Early Adventure in my Luccombe 8A, Part 2
By Steve Weaver
Quitting time came promptly at five o’clock and I was out the door and in my car in a flash. I drove as fast as I could without attracting police attention, to the airport where the Luscombe awaited me, tied securely down in the back row of parked airplanes.
The old Stewart Airpark lay on the west side of the town, hard by the banks of the Ohio River, and was one of the few old-time flying fields that had survived into the 1960s. It was built in the 20s, when airplanes had little crosswind capability, and were constructed to enable a pilot to land into the wind, no matter which way the wind was blowing. The landing area consisted of acres of well-drained sod, some 1,800 by 3,100 feet in size, and from the air it looked like a great, green velvet tablecloth.
As I pulled my car into the parking lot, the airport lay glowing with the emerald sheen of high summer, in the slanting, late afternoon light. It was bordered to the west by the great river and to the east by State Route 47. A flood-wall cut diagonally across the south end of airport property and a small neighborhood marked the north end of the field.
Stewart Airpark in 1962 was home to 50 or so airplanes and was operated by a busy FBO that was also a Piper distributor. The field was uncontrolled, but had lots of traffic during the pleasant months, with 40-cent-per-gallon gas fueling great amounts of aeronautical activity. Local pilots flew the pattern and announced their movements and intentions on Unicom frequency when their airplanes were equipped to do it. Everyone else utilized the Mark I eyeball, and so far as I know no one ever got tangled up with anyone else there.
I quickly made my way to where the white Luscombe was parked. My flying kit consisted only of an Esso road map, because in thinking about this trip I was about to make, I realized that I knew US Route 50 like my own face in the mirror and thought I could recognize it as well from 500 feet as I could from the altitude at which my 1957 Chevy usually operated. On the other hand, I knew nothing about aerial navigation or any of the normal skills that pilot’s use to get from one place to another, so why pretend that I did?
So that was to be my plan. I would follow the roads, the same roads that I used to drive from my home in the middle of the state, to where I now lived, on the western edge of West Virginia. I would not to try to emulate the more seasoned pilots, which I certainly knew I was not, by navigating, doing pilotage and reading aeronautical maps. I would just ‘drive’ home. The only exception would be that my wheels would be dangling above, not planted on, the roads I knew so well. This would work just fine, I knew.
The five o’clock traffic, the preflight of the airplane and getting fuel, had taken much precious time and caused my departure to be much later than I had anticipated. I glanced anxiously at my watch while doing the run up at the end of the sod runway and took solace in the 56 minute estimated enroute time that my friend had made for me. This would still work. I would still have time to complete the round trip and make it back to the field before dark and that’s all the time I needed.
As I had been taught, I gently pushed the throttle forward and the little airplane responded by accelerating down the green strip, the tail coming up and the wings nibbling at the air. It bounced gently once or twice on the gear, then eased into a slow climb through the warm summer sky. The evening sparkled with the golden sunshine of a late summer’s afternoon, and the broad Ohio River fell away to my right as I turned toward the downtown area of the city. I would pick up US Route 50 there, that famous strip of asphalt, follow it east, and it would take me to within 15 miles of my destination. It would be my compass.
I looked down on the city as I made my way across town and soon the familiar pattern of “Washington’s Pike” appeared below me. I thought how easy this was and wondered why anyone would want to navigate any other way but following roads. The shadow of my little airplane leapfrogged over the sluggish lines of evening traffic and I felt completely superior to all that crawled about below me. How could I not, for I was a flyer now, and had no patience for things that moved about on the earth.
Soon I was following the road through open countryside, and the familiar hamlets of Ellenboro, Pennsboro and West Union passed beneath the nose of the airplane. I watched the town of Salem appear and then the city of Clarksburg loomed before me. It was a place I knew well and where I planned to hook up with route 20. That road I knew, wound through the hills to the southeast for several miles on its way to Philippi, the town that had served as our family’s trading center during my youth. From there, the Tygart River made its serpentine way to the village of Arden, the target for tonight’s mission. Finding my destination was as easy as following the path from my bed to the bathroom in the house I grew up in, and which even now awaited my unannounced and dramatic appearance in the sky above it.
