Persistence |
Walter Gabrielson Painter |
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Appendix: Serious Aviation |
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| True flying story. Two guys coming back from a fly-in near Reno in a WW II trainer called the Ryan PT-22, a beautiful open cockpit tube and fabric plane painted silver and yellow, were flying nap 'o the earth or down and dirty near the ground. Around Inyokern as they flashed over a ranch house out in the middle of nowhere they saw the lady of the manor lying outside taking the sun in the nude. Pilot wants another look and honks the plane straight up, intending to come back around, but the plane stalls in the process, and crashes about three hundred feet infront of the horrified lady. One of the occupant's head detaches and rolls towards her. I know this sounds terrible but there is something very funny about it too. A person is floating along in a beautiful machine on a gorgeous day and loses control over himself and then loses control over the airplane and that is it. In a way that is what all flying is about. You work very hard to be able to get up into the air, then you become sort of used to being up there, then a form of intoxication takes place and you want to push it further, then you get into trouble, and then the airplane being extremely unforgiving of stupidity, cheerfully lets you down. All flying is about your own psychology; it is a place where you can project your fantasies into incredible dimensions and experiences. That is why people do it. I have heard it said that everyone has had a flying dream. You are on a hill or mountain somewhere and you extend your arms and you are flying. Commercial aviation goes on overhead and hardly counts as "flying", it is more like bus-driving by exacting professionals who work like hell to take all the strangeness and adventure out of it. The kind of flying I got into was the personal kind. One day I found myself out at Van Nuys Airport staring at a small trainer owned by an instructor, Larry Riggs. Larry was instructing in order to build time to get into commercial flying. Fortunately he was also a good instructor. I took lessons, had adventures, got a license, bought a small plane, learned acrobatics, learned to fly sailplanes and hang gliders, helped build a plane, flew all over the United States, owned two more planes before I eventually gave it up for art. The kind of personal flying I was involved in is no longer affordable to the average man or woman and is essentially over with, except in the case of flying ultralights and homebuilts. There are no longer any single engine airplanes being built for general aviation; product liability insurance makes the price of them too high. When I did it, I could afford it, not much more than operating a big car by comparison. The airplanes I flew didn't even guzzle much gas. The ten years I spent flying probably saved my life if not my soul. Powerless in my career and my teaching job, I found solace and energy by launching myself into the sky and safely returning back. There is something very pure and clean about flying. There is little tolerance of the oozy level of incompetence and hysteria that exists in other endeavors, in flying anything less than competent is unacceptable and nearly always fatal. To be more than competent I went as far with it as I could until the airplane and I were of a oneness. I think that is the only way to do it. You just can't fly airplanes part-time. I know 20 people who have been killed in airplanes and many of them were professionals who just lost it one time and that was that. I lost it three or four times and luckily, I didn't have to pay a price for it. In flying you transcend into a place that is unique in a machine you can manipulate at will. You can make the sun rise on the horizon, you get into fresher, cleaner air, you see colors that are remarkably bright, and in a storm you can taste all the forms of fear and intensity that nature can serve up. In a glider you can transfer bubbles of energy from the earth to distance, altitude or time. With airplanes you learn to cope or you die, it is a wonderful way to learn things. No repeats on the test, no try it again tomorrow. If you get yourself into trouble, you get yourself out or that's it. What a remarkable change from a faculty meeting or an self-serving art discussion. I discovered that other artists in California had made this quiet discovery. Jim of course. Sam Francis had flown during the war. Doug Wheeler, Bruce Everett (one of the few good guys left at CSUN) flies planes and ultra-lights. Larry Albright has a plane. David Settino Scott was an instructorand flew practically everything with wings on and one engine. Ted Kerzie still flies back and forth to work and has his studio in a Santa Monica hangar. My first wife Betty learned and flew. Richard Dehr of course. Irving "Doc" Grubb at VNX with his Silver Citabria. A few more. Flying is like entering the priesthood. The oral history of flying, all the stories that people pass on to each other when sitting around a table was our bible. Your flying license was just a ticket to be at the table. The best flying circle I discovered was down at Torrance Airport. It was headed by a canny old aviator with a deadly sense of humor named Roger Keeney. Roger is a pilot, mechanic, and keeper of the flying faith and the faith. He would teach you to fly the engine as well as the airplane, saving and extending the plane's life as well as your own. If it is possible for one person to know everything about flying, Roger is just about there. He also ran a fixed-base operation on the airport, an old P-38 facility over in a