Wednesday, August 20, 2014

Close Calls

There were three occasions when I had a near collision while flying a small aircraft, two were entirely my fault, one was not:

1.  I was flying to an airport I had never been to before.  This airport was on one of the islands close enough to Okinawa that you could fly to it in a small aircraft.  I was relatively new to flying and had done most of my landings at Kadena Airforce Base in Okinawa.  The runway at Kadena was about 2 miles long and probably 150 feet wide, it could accommodate any aircraft.  The Cessna I was flying needed nowhere near this length, so it was a very forgiving runway.  You could land near the end of the runway and still have plenty of time to come to a stop.  The airport I was flying to had a shorter runway, it was still long enough to easily land on, but was probably half the length the runway at Kadena.  The first problem is that I came in way too high.  I immediately chopped the power, and put full flaps, but I still wasn't losing altitude quickly enough.   I put the aircraft into a forward slip, To execute a forward slip, I banked into the wind and applied opposing rudder (e.g. Right aileron + Left rudder) in order to keep moving towards the target. If you were the target you would see the plane's nose off to one side, a wing off to the other side and tilted down toward you.  Still, I wasn't losing altitude fast enough and I was picking up speed.  I should have executed a go around, and aborted the landing, but I stuck with it.  When I finally touched down, I was near the end of the runway and had a pretty good head of steam. My first instinct was to apply full power to see if I could get airborne again. However, I was concerned that if I did not get airborne in time I would hit the fence while still accelerating.  In an instant I made my decision. I stomped on the brakes, harder than I had ever done before but the fence at the end of the runway was still rushing towards me.  Thankfully I stopped, but I did overrun the runway into the grass. Fortunately, I did not hit the fence or do any damage to the aircraft, but it was my worst landing ever.  It would have been particularly awkward if I had damaged the aircraft because I was on a small island and spoke nowhere near enough Japanese to communicate the problem.  It would have been particularly embarrassing too because it was entirely my fault and easily avoidable.  I still don't know why I stayed with the landing.  I was not in a hurry, there was no-one else in the aircraft it would have taken all of 5 minutes to have set up for the landing again and come in low enough that I comfortably landed.  

2.  I was flying in the evening, after work and perhaps I was a bit more tired than I realized.  I was setting up to land at the Air Force base, a maneuver I had done many times in the past.  Because the Air Force base is operational, the pleasure aircraft have lowest priority for landing.  I radioed the tower and asked for permission to land, and was told to "hold over the water tower"  This meant I was supposed to fly in circles around a particular landmark while waiting for incoming traffic to land and clear the runway.  My flight instructor had pointed out the various landmarks that the air traffic control refer to on many occasions and I had held over the water tower several times in the past.  

For whatever the reason, I went to the wrong water tower.  Critically, I flew directly across the approach path to get to the other water tower.  As I was crossing the approach path, the incoming traffic flew just below me, It was close, I could see every detail of that aircraft, had I been 50 feet lower, we would have collided.  I then realized my error and immediately proceeded to the correct water tower and held.  The Air Traffic Controller then instructed me to land immediately and to phone the tower immediately after I secured the aircraft.  

I thought I was going to get yelled at and possibly lose my flying privileges for awhile.  Instead, this very polite senior officer calmly, but sternly, asked why I had done what I did and I explained that I had made a mistake.  He informed me that the other pilot had not reported it or complained and that we could just chalk it up to a learning experience.  I never did get the water towers confused again.  

3.  This is the only one that was not my fault.  Typically, when you depart and set up to land at the air base, you have to come in via a set number of landmarks.  One of the most popular is a lighthouse that is located about 5 miles from the air base.  I was coming in for a landing and was told to proceed to the lighthouse and given an altitude to maintain.  As I was approaching the lighthouse, another Cessna from the Aeroclub was also in the area, but I did not know that … yet.  It is usually pretty tricky to see other aircraft when you are in a small plane.  The visibility is not grab because half the view is taken up by the instrument panel.  Additionally, you really cannot see much above you, because the wing is directly above the cockpit.  You have limited side visibility as well.  Consequently, when Air Traffic Control warns you of other aircraft in the area, it typically take a few moments to find it, even when they tell you directly where to look.  

In this case, I was unknowingly heading directly towards another aircraft and fortunately we were not at the exact same height, I was slightly higher.  We were probably each traveling at about 90 mph, for a closing speed of 180 mph or 1 mile every 20 seconds.  I only saw the other aircraft for a moment as it passed directly below me.  I don't think the other aircraft saw me at all since I was above.  I could see both the occupants clearly, it was over in a blink of an eye but the memory is still vivid.  There was no follow up to this one.  Since we were flying under visual flight rules, it is the pilot's responsibility to avoid other aircraft.  However, the tower had ordered me to fly to a certain location at a certain height.  Arguably it was the other aircraft's fault, but I don't really think they had done anything wrong.  It was simply a matter of coincidence that we had both chosen to be in nearly the exact same place at the same time.  Who knows, perhaps I had other close calls that I didn't even realize!


Friday, August 8, 2014

Zip Line

For some reason, one of the most popular activities at our camp was the zipline. It was a simple set-up, there was a steel cable that ran across the lake and a bar attached to a trolley that ran along the steel cable. Scouts would climb up to an elevated platform about 10 feet high, grab onto the bar and start sliding down the cable. At some point your ride would come to an end, either by letting go, or the bar got low enough so that your lower half of the body was in the water. Once the scout let go, there was a rope attached to the trolley and the next scout had to pull the zip line back for his turn. If you were tasked with running the zip line that day, you simply stood on the platform and were there to jump in the water if someone had trouble swimming.

