Self portrait taken 10

Self portrait taken 10,000 feet over Southern Virginia
enroute from Washington, D.C. to Kissimmee, Florida
Piper Commanche N119Q
May, 2003

Why I Fly

by Stephen Coonts

Every pilot has his favorite time and place to fly. The urge grips me hardest on dead-still, cloudless Colorado mornings as the sun creeps up over the earth's rim. Standing on my deck, surveying the crest of the Rockies, listening to the meadowlarks, I know how it will be. As the rising sun warms my face I think about how the airplane will smell and feel as I preflight it. The cockpit will be just so as I settle into it-- every familiar dial and gauge will be ready to tell me its tidbit, every knob will welcome my fingertips, and the stick and throttle will fit naturally into my hands as I grasp them. And I know how the airplane will feel as her wings bite into this still, calm air. Inside, I go for a quick shower and shave, then head out to the airport.

The hangar door squeaks as the door rises, this in spite of the grease and oil I have squirted liberally over time in vain attempts to cure that squeak. The door rises slowly, majestically, to the whap, whap, whap of the roller and the pleasantly protesting, squeaking bearing.

The rising door admits the sunlight, still at a deliciously low angle, into the dark, cavernous bay where my airplane awaits. She is a 1942 Stearman, a brute of a biplane that once trained military flight students, then spent more than 30 years spraying crops, and now, in the fullness of her age, takes me and my friends joy-riding on pristine mornings like this one. She wears a 300-horsepower engine and bright yellow paint.

This Stearman is not the first airplane I have been smitten by. She is just my current flame. I have been panting over flying machines on and off since 1968. Alas, money fuels my passion. Right now I am flush enough to finance a Stearman affair, but historically my bank balance has waxed and waned. Who knows, my next winged mistress may be an old Cessna-- another one, because I have danced with that girl before. Gigolo that I am, I will love her just as much.

Pushing the Stearman from the shadows into the sunlight is always a satisfying ritual. The sunlight shrieks when it hits the yellow fabric.

I circle the airplane several times, looking at this, prodding that, checking the oil, checking the fuel, checking the air in the tires, looking for leaking brake fluid. Just often enough to keep me interested I find something amiss, although the problems are rarely significant enough to delay my departure.

Because I am picky, I add a little oil to the crankcase. This chore inevitably allows me to get oil on my hands and gives me a tiny mess to wipe with a rag. Because I have the rag out, I wipe at this and wipe at that, scrape some bug carcasses off the wing leading edge with my fingernail, and finger this and that in an unorganized, unhurried way.

The magic of aviation is that this 51-year-old contraption of metal, wood, fabric, paint, wire, and rubber will actually fly. I have seen this miracle occur often enough to have faith that it will occur again, when I will it, in just a few more minutes. Yet the predictability of this does not lessen the wonder for me. So now, I amble along with my rag, touching fabric and struts and wheels, running my fingers along the leading edge of the prop, looking and feeling and savoring.

Finally, I am ready. The still, clear air is waiting.

The Stearman comes to life with a chug and a growl and a chuff of smoke. The round, nine-cylinder Lycoming engine settles into a rocking idle. The laminated hickory joy stick is cool and hard to my touch as I waggle it. Sure enough, the ailerons and elevator respond predictably to my inputs. I crane my neck and watch the rudder as I push right and then left on the pedals.

After nudging the mixture knob up a trifle, I add some throttle and the big yellow biplane begins to roll.

Out in front the prop is a mere blur, barely detectable with the naked eye, yet the breeze it produces swirls back over the cockpit and caresses my exposed cheeks and neck. It plays daintily with my shirt while the early morning sun casts strong shadows on the gray instrument panel, on the yellow wings, and on the gray asphalt as the airplane taxis toward the runway.

In the runup area, I sit in the cockpit looking at each dial and gauge in turn, listening to the engine, surveying the limp windsock and the empty blue sky above as the engine oil warms. To the west, the peaks of the Rockies are washed-out pastels embedded in a thin trace of haze. High overhead in the blue are contrails, perhaps airliners on the morning run to Los Angeles and San Francisco or maybe Air Force tankers on their way to a rendezvous or bombers on a practice mission. The airplanes at the end of the contrails are tiny silver specks, too high to be identified.

