Some of us actually like to listen to all that racket as part of our power setting procedure, and having a buddy blathering away about his brother-in-law’s new stainless steel barbeque’s searing plate is a good example of where the saying originated about the high quality of the social experience in single-seat aircraft. Better to helpfully watch for traffic at this point.Īlso a good time for silent running is when Captain Joe has leveled off and is setting up cruise power. It’s too easy to ask, “Whatz?” “Whatz?” “Whatz?” while pointing like a hunting dog at every switch and gizmo, but just before the runway is not the time for that. Something I have trouble with is keeping my mouth shut-anytime, really-but especially when the owner is igniting the infernal combustion device, listening to the AWOS, and generally getting into pilot mode. But almost every experimental has more “don’t touch here” points than an old cat, and it’s important to actually listen and understand when Joe is reciting the grab here, step there hokey pokey. If it’s a Cessna Cardinal we’re talking about, well, there’s nothing to say. And if you don’t have the necessary experience, it’s far better to let the guy who does handle the job. Another thought to remember is it doesn’t take a superman to fly almost anything you’ll run across, but it does take experience. Even more apropos, you and Joe might be friends and maybe even flown a little together before, but he doesn’t truly know if you found your tailwheel endorsement in a box of caramel candy or blowing across the ramp one day. Airplanes, sometimes even different examples of the same breed, handle differently, and Joe isn’t interested in impromptu dual. Joe may be generous, but he isn’t stupid. If Joe wants you in the left seat, that’s his decision alone, and he doesn’t need any pressure, subtle or not, from you.Īnother given is who is going to take off and land.
For starters, did he mean the left seat or the right seat? Joe might be crazy enough to put you in the command position, but out on the ramp it’s far smarter to, with hands in pockets, just sort of loiter on the right side of the bird than anywhere else. So, when your buddy Joe does offer to let you fly his Sierra Hotel Model 1 home from breakfast, there are a few things to keep in mind.
We didn’t see too much of him after that, as word does get around, even among competitors. I’ll pause here to swear I’m not making one iota of this up, but his first words as he crawled out of the wreckage were an accusatorial, “Your car sure doesn’t handle very well!” To the latter point, you don’t want to be the jurno who, driving far ahead of his talent during a private track event, comprehensively wadded a hand-built Detroit prototype-call it an easy $500,000-against a bridge abutment. What all the car, motorcycle, tractor, boat, bicycle, and aircraft samplings have in common is the unspoken etiquette of handling someone else’s impossibly valuable pride and joy, or what may be a corporation’s high investment one-off. Also, I’ve hosted a fair number of people in my own airplanes, which is much the same experience turned around. Truth be told, I’m not that qualified for the job, so fair enough, but that said, along the way I have weaseled my way into a few cockpits not my own. So far my association with KITPLANES® has not given me any special entry to cockpits either fair or intimidating, these being the purview of the gents scribbling articles at the front of the rag. Many of these were quite memorable, especially the ones that caught fire, while others were simply nicely done and have long since blended into one of the brain’s deeper folds where lists of state capitals and last Tuesday’s breakfast go to fade away. In my case there have been somewhat fewer new cars than scribes constantly employed in mainstream car reviews, but you can add in several hundred privately owned cars because I typically labored at a “screwdriver book”-industry speak for a how-to magazine (such as KITPLANES®) where the subject was often some guy’s personal creation. But for an old-school journalist who was regularly hosted by auto manufacturers, the number is in the many of hundreds, if not solidly in the four-digit range over an active career. Who knows what the average is, 20 perhaps, for a person who may not travel much and thus doesn’t rent too many of Hertz’s finest. In a parallel life of mine-auto journalism-shop talk occasionally got around to just how few cars the average person probably drives in their lifetime.
But pay attention during the briefing as two airplanes of the same type might fly a little differently, such as this pair of Starduster Too’s. Trying someone else’s airplane is a lot of fun and we should all do more of it.
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