The Hard Yards

As I watched the Blue Angels at the Fargo Airshow fly a fingertip-formation loop, it suddenly occured to me: I used to fly fingertip formation in a T-38 almost daily, and it’s not all that hard with a lot of practice and once you get over the night terrors.

I bet parts of the Blue Angels show are easy for them—play, really.  Like flying fingertip formation, doing turning rejoins.  Maybe when the last guy of the six comes diving down at like four hundred fifty knots, nose buried, to rejoin the other five, then tucking into place in the tight formation.

The Blue Angels have to constantly practice the “hard” parts of their airshow to be that good.

Horseplay for those guys.

It suddenly occured to me that the Blue Angels have to constantly practice the “hard” parts of their airshow to be that good.

Like a short video of Roger Federer I saw one time, where he said he got out on the tennis court every day for five hours and “did the hard yards.”

The “hard stuff”—the tight fingertip barrel rolls with smoke, the bombursts or whatever The Blue Angels call their skyrockety-looking vertical split up, the high-speed head-to-head runs over the runway, the down-in-the-dirt high-speed passes in afterburner, the flying in formation inverted. (I know, right?) Arriving over the runway at exactly the same time from four directions at ideally four different altitudes.  That stuff, the hard stuff.

I bet that stuff takes practice, practice, practice.

The cruise portion of a flight is easy.  One time, a couple of airline pilots once actually fell asleep, flew right past Minneapolis, and landed in—allegedly—the parking lot of FAA headquarters.

In cruise flight, unless you have a rapid decompression (“rapid D”) where you get to finally put on the quick-don mask on “for realsies” and the “rubber jungle” comes out for the pax, or you lose an engine or two or three—or four, in the case of KLM 867—(google “volcano eruption KLM”), cruise flight can be boring, even. What’s that?  Yes, the KLM was a Boeing, but come on!

Without too much mental effort, flying in my Lancair IVP, I  can fly overhead patterns, VFR patterns—a “90-270” pattern, if the winds and tower are calm. Or do a touch-and-go on Runway 18, ask to switch to Runway 27 or Runway 13, or go over to Moorhead airport, six miles away, without thinking all that much.

But when I have to think—walk and chew gum—those are the “hard parts.”  The parts of flying I have to practice.

Like the other day, I flew on an IFR flight plan from Fargo (KFAR) to Crookston, Minnesota (KCKN). Mission:  practice filing an IFR flight plan from a non-towered airport, shoot instrument approaches. Did I mention weather avoidance and radio calls and changing my flight plan in midair?  I will…

Enroute, I asked for the RNAV (GPS) Rwy 31 at Crookston.  The controller was pretty busy, what with all the University of North Dakota flight school traffic (UND’s flight school mascot I think is a locust.)

The ATC guy says “Lancair 246HU, cleared direct AKKIF, cleared the RNAV runway 31 at Crookston, traffic in your one, two three o’clock rock, four o’clock rock…”

I was confused—I wasn’t mentally ready to be cleared to that fix, AKKIF. It’s there, all right, on the approach plate as an IAF, but I was looking at the bold-print fixes FAPVU and EHOBI.

So I queried the controller to spell AKKIF, and he did.  Then I asked for an initial vector to AKKIF, because I was looking at the HDD (head-down display), trying to type AKKIF into the flight plan with both hands and my nose as the screen playfully bounced due to it being attached to the bouncing aircraft.  I didn’t want to keep flying on my current heading if AKKIF didn’t just happen to be in line with where I was flying.

The controller chirped “Sorry, I don’t have radar,” and I think I heard him mutter (like Viper only different) “Damn, this kid’s not good!” Then he talked to forty-seven UND student pilots in a row.

Mentally uttering a four-letter word (DOHH!) at the ATC-Viper guy, I got AKKIF entered into the bouncing Garmin screen by sort of “leading” the letters with my finger, stabbing at where I predicted the letter would be “on the bounce,” then mashing the “NAV” button with my elbow or knee, I forget, and then flying the soothing magenta line toward what turned out to be, go figure, an IAF for the approach.  

One small step for man, one giant smack upside my own Mr. Magoo head with my throttle hand. Duh, and ouch on the ego.