Finding Route 20 South, it was only a matter of minutes before I was over Philippi, the old covered bridge passing beneath me as I joined the river and continued downstream toward my home.
This seemed like a dream to me. After a lifetime of looking up at the very sky I was now occupying, I was at this minute zooming through it, announcing my passage with an important roar to all those below.
Since my mission plan called for minimum altitude over the target, I had wound the trim forward and stuck the nose of the little airplane down, in order to get to the planned altitude by my objective. A satisfying hiss of air washed over the airframe and the little A-65 Continental engine took on a serious note as the airplane slid down the slope I had created. The whole airplane took on a vibration I had never felt before as the airspeed indicator needle reached for the red line that marked “this fast and no faster,” and I wondered if anyone had ever flown it at this speed before.
About a mile from my parent’s house, the twisting river made an oxbow of its meandering path toward the Ohio, and as I passed this point, centered between the stream’s grassy banks, something flashed by, close beneath my wheels, so fast that I couldn’t estimate by just how close it had been. A power line, I noticed stupidly and belatedly, now spanned the river here, and it was hanging from new supporting towers that crowned the tops of the hills bracketing the streambed. By how much I had missed the heavy cables I couldn’t say, but the image of the windings that were built into the cables during manufacture remained burned into my brain like a photograph, and it shook me.
After a much-too-late, involuntary jerk on the control stick, I shakily continued my descent into the river valley. My heart was pumping what felt like quarts of adrenaline through my system and my breath came in short pants as I banked the Luscombe quickly right, then left, to stay over the twisting river. One last sharp bend remained before the short, straight run the river made past my parent’s house, and as I came around it in a near vertical bank, my altitude was about 200 feet above the river. A few seconds later the familiar white farmhouse flashed past my left wing and I was climbing as fast as the little airplane could, to escape the valley.
I had done it. My mission had gone like clockwork, if you didn’t count the fact that I’d almost killed myself on the power cable. Now satisfaction joined all the other emotions that were having their way with my brain. Rising above the steep, wooded hills surrounding my village, I aimed the airplane back toward Philippi, to join Route 20 again.
Slowly my heart rate and breathing returned to normal and I looked about me. With the concentrated effort and the excitement of finding my way to the destination, I had lost track of the day’s progress. I was as they say, shocked and saddened to see that the sun had just set. I looked at my watch, as if I could argue with the sun if I found it was quitting early. No, it was setting exactly as it should. Where had the time gone?
For the first time I realized that the straight line that my friend had plotted for my journey had in no way resembled the drunken path I had scribed through the air above the roads I’d followed. I’d taken nearly twice the allotted time to fly the distance and I’d used up most of the precious daylight. Once again my heart was trying to hammer its way out of my chest, presumably trying to get someplace where I couldn’t kill it. The control stick and throttle grew slick from my sweating palms. I frantically reviewed my options and I immediately thought of the warning from my instructor after I’d soloed the Luscombe from the grass at Stewart. “Do not land this thing on a paved runway until I ride with you. You’ll ground loop it.” That eliminated almost all of the airports that I could get to before dark. The few that were left were much shorter than anything I had ever landed on. Should I go to one of those and crash now, or continue toward Parkersburg and crash later. My decision was aided by my penchant for putting dreaded things off. Crashing an airplane easily fit into that category, and I opted to continue on toward Parkersburg.
I felt trapped, and for the first time in my short flying career, I wished I were on the ground. By now I was over Route 50, heading westward toward the glow that the setting sun had left on the horizon. Aloft, I was still bathed in afterglow, but darkness was spreading quickly on the ground below. Automobiles now had their lights on, and while I could still make out the path of Route 50, it was getting harder to keep it located beneath me. Salem passed underneath, the downtown area lit brightly as people finished up their day and got ready to head home, the street lights brightening their way.
Look for the conclusion in the February issue of In Flight USA.