corner from WW II, pumped gas, weighed airplanes, dispensed cokes, did everything. When there was an accident somewhere, Roger was the man who knew the people, the plane, what happened and a good guess how it happened. A day later we would find out, talk it over, learn from it, file it away. Many times I think I was saved by my attendance at Roger's church. If you didn't learn it there, you were never going to learn it anywhere. Roger still flies. My salvation came with risk and learning competence in a totally new field. The following few stories are my attempt to make it real but I have no large expectation that I shall ever be able to transmit much of the experiences of flying. It stays there. Perhaps that is best. Anybody can find a similar experience in sailing, diving, other kinds of adventuring. We all need an extension of our earthbound, boring self once in a while just to wake us up. My first big wakeup in airplanes happened about three flying hours after I had soloed. Solo is like sex for the first time that actually is good. Anyway, after soloing they turn you loose to fly alone and practice by yourself so you can gain confidence and eventually pass the flying test. On this day Riggs told me to go up and practice departure stalls, a maneuver of making the airplane stall when you are departing an airport for instance, but you practice it at altitude just to be safe. You want to save your real departure stall for when you are just about to crash into somebody's housing development, no use rushing it. The procedure is to get the airplane climbing and turning until it gets low on airspeed, starts shuddering from the wings unloading and then you recover and that's it. Well, I did a bunch and then started wondering what was a REAL departure stall like? We had never done an actual one since Riggs said just to get near it and then recover because that was all the test demanded. But ever curious and being a damn fool I decided to go for it. I got the airplane climbing and turning at full power, pulling ever back on the stick to get it to happen, and it did. Wham! I was turning to the right going up and suddenly the airplane flipped upside down to the left and fell like a free-falling anvil with the engine still screaming away. The earth was doing some interesting things too, swirling around letting me know I was in an inverted spin. I pulled off the power, released the back pressure on the stick, got the turning stopped, wound up going straight down, and pulled out of the dive. What had I gotten myself into? Fortunately, I had instinctively done all the right things. I headed back to Van Nuys shaking so hard I could barely land and went home and crawled under the covers. If airplanes can do that kind of thing, leave me out of it I thought. Two weeks later Riggs called and asked why I hadn't scheduled anymore time, I meekly related my story. He must have gone white on the other end of the phone and said, "Students don't DO that kind of maneuver!" Now he tells me. Riggs offered to take me up in a real acrobatic plane and show me all themoves and after that acrobatic demonstration it was easier to continue. When I went for my license I asked the examiner with a straight face if he wanted an actual departure stall. He looked at me strangely and allowed that I didn't have to go all the way with it. Had a feeling he had never done one for real, the faker. After the instruction phase I decided to buy a plane and actually found one in reasonable condition for $2800. I hocked everything, sold my Cuevas prints and there I was. It was an Aeronca Champ, a 90-hp fabric plane which I flew all overCalifornia, discovering its vastness, colors and richness. The coast is just such a small part of it. I learned about mechanics to take care of it, learned judgement in all sorts of weather and situations and gained confidence, and learned to play in the clouds and land anyplace I could find a flat spot big enough to put it down in. Finally, after three years of arduous flying it became time to invest a lot of money in it or sell it. I chose the latter and flew it out to a buyer in Cottonwood, Arizona. On the way I encountered powerful winds in the Palm Springs Pass which put me vertical to the ground and rising over 2,000 feet a minute but I kept on going. Arriving over Cottonwood I flew down the main street until I found my buyer's ARCO station, circled a couple times, landed out at his primitive strip and regretfully said goodby to this little plane that never let me down. By this time I had discovered that flying is a truly unique experience. It is not so much that you operate a machine, what you really do is control the earth. An airplane allows you a fixed position in the air from where you can direct the earth in any dimension as it rolls under you. You can tip it up and put it at an angle or make it grow bigger or smaller and, you make the decisions. Flying is about empowerment. I gradually began to notice this phenomenon as I sat up there, just flying along. The earth would obediently roll along under me until I decided to alter its characteristics, which I could manage with a whim and a slight pressure on the controls. Amazing. After you learn to fly an airplane, and cease being afraid of it, you can gradually push your perception and experience outwards until you practically are accomplishing it by instinct. My favorite act was something I called the Zen landing. As I would come down to land I found that I was actually pulling the ground up to me. I could make it go away but I could also bring it up. I decided that the best landing would be one where I brought the land up to my wheels with such delicacy that I could not perceptibly