Solo (23 page)

I
N JULY I OFFICIALLY
requested a forty-four-day rollback; that is, I asked to go home forty-four days short of my scheduled one-year tour so that I could enter graduate school back in North Carolina in time for the fall semester. I doubted that the request would be granted. Why should the Air Force do me any favors? But I was wrong. My request was granted.

At Travis Air Force Base in California I collected a cash payment for my unused leave days.

My days as an United States Air Force pilot were over.

Before flying home to North Carolina, I detoured through New Jersey, where Johnny Hobbs (still a close friend then—and in 2005) was living and flying with the National Guard. We found a Sonny Terry and Brownie McGhee concert in New York City and celebrated. We’d been gone from Yokota for two years. It seemed like a lifetime.

Then I flew home. I was twenty-seven and wanted to do something different.

A
NNABELLE

I
N THE MID
-1980s, when I lived in the little town of Apex, North Carolina, a bright yellow Piper Cub flew over my home almost every Sunday afternoon—low and slow. It reminded me of the first airplanes I’d seen as a child.

Since my Air Force days, I’d renewed my pilot’s license three times and flown for a few months each time, for a total of less than a hundred hours. I didn’t care much for civilian flying; it was a letdown. I’d also taught high school and college and had published two novels. I’d started a third novel,
The Floatplane Notebooks,
which included passages about combat flying. Somehow that writing made me want to fly again or at least be around airplanes.

So one day in 1987 I drove out to the local airfield and happened to see a beautiful little yellow airplane sitting in a hangar—surely the one I’d seen flying around on Sunday afternoons. It sat nose high, unlike modern planes. The third wheel was under the tail, not the nose.

I assumed that all little planes were configured inside
like the Cherokee 140 I’d flown with Mr. Vaughn, or like the T-41 I’d flown when I was still wearing shoes instead of boots with my flight suit in Laredo.

I walked over and looked into the cockpit. There was no yoke, no throttle knob out of the instrument panel. A stick stood on the floor, and the throttle was on the left against the side panel. And not only that: there was room for only one person up front and one person in the back. I’d flown in no civilian aircraft without side-by-side seats. In the T-38, the F-4, and the OV-10 the seating was tandem, just as in this little beauty. I’d be by myself up front or in the back. There were controls in back for flying too. Exactly like a two-seat fighter.

A
strong,
long-dormant urge to fly came thundering back alive after almost twenty years. I
had
to get one of these little airplanes. I
had
to start flying again. Suddenly, as a consequence of form, shape, and memory, I was re-hooked, reinfatuated.

I drove home, ordered flying books, and started reading. I couldn’t help it. I read about tail draggers. Since the third wheel is very small and under the tail, the nose sits high. In the old days this high nose kept the propeller away from sand and gravel. It also allowed more room for big propellers, and the high nose set the wings at just the right angle for takeoff.

I saw myself landing a tail dragger on a beach somewhere. I decided that if nothing else I could renew my license again and do some simple civilian flying in a simple civilian aircraft. I drove out to the airfield again and again—and dreamed.

I read more about tail draggers. With the advent of asphalt runways back in the 1940s and 1950s came a new configuration of landing gear. The third wheel, enlarged, was moved to beneath the nose, making these new airplanes much easier to land. I learned that old tail drag-gers, practically all, were flown with a stick and with the throttle to the left.

A dilemma was that I wanted to fly two passengers rather than just one, yet I wanted to fly alone in the front seat. Perhaps I’d have to settle for a four-seater. The problem seemed insurmountable until I found a book called
The Piper Classics.
In it I read that during the years 1946 and 1947 about thirty-seven hundred PA-12 Super Cruisers had been built, designed with a slightly wider backseat than that of the Piper Cub—wide enough to hold two people. Otherwise it was almost identical to the Cub. I could hardly believe it! The perfect little airplane for me.

I called the Piper dealer in Winston-Salem, North Carolina. I asked him about these Super Cruisers. “Oh, sure,” he said. “Would you like to have a list of all PA-12 owners in North Carolina?”

“You bet.”

He mailed me the list. There were thirty owners in North Carolina. A quick calculation—fifty states, thirty Super Cruisers per state, fifteen hundred total. Almost 50 percent of them were probably still flying.

I wrote a form letter. It started: “Dear _______, I’d like to buy your airplane.”

I sent the letter to each of the thirty owners. I received
five replies. Two replies said something like, “I own a Super Cruiser, it’s a wonderful airplane, you’re on the right track, but I will never sell mine.” The other three owners had Super Cruisers for sale. The first was a “project,” meaning it was in separate parts and I’d have to put it together. The second was in Spartanburg, South Carolina, and the third, in Charlotte.

I drove to Spartanburg with my buddy David McGirt, and we looked at the first PA-12 Super Cruiser I ever remembered seeing. I asked the old-timer who owned her to crank her up. I remember watching him climb in. The sound of her engine hypnotized me. I was in love. But the asking price was too much: $16,000. The most I could afford was about $12,000, $14,000 at the very outside.

In the meantime, from a small airport in South Raleigh, I renewed my pilot’s license with the prerequisite landings, takeoffs, and air work. I joined AOPA (Aircraft Owners and Pilots Association). I joined a pilots’ book club and studied new FAA regulations from books I ordered.

My seven-year-old daughter, Catherine, had never flown before, and when I taxied out to take her up in a rented Cessna for her first ride, she said, “Daddy?”

“Yes?”

“Did you finishing reading that book?”

I
GOT TO KNOW
the mechanic, Gary Durham, at the Triple W Airport in South Raleigh and found empty hangars there for rent.

