Calgary, January 2020
Recently I was watching a program about the WWII Battle of Britain, where an old Spitfire pilot spoke about flying the famous fighter plane. He talked about his first takeoff and landing, and it reminded me of my first takeoff and landing in a high performance, aerobatic single seater. At that time, I already had about 1000 hours of flight time and a lot of aerobatic experience, but none in a single seater. To put it into perspective, the power to weight ratio of my new airplane was about double compared to anything that I flew before. Also, I was warned that the controls are feather light. Something like driving a Formula 1 race car compare to our Honda Civic.
So, there I was, with the engine running, waiting for takeoff clearance and wondering what will happen in the next 10 seconds. Full power, the aircraft accelerated furiously and, following the laws of aerodynamics, turned left threatening to leave the runway. Quick right rudder, the plane made a right turn, tires squeaking, threatening to go over the other side of the runway. Bit of the left rudder and when I couldn’t stand it anymore, I applied a slight back pressure on the stick, and the plane went into a vertical climb. A panicky push forward, and we were flying more or less horizontally. After that, any move on the stick made the plane climb or dive just like a roller-coaster. At that point I decided to let the plane do its own flying and I controlled it just by slight touches on the controls. That worked well and I arrived in the practice area with plenty of altitude to do more experimentation. First, straight and level flight and gentle turns, and then simulated landings. Decrease the power, shallow dive at 90 mph and, when over the imaginary runway, power to idle, stick back to the three-point altitude and wait for the stall. Then power on, 360 degree climbing turn and do it again. And again. After about half an hour, when it was obvious that I cannot postpone the landing anymore, I returned to the airport, flew a big circuit and did a perfect landing. Later I was told that the whole airport was watching.
After several flights, when I started to enjoy the spectacular performance of my new acquisition, I became ambitious. I wanted to win something important in aerobatic contests and that meant a lot of practice. Eventually I progressed all the way to the Unlimited category, but I flew it badly. There is a huge difference between flying aerobatics just for fun in friendly competitions and flying it to win at the national or international level. That requires full dedication to that one particular activity, and I am not that type of person. So, I struggled for a few years in Unlimited, and then dropped to Advanced and I realized that competitions were losing their appeal for me. I stopped caring about my results, and that defeated the whole purpose of participating in contests. So, after flying competitions for 17 years, I quit.
However, that did not mean the end of my flying endeavors. Now I was able to fly for my own pleasure instead of trying to impress the judges on the ground. I enjoyed this style of flying for a long time, from 2006 to 2017. At first it was great. No more stressful cross-country flights to competitions, dodging clouds, rain and thunderstorms; no more waiting for my turn and no more tense competition flights where one small mistake could mean dropping from first place to somewhere at the bottom (as it happened to me at the Canadian Championships in Brandon). But then, as time was passing, my skill level was deteriorating, and I had to push myself to go flying. It felt more and more as my duty. I had a great airplane and could fly whenever I wanted to, but I was looking for excuses not to go. The fact is that each flight is a mixture of fear and excitement; the fear that something will go wrong and the excitement of an adventure. With time, the fear stayed, but the adventure diminished. The fear of landing at 25 knots crosswind, which I used to ignore because, in my mind, I was a hotshot pilot who could handle it easily, later became a serious concern. Meanwhile, those originally exciting maneuvers like rolling turns, outside loops, inverted spins, and tail slides were less and less of an adventure. So, one day, after making a mistake by cutting off somebody on landing, I decided that I had enough. I had been flying for 55 years, from the age of 17 to 73, and I had over 1,500 accident-free flight hours, and I wanted to leave it at that.
People sometimes ask me if I was scared to fly aerobatics or if I had a close call. The answer is yes and yes. Being scared first: I was trying an inverted spin in my new plane. It was not the first time I performed an inverted spin, but it was the first time in that airplane. With plenty of altitude, I did the half roll into inverted and applied the control inputs for the spin. The airplane started spinning as expected and when I pressed the opposite rudder to stop it, the plane kept on spinning. That was terrifying. My first thought was of bailing out, but a fraction of a second later the spin stopped. When I analysed the situation after landing, I realized that initially I did not apply enough of the opposite rudder, but later I had instinctively pressed harder and the spin stopped. I had learned an important lesson.
My close call was such that I did not even know that I had a close call until my plane was back in the hangar. I was taxiing to the parking area and there was a helicopter ready for takeoff. I was not sure if I had enough room to taxi by, therefore, following the rule “if in doubt, say no” (applied mostly to women), I turned off the engine and the helicopter took off. In the evening, when my plane was in the hangar, right beside the helicopter, I realized that the top of the ark of my prop was above the rotor of the helicopter. If I had kept on taxiing, my prop would have collided with the rotor and I do not even want to think of what would have followed. It just shows that one can never be too careful.
I am sure that my friends from the Aerobatics Club of Alberta have similar memories. We were all chasing the same dream. The sad thing is that this dream is dying, and aerobatics will follow the path of jousting in Middle Ages. Just like jousting, there is no practical purpose of flying aerobatics. Neither military nor commercial aviation needs it. Moreover, why spend time, money, and effort learning to fly when all that is needed is to buy computer game and “fly” aerobatics right away, just by watching the screen? True, it is not the same thing, there are no G-forces and no real upside down, but it is easy and fun, as advertising claims, and that’s what life is all about nowadays.