Going Solo

Going solo can either be a moment of triumph or of terror. It all depends on how prepared you are when it happens.

Remember being 16, having passed the driver’s education test, built up your required driving hours and finally proved to the DMV examiner that you were worthy of a driver’s license? Then, with the license in hand you approach your parents for the keys to the family car.

“What? You want to drive solo? Well, I don’t know,” your dad says.

Then with an elbow in his side by your mother, he reluctantly hands them over to you . .  .  along with a small notepad of his handwritten rules for driving his car. As soon as you back out of the driveway onto the main road and put the car in drive, you realize, “I did it. I am driving all by myself.” You look back at the house in the rear-view mirror and see your dad standing with a worried look on his face. Your mother has her arm in his and she is waving. Now all you must do is remember two things: the rules of the road, and how to get back home.

It was an amazing feeling though. “Oh yeah, I’m cool. I can play the radio. I can hang my arm out the driver’s side window while I’m wearing dark glasses. I can toot the horn and wave at the other kids who still have to walk to school or take the bus.”

And then one evening as I drove northbound on the I-5, I thought to myself, “Have I ever seen a State Patrolman watching this part of the freeway? No, I haven’t. I wonder how fast I can go?”

And so, at 80 mph in a 60-mph zone, I passed two Patrolmen standing outside their vehicles. The chase lasted less than a ¼ mile and Mr. “Solo 16-year-old” was busted and lost his license for six months.

That is about how every “solo“” event has gone in my life: sleeping solo in a tent in the woods. (Did you know that it is not actually possible to sleep when you are listening to every snap of a twig outside your polyester fabric fortress.)  First trombone solo in band. (A slide slipping from your fingers can actually travel through two rows of flutes and clarinets before coming to a stop at the director’s feet.) First solo date with a girl. (Now here’s a thought, nobody told me I should have something to talk about that girls would be interested in.)

And the “solo” misadventures go on and on, but the point is, the solo must happen so you can gain something new called, “experience.”

For as many times as my dad said to my mom, “Patty, that idiot is never going to figure it out,” I proved him wrong, maybe not in the first 20 times, but surely before the 101st.

The thing is, most solos don’t have consequences for screwing up and I didn’t consider this until I started flying.

When I was 16, I started taking flying lessons in a Cessna 152 which is a little side-by-side two-seater. I started in a ground school class which met once a week. There we learned all about the rules and theory of flight. Then I was given an instructor and we would fly for an hour at a time learning to take off, land, talk on the radio, and control the airplane in the sky. After about 15 hours of dual instruction, the instructor asked me to taxi back to the tie down. When I reached that point and shut off the engine, he climbed out, looked at me and said, “Take it around the pattern twice by yourself solo.

Taxiing out to the active runway, a million thoughts ran through my mind, remembering all that we had practiced. I stammered to the tower operator who I’m sure was alerted to the greenhorn in the airplane. Finally, after running up the engine and doing preflight checks, I was given clearance to depart. I centered the little airplane on the runway, added full throttle and took off.

Now the difference between soloing in other aspects of life and soloing in an aircraft, is that once the aircraft is in the air you are committed, and there is the issue of bringing it back to the ground safely again. You see there is only you. You either figure out how to land it safely or you crash. That is a rude realization once you have left the ground. It is like a ski jumper leaving the lip of the jump at 60 mph. Once he is in the air, he just better know how to land safely on the snow again.

I think that everyone watching on the ground knew I could do it . . . eventually.

You see, suddenly, the aircraft was 180 pounds lighter without the instructor and that affects how it climbs and glides to a landing. I got into the pattern and upon reaching the downwind leg, got permission from the tower for a touch and go. Turning from base leg to final approach seemed like everything was normal.  The runway was a ¼ mile off and I had a nice glide rate except I noted that the airplane was not settling at the same rate as with two people. Finally, the airplane passed over the end of the runway and just before touching the tarmac I flared by lifting the nose up. The rear wheels touched the blacktop and the airplane hopped into the air again. So, I settled it back down and the rear wheels touched, and the airplane bounced into the air again. And it went, boing, boing, boing down the runway until the tower operator called over the radio, “Hey, kangaroo boy. You better go around and try it again mate.”

I think that there was a pretty good chance he was mocking me, and he wasn’t actually from Australia.

Eventually I figured it out. My dad, who was a long-time veteran flight instructor at Bellingham Airport, took a lot of ribbing that day.

Later, when I was 19, I started training as a helicopter pilot. A helicopter is a totally different beast than an airplane. It becomes part of your body and must be controlled at all times. There is no taking your hands off the controls as you can do in an airplane.

My instructor’s name was Brad Wilson. He lived at a housing community for pilots in the county called Meadow Mist. It had its own private runway. Now here is something which I find interesting: If you understood that name in English it would mean Morning Fog in the Meadow. On the other hand, the meaning of those two words in German would mean, Meadow Dung. Perhaps this is why I had to buzz the airstrip twice so a high school boy would run out with a shovel to chase the cows off and scoop up the poop.

After approximately 15 hours of dual instruction time with Brad, he asked me to fly to Meadow Mist and land on the runway next to his house. As the helicopter sat idling in the grass, he motioned over the roar of the engine that he needed to get something from his house. Leaving the cockpit, he walked over to the garage and returned with a parachute.

This was unsettling. If the instructor got a parachute, why didn’t he bring one for me? What does he know that I don’t know?

He opened the passenger door, laid the parachute on the seat, and clipped the seat belt around it. He then shut the plexiglass door and waved to me. His way of saying, “you’re ready to go solo.”

Once again, the weight of the parachute was not close to the 180-pound weight of the instructor who was now missing. As he walked away, I can remember thinking that he must have faith in me returning. After all, I was his ride back to Bellingham airport.

Of course, now being lighter, the helicopter shot into the sky as I pulled up on the collective. Brad said that over the roar of the Lycoming engine, he could still hear the faint scream of, “Yeow!”

Now, the unique thing about a helicopter is that you land it to a specific point. Circling the airstrip and looking down at his house, I can remember thinking as I made the final approach to the grass runway, “I’m going to land on that point.” Overshooting it, I said to myself, “No, I’m going to land on this point. Darn it, this point. Oh, for crying out loud!”

Finally, two blocks from his house, I found the point. He needed the walk anyway.

Going solo for the first time is always uncomfortable. Am I ready?  Do I have what it takes to succeed, or will I fail? In the foreground are those who those who are waiting for the blooper, but also know, there are those watching from a distance who truly believe that you can do it.

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