feel the transition from sky to earth. It is absolutely a gorgeous feeling. I returned to LA and was a wingless bozo for a year or more. During this time I took instruction in flying sailplanes and learning how to soar down at Elsinore. In flying these birds I discovered the subtleties of the air and its velvet or torrential movements, the management of energy and the simple art of flying without an engine. In a sailplane I once stayed up for three hours, flew a hundred miles out and returned without landing, got it up to 23,000 feet with a hawk out by my wing. I took some LA artists up in the sailplane. John White used the event in a performance once. One of the best flights was with Pat Hogan. Pat was just about a brain in a broken body in a wheelchair but a painter and player nonetheless. We poured him into the back seat and after the tow I found a big puffy cloud right about El Mirage dry lake that had substantial lift near its bottom. The cloud was about two miles long, so we could fly down its length just below it, translating the upwards lift to speed by putting the nose down, a form of inverted "surfing" if you like. We raced along the bottom of the cloud next to its power and fresh air and water, and when we came to the end I would do a chandelle and return for another pass. I asked Pat if this was too much for him. All I got was kind of Waooooow and took this as a sign to continue. We must have been there a half an hour before the cloud got far enough away from the strip and we had to get back and land. I also tried hang gliding and successfully risked my carcass for 25 flights before giving it up. A young man's game. The idea of running hell to leather off a sheer cliff with nothing but a bunch of glorified lawn furniture holding you up really boggles the mind. But, it is some of the most exhilarating flying I have ever experienced. I was the bird. But I felt it was too far beyond my capacities to safely survive and I dropped out of it. When I was in a very low state in 1974 after my divorce, Richard Dehr came to me with the T-18-project. It also was a product of a divorce. For $2500 we could buy a mess of parts and make an airplane out of it. Why not? We trucked it up to Topanga and got to work. Richard was a metal-smith and engine mechanic and I was the helper and gofer, the roving executive. Our efforts together with the assistance and counsel of other builders got us an airplane worthy of serious aerial navigation. We rebuilt parts until they were right, we strengthened others, we puttered around the aluminum until it flowed out of us. Finally we hung the engine and I got in, Richard swung the prop and the damn thing lit off. There it was, a wingless airplane in Topanga Canyon with ambitions. After a coat of white paint we took it out to Mojave airport for its first flight. A T-18 pilot named Jack made the first flight in it, engine ran too hot so back to the bench, adjustments, a day later it flew. We watched from the ground. He came back and said it flew like a dream. Richard got in and a half hour later it was my turn. My first impression was how small and constrained the side-by-side cockpit was, how noisy it was, and how from one side you could hardly see the other wing. Very eerie, seemed like it had fallen off in the air. But the sensitivity was astounding. I flew it with the tips of my fingers. It was faster, dropped like a rock without power, landed like a fiend, but went like hell in the air. I could do a 360 degree roll at cruise with my feet on the floor just moving the stick a little bit. Zam, and it would be around. It was a machine that could flow out of my body in control, an extension of my will. I didn't have to work it or wrestle it. Think left, and I was there. Learning to fly it was tough. Things happened so fast you just couldn't afford to make a mistake. I heard of one T-18 where the builder/ pilot took a fellow pilot up for a ride who asked if he could fly it. The builder said sure, and immediately his friend pulled it up into a loop, went over the top inverted and didn't pull off the power. To save it, the builder grabbed the controls and pulled off the power but by this time they were going straight down at a ferocious speed. He managed to pull out of the dive but so many G forces went on to the wing that it permanently deflected upwards but didn't break. (Nice to know.) On the ground, his friend said thanks for the ride and strolled away. My problem was strange - I would lose it on takeoff! It would want to yaw before there was enough air going over the tail and the wing was in ground effect so it wanted to fly before it should. My takeoffs were very amusing hippity hops all over the place until Jack taught me how to do it right and then all the problems went away. Landing was also different because the sink rate was high and it was so fast, but I mastered landing before takeoff. Finally, we were free to build time on the plane. I or Richard would go out to Mojave on Friday or Saturday night, camp out by the plane and get up at dawn, fire it up and fly it until the air got too warm and created thermals which made it very squirrely and dangerous. Because it was permanently registered as experimental we had to fly 75 hours out there before we brought it back to a city. (A plaque designating the plane experimental and mounted on the panel sometimes unnerved passengers.) I had one more serious encounter with it after a summer of flying before we brought it back to LA. I was practicing landings when it began veering to one side off the runway, I gave opposite rudder and brake (The day before, the brake had gone out on that side and we had fixed it.) and nothing happened. The airplane