Early Adventures In My Luscombe 8A, Part Three
By Steve Weaver
Continued from the January 2012 Issue
By the time I reached Pennsboro the ground was totally dark and now I was following the lights of moving cars that I fervently hoped were moving toward Parkersburg. Worse, I had no lights on the airplane and nothing to light the instrument panel, which at this point was a just a dark shape in front of my knees. I had never been in an airplane at night before, and as the visual cues that I had used in flying, without even thinking about them, slipped away one by one, I felt like a man being swept by swift waters to a waiting waterfall. The brassy taste of fear was in my mouth.
The speed of the little airplane over the ground now seemed reduced to a snail’s pace, and the indistinct gloaming below passed ever so slowly. The sky, still with faint afterglow on the western horizon, had darkened above me and stars were beginning to appear. I kept trying to comprehend the fact that I was flying an airplane alone, through a night sky.
After what seemed to be an eternity, an indistinct glow of light appeared at my one o’clock position. It slowly grew brighter as I came on, and in a bit I passed over a lighted service station. I could see an attendant pumping gas into a pickup truck that sat washed in the flood of the island lights and as I looked down, the attendant’s white face turned up toward me, no doubt wondering why no lights showed on the airplane passing over. I recognized the station as one on Route 50, where I occasionally gassed up my car. Now I knew I was not far from Parkersburg and that I was over the right road after all.
Sweet relief coursed through me as I realized that I wasn’t lost, that I had found home and that I was going to survive this. Soon I could see the outskirts of the city, well lit by the street lights and the signs of stores. The huge, orange colored Mr. Bee’s Potato Chip sign that sat above the street leading to the airport came into view like a friendly beacon, as I made my way over the now familiar path.
A few minutes later, my high spirits fell as I reached the area where I knew the airport to be. There were no welcoming strings of runway lights, only a large square area of total darkness, contrasting sharply with the myriad of city lights all around it. My lack of night experience was complete. Not only had I never flown at night, I had never even been to the airport at night and didn’t know the runway wasn’t lighted. Now I had to land an airplane at night for the first time, do it without benefit of seeing my instruments, and as a special topping for my flight of idiocy, also manage to hit an unseen runway.
As I flew across the center of the field and looked straight down, I could see the outline of white airplanes parked on the dark grass, as they reflected the glow of the city lights. Using that position as a guide, I turned downwind and pulled on the carburetor heat, as I’d been taught. With no way to see my airspeed or altitude in the darkened cabin, I knew I had to rely on the patterns established by the hours of landing practice with my instructor. I would have to depend on the feel of the airplane against my hand and the sound of the air moving past the ship to gage my airspeed. I hoped my inner clock would let me time the length of the downwind and base legs of my pattern, and then I’d aim for the square of darkness that was the airport, once I’d rolled out on final approach.
As I pulled the throttle back to idle I said a small prayer, asking God to forgive me for being so stupid and to please let me survive this mess I’d made. I hoped it was true that God protects drunks and fools, for I had completely qualified for the latter nomenclature.
Giving the trim the number of twists I remembered from my other landings in the Luscombe, the little airplane settled into my hand and I began the glide. Seconds passed, then when I thought the time was right I made the 90 degree turn onto the base leg of the pattern, careful to neither pull up the nose or let it drop. Strangely, the airplane felt almost normal in spite of not being able to see instruments or runway. When the square of darkness filled my left window, I made the last turn onto the final approach for the runway.
While I had been over the streets and neighborhoods of the town or pointing away from the field, the lights on the ground had given me reference, and made maneuvering the airplane almost like daytime. Now I was pointed at a dark hole and as I sank lower it became harder to sense the attitude of the airplane. I concentrated on not make changes in the controls and listened intently to the sound clues the ship gave me. I seemed to be centered on the blackness that I knew was the airport and as best I could tell, my altitude looked about right. Suddenly I saw the top of a shadowy hill silently ghost by beneath my wheels and I realized I’d passed the flood wall that marked the south end of the airport. I was about as well positioned as I could hope to be and as I sank down into the darkness I looked desperately for some clue to tell me where the ground was. When I could stand it no longer, I broke the glide and started feeling for the ground. The Luscombe stalled and dropped and I knew I had flared too high. I jammed the throttle forward and eased up on the stick until I felt the wings gain purchase again, then pulled the throttle back and began the process over. This time the ground was just beneath the wheels when the airplane stalled and we touched and with a small bounce the airplane settled and rolled through the dark and the mist that was starting to form above the wet grass.
As one could imagine, my failure to return to the airport before dark had not gone unnoticed. As I taxied slowly in I was met by a mighty contingent of cars and people, looking to me at the time much like a lynch mob. It was led by my instructor, a giant of a man named Red Bozo, who looked ten feet tall in the wall of headlights backlighting him. When I cast my memory back to that moment, I could swear that the crowd was holding the blazing torches seen in Gary Larson cartoons, but they were probably flashlights. A caravan of cars led the way back to my tiedown and I made my excuses to Red, all lies, for what could I say?
I remember driving back to my apartment feeling as if I had just awakened from a long and wrenching dream. I knew that I had just experienced life on the very edge. I also knew that things could have so easily ended another way and that I was blessed to still be drawing breath. At that moment life seemed inexpressibly sweet to me and I vowed that I would never again do something so foolish. But even as I made that vow, the thought came to me, totally against my will, that I had never felt so alive as I did at that moment.