Soon the engine is ready. I run her up to 1,600 rpm and check the mags, cycle the prop, and engage the carb heat momentarily. Everything works as it should, precisely as it should, when it should.

After announcing my departure over the radio, I taxi the Stearman onto the runway and line her up. Anxious to be gone now, I feed in throttle while jockeying rudder and stick to hold her straight. The engine's moan rises to a pleasant roar and the prop wash becomes a stiff breeze.

Down the runway we go, the speed steadily increasing. The tail rises, and I can see straight ahead over the nose. The rudder is very sensitive now, the stick more solid. A glance at the airspeed indicator-- 60, 65--and stick back to let the wings bite into the air.

The miracle occurs again. The ground recedes, my craft swims upward readily, willingly into the atmosphere, greatest of the earth's oceans.

Upward I steer away from the ground, away from the strident voices shouting for my attention and my time. I cannot completely escape the people or the problems up here, not for very long anyway, but for a little while I can see the earth and its inhabitants from a better perspective. Where else but aloft in an infinite blue sky can you see how small the towns and cities really are, how tiny the houses, how minuscule the people? Where else but here can you see how a stream has meandered down its valley as the ages have slipped past, how the hills have weathered, how the mountains are once again surrendering their crown of snow as the days lengthen and the sun climbs the sky?

The engine and the bright yellow wings lift me higher and higher. Now I see a hawk circling haphazardly, searching vainly for a thermal. He is too early. He'll have to work awhile, until the sun has had a few more hours to heat the earth.

My craft cleaves this still morning air with a dreamlike quality. Every twitch of the stick and rudder gives the anticipated reaction and nothing more. No burbles or thermals yet--just this wine-smooth air with a trace of haze out there on the distant horizon, provided, no doubt, so I will not be tempted to think that I can see forever.

And yet up here I can see far beyond today. I can see into yesterday, and I can see into tomorrow. I can see how the earth used to be before the white man came, and I can see how the towns and cities will continue to spread, how the streets and highways will lengthen and widen, and how the traffic will flow in five years, 10, 20. I can see it all so clearly, yet I am powerless to stop the process or speed it up.
It is, just as the sky and land are. I am a mere spectator floating in the pristine wilderness of air.

I am alive. Up here with the song of the engine and the air whispering on my face as the sunlight and shadows play upon the banking, wheeling wings, I am completely, vibrantly alive. With the stick in my right hand, the throttle in my left, and the rudder beneath my feet, I can savor that essence from which life is made.

Too soon I must head down, down toward the waiting runway. As usual, I do three or four landings, play the power and the controls and try to induce the airplane to kiss the earth precisely where, when, and as I want it to. The errors are mine alone.

Finally, I am taxiing again. In front of the open hangar bay I pull the mixture to cutoff, and the engine dies.

The silence stuns me. I fumble with the switches, making sure that mags and battery are off, then pull off the flying helmet and let the sun dry my sweaty hair.

Reluctantly, I climb from the cockpit, smell the grass and earth, gaze at the motionless prop, and feel the heat radiating from the silent engine. Yet my flight isn't over. When I have come completely back from the sky, I must wipe her down, swab off the oil that the big radial engine sprayed so wantonly, check everything, and, finally, wheel her back into the semidarkness of the hangar and chock her carefully, so she will be ready next time I yearn to fly.

Then I go to work, to the office with its computer and telephone, its fax machine and morning mail.

But maybe, just perhaps, the wind will not pick up much today. It looks like clouds will drift in this afternoon, but if the wind doesn't come with a vengeance, perhaps this evening. Perhaps this evening I can fly again.

For I will tell you a secret. Flying on a still, calm spring or fall evening, as the sun sinks behind the peaks of the Rockies and dusk settles over the land and lights wink on in the villages and towns--that flying is even better than flying in the morning.

Stephen Coonts owns a Cessna 421B, a 1942 Stearman, and a Breezy. A formal naval aviator and attorney, he is the author of "Flight of the Intruder," "Final Flight," "The Minotaur," "Under Siege," "The Cannibal Queen," (a highly recomended non-fiction account of Coonts' transcontinental adventures in his Stearman biplane) and "The Red Horseman."

Click here to read an eight year old's take on the magic of flight.