Then I caught myself before I self-immolated and realized this is why I’m practicing. Even though I don’t get cleared to a fix that’s not in my flight plan very often, I should familiarize myself with what’s written on the approach plate.  As a pilot buddy of mine from Boston says, “It’s all right theya in black and white—but pay paticulah attention to the black pahts.”

Instead of going IFR directly back to Fargo, I sallied forth across the “Land Of Ten Thousand Lakes. ” There, nestled in lake country, is Brainerd, Minnesota (KBRD), home, as everyone knows, of Paul Bunyan.

So I land in Brainerd, another non-towered airport, and for practice file IFR outta there to Park Rapids (KPKD).

In this modern day, with all the technology—satellites, cell phones, iPads, 5G, ForeFlight and magenta lines, filing IFR out of a non-towered airport is simple, if by “simple” a person means “not simple.”

I just file an IFR flight plan on my iPad on ForeFlight, then call Minneapolis Center on the telephone number listed in ForeFlight.  A person from a call center in Bombay then tells me politely to call them on the radio. (No! Just kidding, someone in Minneapolis Center told me that.)  So then I do that, using the freq 132.15 which I look up on a plate, since they didn’t give me a freq on the phone, and why would they, the big-city folks talking to little old me in the forest with Paul Bunyan.  I copy a clearance, which involves a little more craftiness than “C.R.A.F.T.”, I noticed, because they also want to know

• which runway I’m using?
• when I’m taking off?
• If I can I copy down three different ZULU times as fast as a human can speak?

Then ATC spews out something like:

“Lancair 246HU, cleared to Park Rapids as filed, climb and maintain four thousand feet, expect seven thousand feet in ten minutes, contact Minneapolis Center on this frequency when entering controlled airspace, squawk 4621, cleared for release, clearance void if not off by 1455 Zulu; time now 1445 Zulu, if not off by 1505 Zulu advise no later than 1520 Zulu.”

Copying this down and reading it back is super-simple, and requires no pre-thinking or even writing down, if you have a photographic memory or are Rain Man.

Easy for you, maybe, but getting an IFR clearance out of a non-towered airport is definitely something I need to practice.

So I read all five hundred words back, and take off and fly…right into, almost, a thunderstorm.  See, I was cleared direct to Park Rapids, Minnesota, at seven thousand feet but whoa—extreme precipitation in my twelve o’clock. “Lancair 246HU, request deviation for weather.”

Well, the radio was so busy that he keyed the mic, said “Lancair 246HU, cleared deviation right or left for weather,” and then went on machine-gun-speaking on to some Citation jet jock who took off ahead of me VFR out of Brainerd, all cocky and happy, thinking he’d pick up an IFR clearance if he needed one.

And guess who needed one—him. He flew right toward the same “extreme precip in your twelve o’clock” as me and was filing IFR airborne in a much higher voice than the jocular tone he used on takeoff, since he was approaching the solid wall of clouds on the double.

While the ATC guy tried to keep the now-soprano-singing Citation dude out of the weather or clear him through it, I flew merrily along right towards it—the cloud mass was too big to go around, and too tall to get over, me without jet engines and all.  Black, blue and grey the wall was, with your basic terrifying lightning—I felt the hair on the back of my neck stand right the heck up.

Anyone who’s flown really near a massive thunderstorm knows what I mean.  Real no-kidding fear.

Now I’m getting closer, closer, and the clouds are now on what looks like three sides of me—I see no way at all to pick my way through.  I key the mic and say “Lancair 246HU, I would like to do a one-eighty right now to avoid weather.” I continue straight ahead, waiting for clearance.  The controller said “Lancair 246HU, understand you’d like to do a one-eighty turn?”

But now I had to turn, and as I roll into a monster bank and pull and add power, said “Affirmative, turning now, one-eighty for weather.”

Let me just add right here that I understand why people get Spatial D and lose control when going from VMC to IMC—I went from flying on autopilot, looking outside at the the “horizon” (a jumbled mess) to hand-flying, looking inside at the attitude indicator (with my internal gyros a jumbled mess.)  My inner ears helpfully telling me that I’m upside down like a Blue Angel, or on my side as I accelerate and rack the aircraft into a bank and do a 180, thank you so much for your input, inner ears, as I stare at the attitude indicator, airspeed.

The ATC guy said “OK, Lancair 246HU, where would you like to go, instead of Park Rapids?”

