Fluency

My full-time employment at the Rockcliffe Flying Club remained on my own terms.  I set myself up to work Wednesday through to Sunday in order to keep myself available for the higher trafficked weekends.  The aerobatic program competed annually with the petulant nature of April weather, with its undulating temperatures and sporadic rain showers that often came unannounced with the fury of a monsoon.  May usually brought stability in the weather and a more or less constant stream of returning and new aerobatic students.  In the short term, I planned to fill the gaping holes in my schedule with short jaunts in the Smith.

I had plenty of opportunity in the days following our first flight of 2015.  The Smith and I launched on the 16th, 17th and 18th with the goal of recapturing the modicum of comfort and skill we'd built during the previous season.

On the 16th, we went east instead of west - racing along the south shore of the Ottawa River and across the urban sprawl of Orleans spilling out of the nation's capital.  Once the ferry crossing at Cumberland disappeared under the left wing, we turned right to a heading of roughly south-east.  Here, Orleans breathed her last gasps of suburbanization and the expanse of field and forest reigned.  Here and there, a small town or hamlet crowded the intersection of two county roads that, remarkably, ran straight and true for miles until fading into the dull, grey blur of the horizon.

I picked up a rare winding asphalt road, crossed a small patch of fields, then a forest that had sprung a cell phone tower from its pine canopy.  Just beyond, was J.P. and Maria's farm with the cliché red barn and its incongruous slabs of solar panels.  I guided the Smith through a few left hand orbits until someone emerged from the house and stood in the dirt courtyard, shielding their eyes with one hand while waving with the other.  The Smith and I went around the patch a few more times before waggling our wings and sweeping southward to crisscross the countryside.

I love this part of Ontario because it has remained largely unchanged since the days when we first took to the skies.  You could, as they did in aviation's infancy, take off or land from any of the fields spread around us - provided they were reasonably flat, devoid of ditches and you took care to avoid fences, trees or livestock.  Later, when the literal flying fields became aerodromes and then airports, the purpose-built installations at Rockcliffe and Pendleton were carved out of the wilderness or born from repurposed land.  Airplanes too became more specialized, more sophisticated - and they flew higher and faster behind engines of increasing power.  Still, they remained essentially the same - wings for lift, a tail for control and stability, a compartment to carry the aviator and an engine to provide thrust.

Rockcliffe's face had changed drastically over the years.  Her three runways had been whittled down to just the single strip - one being erased entirely while the other now serves as a taxiway.  Her expansive military hangars are gone, leaving only the faint footprint of their foundations and the occasional iron tie-down ring.  The song of the Merlin and the bass rumble of the old radials has long since faded only to be replaced by a chorus of small Lycomings and Continentals with the occasional refrain of a Kinner and Jacobs thrown in.  Purists decry this aging as the tearing down of national monuments while most are simply glad the old field exists at all.

Further east, and actually not far from where we are now, is the former RCAF Station Pendleton.  During the second world war, it hosted No. 10 Elementary Flight Training School (EFTS) where trainee pilots were given 50 hours on the Tiger Moth or the Finch.  The field remains largely as it did more than 75 years ago.  It retains its characteristic triangular arrangement of runways and most of the buildings from that era, however, the asphalt is in such bad shape that the tow planes and gliders mostly use the grass.

I can see the pale triangular smudge of Pendleton, neatly framed by the forest, hovering just over the nose.  It's well camouflaged and, if you're not purposely looking for it, easy to miss.  I quickly tune my radio to Pendleton's frequency and listen in.  Silence.  Well, outside of the blast of the slipstream and the growl of the engine.

My eyes strain to pick out any traffic loitering about the old airport.  No joy - and it's not surprising either.  It's lunchtime on a Thursday.  I'm very much alone in the sky's basement.  In fact, it's likely that I'm the only pilot flying around these parts.  At least the only pilot not getting paid to fly.

I smile in spite of myself.  I suppose this is one of the perks of being more or less unemployed.

About ten minutes later, still smiling over my how great misfortune led to me frolicking in the skies while everyone else worked, I am crossing the field at Rockcliffe and about to join the circuit.  There's only one airplane in the circuit, a rental flight in one of the club's Cessna 172s, and I've been listening to him plod around the pattern for the last several minutes as I flew inbound.  As I'm about to make my overhead call, he comes up on the frequency to say he's turning base.

This is good news.  As Andrew Boyd taught me during my apprenticeship in the Pitts, "flying these things is easy, it's fitting into the circuit and landing that's hard."  With that in mind, I fly a circuit similar to the one flown by the ride-hopping WACO.  It consists of a descending, U-shaped base to final at 85 miles per hour and carrying 1700 RPM until the flare.  In the Pitts, I flew a similar profile to a slant final, before making that final adjustment to line up with the runway as I crossed the threshold.  I can see well enough straight ahead over the nose in the Smith to render the slant final unnecessary.

The whole thing, from the end of downwind to touchdown takes about 25 seconds.

Still, given the 172 is on base for a touch and go and I'm overhead, this should work out nicely.

The only issue is that the 172 isn't where I expect it to be.

After squinting hard at what I would expect to be the terrain above which one normally flies a base leg, I catch a glimpse of the white trainer turning final somewhere past Beacon Hill.  The accompanying radio call confirms it.

My groan is instantly swept away by the wind, leaving only a despondent rumble in my chest.  I power back and trim for 70 miles per hour, which is the slowest speed I care to cruise at.  This is 10 miles per hour faster than the Smith's stalling speed and only slightly faster than the 172 final approach speed.

And so we come to every biplane pilot's rub. Two wings means double the lift but also double the drag.  These things can't glide worth a damn.  Rockcliffe affords little when it comes to off-airport landing sites so once you're in the pattern, the preference is to stay close enough to the field that you can make it should the engine quit.  The trouble is, you can't fly slow enough to avoid being pushed way out by a slower airplane flying a wider circuit.  The end result is that we end up wallowing around the pattern, holding our altitude until final and then increasing speed to 85 miles per hour for the approach.

It isn't dangerous or difficult, really - just backwards.

The end result is, by the time we're crossing the perimeter fence, we're a little faster than we should be.  I know I can carry a lighter power setting into the round out and bleed off the excess by being patient in the flare. 

I let the cushion of air beneath us flatten a shade earlier than I'd aimed for and the little ship skips back into the air.  It's an unpleasant feeling - hanging a few feet above the asphalt with the power at idle and the scenery rushing past in a frenetic blur.  I know we're floating more than a meter above the runway - I can feel it in my seat and in how the wings feel heavy.  I won't break it if I drop the Smith from this height but it will be a wild ride down the runway. 

This is the Smith talking to me.  Like any language, it fades with disuse.  After 5 months away, I'm only just starting to remember some of the words.

Instinctively, the left hand moves forward and the engine responds.  The wings, light again and invigorated by thrust, stop the Smith from settling.  With the lightest of pressure from my right wrist, we rise into the sky again and set up for another go.

Breaking 700 total time and 25 in the Smith on 18 April 2015.  I'm holding a sign displaying the numbers.  (Author's Collection)

On the 17th, we flew north-west to the drag strip at Luskville with the intention of racing against cars but there weren't any.  On the 18th, we flew a short patrol up the Gatineau River to Wakefield.  When we returned to Rockcliffe, I'd surpassed 700 hours total time and 25 in the Smith.
My time in the Smith represented 3.5 per cent of my total flying time over 13 years.  When I reflected on the simple mathematics, it dawned on me that the meaningfulness and impact of that time, barely a day, had quietly defined my flying life.