minutes chilling in the FBO. (Fortunately, they had free popcorn and bottled water.) We flew a quick local mission and then went home.
This week I'm flying with Boss #2, Spud. Spud barely made it down from Nevada in the company Mooney, Sierra Hotel (a 1964 M20E, named for the last two letters of its call sign). There's a high-pressure system down the hill in the L.A. Basin. Conditions up here, then, are ridiculously blustery: 25-30 miles an hour sustained, gusting to 50. It's been that way for the last couple of days. Spud was getting severely tossed around, coming down through the Owens Valley. On top of that, the governor on the variable-pitch propeller was acting up, too. But he made it.
It's so windy, however, that flights have been canceled today and tomorrow. Spud and I spent the morning helping the mechanic down at the airport investigate that misbehaving governor. I'll tell you some more about that next time, I reckon. Let me fly an actual mission with Spud and then I'll get back to you. I can't wait until this spring weather clears up and we can start flying...
Oh yeah...and I'll tell you, in my usual roundabout way, why the word "refraction" is so important to what I'm writing about.
