The only game that matters

It is a week of distraction.

I care not about the weather, nor about my schedule, nor about if I am on time or not.

At 1800 zulu on Saturday, 11/21/2009, The Game begins.

It matters not at all that The Ohio State University Buckeyes have clinched a Big 10 title and spot in the Rose Bowl and That School Up North has had a miserable season and is playing for an outside chance at playing in a loser bowl scheduled for sometime before the Christmas holiday.

This is The Game. This matters.

If my beloved Buckeyes were to win but a single game in a season that season would be a success if the win came in the final game, against an equally terrible team from That School Up North.

Likewise, a single loss to anyone, anywhere, is painful but tolerable as long as the loss doesn't involve That School Up North.

In 1968 the great Woody Hayes, leading That School Up North 42-14, went for two after scoring a touchdown. When asked about it later, Hayes explained "Because the rules won't let you go for three."

That's how important The Game is.

John Cooper, who was otherwise an outstanding college football coach, never fully grasped the importance of The Game. His 3-8 record in bowl games was painful, but it really was his 2-10-1 record against That School Up North that soured me forever on "Coop."

I hate John Cooper. And he was one of us. He was also 2-10-1 where it mattered most.

I hate him. I am not ashamed to admit it.

To this day I hate Desmond Howard with a passion. I hope his hair falls out, followed by his teeth. The image of him striking a Heisman pose after scoring a touchdown against us is burned, forever in my memory. I hate him. I always will.

The streaker, striking a similar pose in front of That School Up North's bench the following year, however, was a classic moment in the greatest rivalry in sports. I love the streaker.

Only Tshimanga Biakabutuka has my respect. I don't like him, but I respect anyone who can rush for 313 yards against The Ohio State University.

I loved Lloyd Carr. He was a fantastic coach for That School Up North. He also had a 6-7 record in The Game. He will forever be known as a loser, a reputation that is not deserved.

That is how much The Game matters.

I hated Bo Schembechler even more than I hate Desmond Howard. Then he died and I was sad.

The Ohio State University needs That School Up North. That School Up North needs The Ohio State University.

Neither would be as great were it not for the other.

It is the only game that matters.

Enceladus

How easily I forget that within the meager range of my company's airplanes lies stark, beautiful,other worldly desolation.

Twenty miles northeast of North Platte, Nebraska. I have left my home planet and am cruising over Saturn's Ice Moon, Enceladus, at 11,000 feet.

I am doing something with which I am relatively unaccustomed: I am saving fuel.

Normally our scheduled runs are within easy range of our aircraft and speed, not economy, is the priority. So we run our engines at prescribed settings, accepting relatively horrendous fuel flows in exchange for slightly higher airspeeds and quicker delivery times.

Today is not a normal run. My day began at 2 a.m. Out to the airport by 3 a.m. Wheels up bound for Omaha at 0343. Then on to Denver at 0607 to drop a load of freight at 0757 local time for an unscheduled charter.

Good pay, lots of flying, a brief look at the mountains and a bit of the unknown.

After 38 minutes on the ground in Denver it was time for a straight shot home and time to deal with the problem that had been gnawing away at me since the phone rang so many hours earlier: Would I have enough fuel for this leg?

My flight planning showed the leg from Denver at 3+30. Normally, not a problem for an airplane that holds 5 hours of fuel.

Because of the oddities of scheduling and time constraints inherent in part 135 flying however I am not in a normal airplane. I am in the fastest airplane we have because I have so far to go and so little time to get there.

However that speed comes with a price: Spectacular fuel burns.

Left to it's own devices, which is how we normally fly this particular airplane, it will drink all 160 gallons of gasoline it carries in just a shade over 4 hours. I am fairly certain you couldn't burn fuel faster if you lit an open barrel of it on fire and pointed a leaf blower on the flames.

However it is still enough, barely, to make it but not enough to make it with the legally required 45 minutes of reserve fuel.

And certainly not prudent.

So it's time for plan b, real hairy-chested freight pilot stuff, for a change: In a fit of desperation I actually opened the manual.

If you are a student, this next bit is why your instructor makes you learn how to read the performance charts in your airplane and work through thorny problems.

If your instructor doesn't stress this make him or her. If they resist, find another.

Our company procedure had been to rely on the auto-leaning function built into the airplane and leave the mixture controls full forward at all times. As a good line pilot, and out of distaste for the thought of destroying a $30,000 engine through experimentation, this resulted in a stubborn effort to burn through roughly 40 gallons of fuel each hour which, for our typical 2-hour leg length, was never cause for more than passing amusement.

Turns out, much to my surprise, buried deep in a supplement toward the back of the airplane flight manual was the welcome news that our wickedly fast airplane will still go damn fast and sip fuel in the process.