There were a number of different strategies. First, you had the older athletic kids that could actually do a backflip off the bar. They would usually let go pretty early so that they had sufficient height. The main group simply cruised down and would let go at various intervals. There was always at least one kid who always wanted to ride the zip line to the end, his lower half of the body would be in the water and he would hang onto the bar for 30 seconds as all the other scouts would yell at him to let go. Eventually he would, and he would repeat the pattern each time. I imagine he probably got beat up a lot. Then you had the chunky kids. These guys couldn't quite hold their body weight, so almost as soon as their feet left the platform they simply fell. They would never admit that they fell, telling their friends that they liked the big drop, but every single time they went it was a very abrubt fall as gravity overwhelmed them.

The staff would often pull various antics at the zip line, the most common riding the zipline in full uniform, there was a fair amount of nude ziplining in the evenings. The thing about the nude ziplining is that it was almost always 100% male, just a bunch of young guys stripping down and getting naked with each other. Every so often a feminina would be up for it, that always led to an extremely well attended event. One particular event involved a young lady named Ruth. Ruth was dark skinned, possibly Indian and was particularly busty. She was quite a character, she was there for only one summer, but was instrumental in keeping morale high across the camp. She was probably in her early 20s, and greatly enjoyed being one of the few females on the staff. She was not ugly by any stretch, but you would have thought she was a super model the way everyone chased her. Fortunately, you didn't have to put much effort into the chase. In fact, she took a liking to a young man of 15. However, it quickly ran its course and from that point on we referred to him as Ruth-less. Interestingly, on the night of the co-ed nude zipline event, she backed out a bit and decided to go down in her underwear and a white t-shirt. Needless to say every run after the first became quite a bit more revealing!

The only time I ever had to do any sort of rescue was an unusual one. Our camp director that year had a young son, probably about 2 years old or so. His son and his wife lived on the camp that summer. The zip line pond is entirely man made and is drained every summer. Consequently, there is a large concrete retaining wall that you walk along to get to the platform. The top of the retaining wall is probably about 18 inches higher than the surface of the water. I happened to be on duty and about midway through the shift, our director's wife and young son came walking along. It all happened so quickly, so I am unsure about the exact sequence of events, but the toddler all of a sudden ended up in the water. He was not a trained swimmer. However, he was the calmest one there, his mother was justifiably panicked. I was all set to go all baywatch like and jump in from the top of the tower, when one of the fathers was able to reach out and pull him to the shore. The best part was that the little tyke's only complaint was that his feet had gotten wet!

The zipline is a Summit Base fixture, a lot of things have changed up at camp, but I think the zipline will always be there.

Tuesday, August 5, 2014

Funny things that Erin Does

Of my two daughters, my youngest is definitely the bigger prankster. Some highlights:

1. It is always tough to admit that you are wrong and to apologize, whatever your age. Erin, has a really big problem with this. She doesn't do anything that bad, just the usual level of nonsense, but you have to have some sort of discipline. Luckily my wife imposes the discipline, overall she is the far better parent. One day, I can't remember exactly when, we told Erin to apologize to her sister for something minor like stealing her toy. Erin was very reluctant to do so, finally she grinned a big smile and belted out "Sorry Whaaaa", and laughed her head off. Apparently, she came up with the compromise that she was OK with saying sorry if she didn't have to say who she was apologizing too.

2. She loves to sing in public places at the top of her lungs. She usually pulls from the movie "Frozen", but also likes to sing her version of the abc's. Her version consists of inserting the letter "O" at the usual stopping points, so she will sing "A-B-C-D-E-F-O-H-I-J-K-L-M-N-O-O-Q-R-O-T-U-O-W-X-Y-AND O" and so on. She did this for an entire train ride, but luckily the train wasn't crowded and people thought it was hilarious, in fact they were encouraging her to do it again - which she happily obliged. Sometimes she will just make up a language and sing it along to a melody.

3. She has no idea about her relative size. She genuinely thinks she can wrestle me into submission to get her way. The other day, we were playing in a creek and she was having a great time trying to herd a flock of Canadian Geese, and those are pretty good sized birds. Similarly, she used to believe that she could breathe underwater. The first few times we took her to the pool she would just calmly keep walking into deeper and deeper water until it was over her head. Of course we were there to intervene. Her favorite way to move around is to jump everywhere, off of couches, off of people, off of anything.

4. Depending on the day, she is either extremely friendly with remote controls or a pure menace. Most days she is a menace, she loves to steal the remotes, try to run and jump into a remote (pun!) location and hit all the buttons in the hope of changing the channel, turning it off etc. On other days, she is very concerned that you are actually holding the remotes and not comfortable with the idea of them simply being within arms reach. She will hand over each one, saying "there you go" in the most serious voice she can muster.

5. If it were up to her, she would do all her eating in the car. At meal time, she seems to eat very little, but the moment she gets in the car she has this insatiable appetite. It is amazing how much food she can put away when she in that car seat. Typically, she then falls asleep, kind of like an old man.

Was trying to get to 10, but drawing a bit of a blank right now, I will try to make a note of some more.