I keyed the mic button, which I noticed was wet with someone’s sweat, and said “Lancair 246HU, I wanna go to Fargo, there’s no place like home, there’s no place like home” in a voice that sounded like Dorothy in the Wizard of Oz.  Glancing down at the rudder pedals I saw that I was wearing red slippers and I was clicking my heels togther, so then it all made sense. I was Judy Garland.

I heard the Wicked Witch ATC guy scold another pilot who kept not using his call sign.  “Sir, I need you to use your call sign every time you key that mic! You’ve made three calls now without your call sign.  Want some fire, scarecrow!!?”  Maybe he didn’t really say all that.

Then: “Lancair 246HU, Fargo is to your east, you are heading north,” he badgered.  I said “Lancair 246HU copy that.”  ATC said in a calmer, snooty voice “Lancair 246HU, I’m happy to give you a clearance if you tell me where you’d like to go.”

I thought about where I’d like to tell him to go, but said “Lancair 246HU, straight ahead now for weather,” as I had to get out of that pocket that suddenly collapsed on me, tried to envelope me.  Then ATC said he’d give me straight ahead for a couple miles, then I could turn zero-nine-zero to get around the cell, and I should let him know when it was clear for me to turn south to get around the line of thunderstorms.

After I skirted the cells, turned right and landed in Fargo I spoke to a seasoned charter pilot there and told him my story—about how I was on an IFR flight plan and almost flew into a thunderstorm because the radio was so busy I couldn’t get a word in edgewise to ask for a new clearance, and suddenly I was surrounded on three sides by thunderstorms, lions and tigers and bears, oh my!, and had to turn tail and skedaddle, and how the Wicked Witch of ATC got snippy, etc.

The grizzled old forty-five year old nodded his head soberly in complete understanding, didn’t ridicule me at all, outwardly.

He said “I just turn.”

Then he said “I request an avoidance vector well in advance of the cell—or look at ForeFlight and file for a flight plan around the bad Wx.”   He said flying well wide of a cell doesn’t take that much extra time, versus flying fairly close and then having to deviate around the weather anyway.

I said “There sure were a lot of cells today.”  He said “Always, Dorothy, always.”

I didn’t tell the seasoned charter pilot, (whose name, coincidentally, was Paul Bunyan), about how I didn’t know where a certain IAF was for a certain approach.  I think to get advice on that one, this approach is better: “Can you believe this?  I heard a pilot on the radio who was given ‘Direct AKKIF,’ and he didn’t know what or where that was, ha ha!,” and then hope to pick out a nugget of wisdom a avoid a withering stream of verbal abuse.

So I got to practice some stuff in a one-hour or so period of two flights that was “hard” for me—the “hard yards.”

I got to practice weather avoidance, changing an IFR clearance on the fly, correct radio calls, flying approaches, and getting an IFR clearance out of a towered and non-towered airport.  Oh, and landings.

Different stuff is harder for different pilots.  Some pilots can land better than others, some can fly aerobatics well, some can fly instrument approaches flawlessly, some are good flight instructors, some have excellent CRM skills etc.

But there’s usually something a pilot can improve on.

Next up for me—I cross over to the dark side.

Night-flying.

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Matt Johnson

Matt Johnson is from Fargo, North Dakota, where hundreds of other people are from. He went to school and learned very little, but the United States Air Force got ahold of him in 1986, when he attended Undergraduate Pilot Training at Vance Air Force Base, Oklahoma (“Little Prison Camp On The Prairie”). He was in the UPT class of 87-07, graduated, then went to Beale AFB, California, and flew as a KC-135Q copilot, refueling the SR-71 on worldwide missions—England, Okinawa, Japan. Also, he flew the T-38 in the Accelerated Copilot Enrichment (ACE) program, and his instructors were SR-71 pilots, Major Brian Shul and Major Terry Pappas. He got all kinds of excited about that jet, and became an Instructor Pilot (IP) in the T-38 after a short three-month school and ten short checkrides at Randolph AFB, and instructed in the White Rocket for a year and a half. Nobody called it the White Rocket, but that sounds cool and I’m a nerd. Note: nobody called it the “SR-71” at Beale AFB; we all called it “the sled.” Matt taught as a CFI for a couple years in Virginia, near Washington DC (bogies everywhere, like fireflies), and now flies for fun out of KFAR, Fargo, ND, in a Lancair IVP. He writes, too, which is troublesome.

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