Friday, August 18, 2006
Enough is Enough
(3)
Anyway, just after liftoff, at about five feet altitude (we were out of runway) I hit the gear-up switch and the horn sounded and the yellow light blinked and the poor woman panicked. She recovered slowly after the airspeed reached the 'no sweat' value, but it was clear that the takeoff had ruined her experience. I don't think she sued. I also don't think she wet her pants, but being too much of a gentleman back in those days I didn't check.
This photograph was taken from the right seat of a Cherokee 140 on approach to runway 30. A road runs along the gully at the far end of the runway. Both ends of the runway ended in a huge drop-off. You definitely did not want to land short at Columbine airport. Two quick memories of panicky woman:
I was teaching a woman how to fly. Her husband had bought an airplane and wanted his wife to be able to take over in case he had a heart attack. He insisted she learn how to fly. She was afraid of airplanes, and very reluctant to learn. I was selected to be her flight instructor. We went through the curriculum slowly, lazily, and I considered this woman to be a real 'bread and butter client' given that I could take all the time I needed with her. But there came the fateful day when the lesson plan was, 'unusual attitudes.' The student needed to be able to recover to normal straight and level flight from an unusual attitude. So, I coached her into a 'departure stall:' full power, left climbing skidding turn, nose higher and higher, airspeed lower and lower until... suddenly the left wing stalls and the airplane rolls to the left and becomes inverted. Now what do you do?
If you are close to the ground you pray. But if you are high enough to recover, you close the throttle, allow airspeed to build to a managable level (say 70kts), then pull out of the dive. But this woman panicked when the airplane rolled inverted. She abandoned the controls and began to hug my left leg with both arms. I recovered the airplane, of course, but that was the end of her flying lessons.