And so this is how I find myself at 11,000 feet over Enceladus/Nebraska with 2 hours and 14 minutes still to fly and a fat 120 gallons of fuel – more than 4 hours worth -- in my tanks.

Somehow, through the magic of the performance charts I have barely looked at in a year, I have gotten my fuel burn down to a mere 27 gallons per hour at a cost of only 5 knots in true airspeed. It is a savings of 2.4 gallons-per-hour per knot. A staggering difference.

And after 3+33 chock to chock I landed with nearly 2 hours of fuel still in my tanks, something I had not thought possible 12 hours earlier.

It's why I have the best job in the world, I learn something new every day I go to work.

St. Elmo

It is 5 a.m., somewhere in the vicinity of Cedar Rapids, IA. The altimeter shows 9,000 feet and the company has been good about making sure I've had an autopilot for a pair of long, hard charters.

I started my engines in Omaha an hour earlier and Lansing, my destination, is still two hours away. Yesterday I departed home base for Omaha at 3:35 a.m. then flew to Denver, dropped my cargo and returned to a hotel room and a mildly successful attempt at a good night's sleep.

Outside it has been snowing at altitude for the past 20 minutes or so and I've been shining my required-by-FAA-regulation 2D-Cell flashlight on the wings, engine nacelles, prop spinners and tip tanks looking for signs of icing every few minutes. All the places ice tends to show up first on a 310 are clean, which is what I'd expect flying through snow.

For some strange reason I still get a kick out of the fact that it can be snowing at altitude and raining on the surface.

As is my custom, I've dimmed the instrument lights as much as possible in cruise and relish in my dark, warm cocoon hurtling through the night sky.

As I look around in the darkness my eye is drawn to a dim flash of purplish-blue. Curious that I should be able to see anything out ahead in the night sky I lean forward to shield my eyes from what little light still exists in the cabin.

Slowly it dawns on me that the flashes I'm seeing aren't far ahead in the distance but dancing on my windscreen, just a few feet from my face.

Then I notice several pools of deep blue light about the size of a silver dollar glowing along the seam the de-ice hot-plate makes with the windscreen and my sleep-deprived brain begins the trouble-shooting process.

The hot-plate is turned off so I'm fairly certain it's not a short circuit about to set my airplane on fire. Then I notice more deep blue pools and strange steaks of purple along the lower edge of the windscreen where it meets the fuselage.

I break out my flashlight and check my fingernails for a telltale blue tinge of hypoxia. They are pink, just like always. Convinced that I am not hallucinating the trouble shooting process continues.

Finally it dawns on me, I'm seeing what is either St. Elmo's Fire or some sort of static build up.

It is stunningly beautiful.

I've only read about St. Elmo's Fire, never seen it, and my limited recollection is that it's probably harmless.

I sit transfixed by the sight and turn off all the cabin lights so I am sitting in total darkness, with only the drone of the engines and glow from my wingtip position lights giving any positive indication that I am still aloft and moving through the Iowa sky at more than three-miles every minute.

Out of curiosity I reach out to touch the windscreen. Miniscule shafts of deep blue light arc between the charged windscreen and my finger and I laugh out loud as I slowly move my hand around and watch the corresponding motion in the plasma just a few millimeters of Plexiglas away.

It tickles.

Perhaps then this is what John Gillespie Magee Jr. meant when he wrote “Put out my hand, and touched the face of God.”

It is an incredibly subtle show, almost like a series of tiny Northern Lights. Only a few spots along the hot plate stay constant pools of deep bluish-purple. The rest dance about, growing and receding in a total universe of perhaps two inches.

For 10 minutes I sit mesmerized, playing with my tiny light show. No radio traffic interrupts the moment for nobody else is flying at such an absurd hour on a Saturday morning, at least not in my vicinity.

Then the glow of my wing tip lights changes in quality, it is more diffuse. I am out of the snow and into cloud. I break away from playing with my windscreen and check the outside air temperature even though I already know the answer. It is hovering at 27 degrees.

Reluctantly I turn my attention away from the windscreen, but by now the show is over and there is nothing to look at.

Interior lights up a tiny bit I grab my flashlight and shine it outside. It confirms what I already know from the jagged prism I can see building around my wing tip lights: I am picking up ice and picking it up fairly quickly.

Lake Michigan lies ahead and I have no intention of flying over it covered in ice. I cast a last, hopeful glance at my windscreen but it is vacant.

There is serious work to be done and I key up the microphone to request a climb to get out of the ice.

My electrical friends are behind and below me now, hopefully looking for another pilot riding alone through the darkness to enchant.

Yes, I know it's been a while since I've posted. I'm sorry but I was waiting for something really worth writing about to happen. Luckily it did.

If I'm headed West it must be morning

Time, in the strictest sense, has ceased to matter. Wake up, head to the airport, fly to points West.

Sit for the day.

Fly to the East, and home.