I called Jim Council from Charlotte—the third owner wanting to sell. He said he had a sweet-flying PA-12, and
he wanted $12,500 for it. It didn’t have much in the way of radios and navigational gear, and that’s one reason he could offer it for such a good price. He didn’t want to sell, but he needed the money.

A few days later I drove to a small airfield near Charlotte and met Jim. He was a pleasant man who seemed sad to sell his plane. We walked over to a row of airplanes under a long, open hangar.

“Here she is,” he said. “Want to fly?”

It was a beautiful airplane. White with red trim.

“Sure.”

Jim put me in the front seat, got into the back, and talked me through a takeoff. He mentioned the fact that since I’d once flown F-4s, this little airplane should be nothing. At the time I was blissfully unaware of the potential problems of landing a tail dragger, and luckily we had no cross-wind on landing. While we were in the air, Jim showed me how sweet she flew, how difficult it was to stall her, and how well she handled. She was unusually stable and steady. I was so eager to own the airplane that I almost made an offer, but I knew I should get my mechanic, Gary, back at South Raleigh, to check her out.

In a few days, Jim flew his airplane to South Raleigh. I stood near the flight building, watching him taxi in, the aircraft nose high and proud. Gary examined the engine and airframe and then took her up for a spin. He landed, taxied in, and motioned for me to walk over to his shop.

“That’s one fine little airplane, Clyde,” he said. “Very sweet—and in a stall she just keeps flying with the stick pulled back.”

“I know,” I said. “I’m glad you like her. What do you think about twelve five as an asking price?”

“Very fair. Very fair.”

That morning I’d written three checks and stuffed them into my shirt pocket. The check on top was for $11,000; the next, for $11,500; and the third, for the asking price, $12,500. I’d bargain with Jim, strike a deal, pull the $11,000 or maybe the $11,500 from my pocket, and save myself some money. Yessir.

I walked from Gary’s hangar, across the lawn, over to the flight building. Jim was inside, sitting near a stove with a couple of other fellows.

“Jim,” I said, “could we walk out to the plane?”

“Sure.”

We walked out the door and started across the lawn toward the little plane I would name
Annabelle.
It was a cold, clear January day.

I said, “Jim, I want to make you an offer for your airplane.”

“Sure.”

“I want to offer you eleven thousand dollars.” “Well . . . Clyde, I really need the money. I hate to sell this airplane, and I need twelve thousand five hundred.”

“Okay,” I said, reaching for the bottom check.

We shook hands.

“Let’s go back inside,” he said, “and I’ll sign it over to you.”

We sat at a small table inside, away from the others. Jim filled out the title, and where it asked for price, he wrote, “$1 poc.” “That means one dollar plus other costs,”
he said. “That way nobody knows what you paid, in case you want to sell her.”

“I don’t think that’s going to happen.”

He signed the title and pushed it over to me to sign. As he turned to look out the window, I saw tears in his eyes. I signed the title, folded it, put it in my pocket. I believe his sadness was as low as my joy was high.

“I’ll take good care of her,” I said.

In a rented Cessna I flew Jim back to his home airfield. I couldn’t fly my airplane because I had no insurance on it. A few days earlier I’d called the insurance folks, expecting no problems. I was certainly qualified, I thought. When I separated from the Air Force, I had a private license, a commercial rating, an instrument rating, a multiengine rating, and about fourteen hundred hours of flying time.

After I explained my qualifications, my new insurance agent asked for the make and model of the aircraft I wanted to insure.

“A Piper Super Cruiser,” I said. “A PA-Twelve.”

“You’ll need ten hours of instruction in that aircraft before we can insure you.”

“What? . . . Why?”

“You’ll see,” he said.

The “you’ll see” was about the tail wheel. As mentioned, the third wheel of most modern airplanes is under the nose, and the placement of the two main landing gear (more toward the rear than on a tail dragger) means the modern aircraft is heavier in front of the main gear than behind. The weight not resting on the main landing
gear rests on that nose gear. This helps the aircraft to continue moving forward in a straight line after landing.

But with a tail dragger the ballast is behind the main gear. And that can cause control problems after landing.

Yet in the air, both types fly the same.

Think about throwing an arrow with the feathers out front and the arrowhead in the rear. After it’s thrown, the arrow will reverse ends. A tail dragger, on the ground, will tend to do the same, especially if a crosswind blows the tail to the left or right just after the plane lands. In that case, as the tail moves to the left or right, the airplane is of course pivoting on the main landing gear and heading in the direction it’s pointing. Without rapid correction, the tail will tend to keep moving to the left or right and on around in front of the nose. It’s called a ground loop. What aids the tail in heading around to the front of the nose is (1) that initial weather-vaning and (2) the weight being behind the main gear.

Additionally, the nose is so high in front of the pilot on most tail draggers that a clear view straight ahead for taxiing is not possible. You must zigzag to see where you’re going. (In the air, a tail dragger levels out just like a nose-wheel aircraft, and you can see over the nose just fine.)

I asked my mechanic, Gary, if he knew of an instructor who could check me out in a tail dragger.

“You’re lucky,” he said. “They’re hard to come by, but we’ve got one right here at South Raleigh: Waldo Ricks.”

Waldo was what the doctor ordered. He was older, with many hours in many kinds of airplanes, and lots of time in tail draggers. He was salty and a bit acerbic, and he
loved to sit and talk flying. He agreed to instruct me for my required ten hours.

“Do you think I need ten hours?” I asked.

“I do.”

After our first flight, Waldo was also in love with
Annabelle.
“What a sweet-flying machine,” he said.

My ten hours were spent learning to handle
Annabelle
just after touchdown in a crosswind. Waldo taught me how to aggressively stomp on the rudder to stay straight down the runway rather than weather-vaning into the wind, and how to pin the tail wheel aggressively to the ground.