That's been the routine for the past several weeks. Vacations and illness among other pilots in our company have meant a busy schedule that continues into August.

This is fine with me. More flying is almost always welcomed.

The weather has been consistently good, with only a few days spent dodging thunderstorms as the dog days of summer settle onto the upper Midwest.

Nothing has broken on any airplane I've flown for what seems like ages now and I can't remember my last instrument approach.

These are fortunate days then, a respite from the cold, snow, ice and low ceilings that were so routine but that seem so long ago.

It helps to have a short memory up here. Summer comes and winter is quickly forgotten. The weather will always be like this. That fallacy holds right up until it doesn't and the skies are once again filled with snow and ice and cloud.

I wish I had a good flying story to share. I don't, just a grinding stretch of airports, airplanes, fast-food lunches, clearances read back by rote and the same patchwork of fields slipping slowly below my wings.

A freight pilot's glamor story: I flew into Sioux Falls three times in 21 hours. Twice I was heading West so it must have been in the morning. It's getting hard to tell otherwise.

The compass has become my clock.

Wind shear

The last two weeks have been totally routine. Even the weather has barely changed.

A steady diet of clear skies and light winds has taken some of the sting out of spending more than week living out of a hotel, covering for a pilot whose normal run starts and ends in Aberdeen.

Only the afternoon turbulence intrudes on flying Nirvana. The 310 is notorious for it's annoying dutch roll tendencies in even the lightest of turbulence, making hard work out of every atmospheric ripple.

But as evening comes on and the air turns glassy smooth, as it has done every day for the past two weeks, life is good.

It's the kind of weather that lulls me into near total relaxation. The airplane perfectly trimmed, staying on course and altitude with no input from me, the engines droning on with both propellers in near-perfect synchronization, the setting sun reflecting off of the hundreds of lakes the slip beneath me as I fly the same route day after day.

Approaching Fargo the sunset is particularly spectacular thanks to the haze created by the numerous grass fires and the first rain I have seen in more than a week.

Fargo itself is dry, the rain is still well to the West filtering the last rays of sunlight. I look at the rain and don't like what I see. It has the look of a windy, turbulent mess.

Not to worry, it is still well West of the airport and the winds are light and the air perfectly smooth.

Pre-landing checks are complete and the airplane is in perfect trim, exactly on speed with gear and flaps down flying hands off down the glide path with the power set to 17 inches of manifold pressure. It is magic. Nothing left to do but ease out the last bits of power and flare.

My thoughts turn to the landing and I decide to work for an absolute greaser. The evening is too pretty, the air too cool and smooth to ruin the moment with anything less than a gentle chirp of the tires against pavement.

At 300 feet I place my hands on the controls, add full flaps and adjust the trim. It is still perfectly smooth.

At 200 feet my world, quiet and serene just a few seconds earlier, tilts instantly and distinctly off it's axis. I am stunned.

The first jolt of turbulence is strong enough that I bang my head against the top of the cabin. I am now fighting to control an airplane that just a few feet ago was in perfect harmony with the atmosphere. Now, that same atmosphere is trying to kill me.

I am starting to drop below the glide path. Out of the corner of my eye I catch the airspeed indicator. I have lost 15 knots in the span of a second, perhaps two.

I add power but we are still sinking and my airspeed is still low. It is a fight to keep the wings level and the thought of crashing runs through my head.

I shove the propellers and throttles full forward. Finally, I am no longer sinking and I am getting my airspeed back. I am suddenly deeply in love with the 310 as 570 horsepower begins to carry me toward salvation.

Satisfied that the worst is over I ease the throttles back.

The wind, which was light and slightly from the left just a few seconds ago is now raging and almost 90 degrees to my right. I contemplate going around but by now everything is once again back under control so I fight the wind down to the runway and instead of the greaser I was contemplating what seems like an hour ago settle for an inelegant, albeit it safe, thunk.

From start to finish the entire saga has lasted perhaps 15 seconds.

As I taxi in I report the wind shear to tower. I am strangely annoyed when they reply that they just noticed a wind shift and leave it at that. Even a quick "wind now 360 at 21 knots" while I was on final approach would have alerted me to the possibility of the wind shear that was waiting for me.

I've been fortunate enough to have encountered wind shear enough that I can recognize it when it happens. Usually it's benign, perhaps a five knot swing or so, and occurs on windy, gusty days so I'm already locked and loaded to deal with it.

What made this encounter so shocking was there was no warning, I just happened to arrive over the runway at the same time the wind was shifting more than 90 degrees. Three minutes earlier or later and I'm sure it would have been a totally unremarkable approach and landing.

After dropping my freight I fired back up and launched into moderate turbulence which lasted until 5,300 feet. Like a light switch the atmosphere was suddenly perfectly smooth again and stayed that way for the 45-minute trip back to Aberdeen on a beautiful spring evening.

The learning continues.