continued to roll madly to the left and nothing I could do seemed to want to stop it, then it reared up on the wing, spun around in a ground loop and ran off the runway in a big cloud of dust. I was devastated. I was also kind of lonely. I had accomplished my first crash and nobody knew about it. I could be upside down and on fire. It was too early in the morning. Nobody was up. No crash truck, no event, so I pulled the plane back on to the runway, started it up again and limped back to the hangar. Richard was amazingly understanding. We took off the wing panel, fixed it in four days, drove back out and put it back on the plane. I went up with Jack some more and reconquered my fears. I eventually realized that I had my feet too far up on the brake pedal and had encountered the bottom of the fuel tank as I gave rudder and didn't have room to depress brake pedal. Just a small thing that could kill you. Better to learn it now. Another T-18 peculiarity was its stall characteristics. A normal stall would dramatically result in a nose drop and rotation into a spin entry. A power-on stall would give you an English bunt, whereby the nose tucks under and you enter an outside loop from the top, are thrown against your belts and wind up upside down very fast. Its little takeoff dance was tricky, it was better to get it going 100 mph on the ground before you attempted flight. Unfortunately, if the runway had some big bump in it along the way, the plane would launch before it was ready to fly and then it was a task to wrestle it back down or keep it low enough in ground effect until the speed built up. But it is just like switching from any average, truck-like vehicle to a very light, high-spirited one, once you made the transition it became a much more desirable flying machine. Finally we got 75 hours on it and were signed off by the FAA. We flew it back to Whiteman in the Valley and packed it into a hangar with a lot of other planes. I went out and painted it with a unique design that got us notice wherever we went. Richard collaborated with Peter Garrison to design a better cowling and also changed some of the externals which built up our cruising speed to over 160 mph. It enabled us to transform our lives, to get around California or across the United States with immense efficiency. On an average day, driving at sixty miles an hour for eight hours translates to a hard day of five hundred mile travelled and total exhaustion for the driver. With a flying machine that did 160 mph or more, an eight hour day got us 1,280 miles farther than we were that morning. Two days would get us to New York. It also took less work and tension to operate, it was fun. We generated a form of rapture as we flew, coming down was the hard part. It allowed me to do all kinds of things I wouldn't have thought of without it. For instance, I flew up to see Christo's "Running Fence" in the morning with Bernice Coleman from CSUN. We flew up and down it at low altitudes taking pictures and enjoying the spectacle, stopped at Half Moon Bay for lunch and came back down the coast to Van Nuys by afternoon. I could go to Flagstaff to see Turrell in about the same amount of time, stay a weekend and be back to teach on Monday. The plane couldn't land out at the Volcano but I put wheels on the strip out there several times, went back to Flagstaff and drove back out with Jim to spend a night or a whole day. Jim named his strip out there Cahoots, so you could get in Cahoots with him in the Helio. I accomplished several working trips with the plane, often using it to get around for lectures and to meet other artists. On one trip I gave a lecture in Kansas, ambled around Oklahoma for a while and wound up in Texas where I looked up Bob Wade, who taught at North Texas State University at Denton. His studio was down in the bowels of the earth - they had allotted him an ex-missile site to make art in. Also I got to meet his ex-girlfriend who evidently didn't like breaking up with him. She took all the detritus and documentation from their affair, rented a storefront and mounted a conceptual show in Denton. She also made up small kits of the material and passed them around to the art faculty in case they hadn't gotten the point. Bob's wife wasn't amused. We went down and cruised North Forth Worth bars and stopped in at his "Map of the USA", a large earth piece he had built in Dallas with an NEA grant. I left there on a wild and windy day and was blown to Gallup, New Mexico. The next day I made Lake Havasu in 2.4 hours and Van Nuys in another 2.0 hours. With airplanes I was able to cut across vast slices of society and territory. It was almost like a narcotic, so powerful an experience. You wanted more. The most momentous flight I ever had in the T-18 took me from Orr to Van Nuys in 12.8 hours on one day. I had come up to see the folks in the summer of 1976, and along the way gave a lecture in Macomb, Illinois, stopped in Owosso, Michigan to see Paul Hood (an Air Force friend studying to be a lawyer) and flew across Lake Michigan to get up to Minnesota. After five days in Orr I was going crazy and getting a cold on top of it. It was time to head on out, I would try for Provo, Utah in a day. I got out very early at dawn, dodged some small showers from Minnesota to Aberdeen, South Dakota. From there it was nice weather and flat to Chadron, Nebraska. At the Chadron Airport, somecommuter airline pilots came over and admired the bird, and we swapped flying stories. From there it was across Nebraska to Wyoming, all on the deck chasing cows and following the terrain. When I reached Rock Springs, Wyoming I saw I had a problem. The airport is on a butte past town with big runways crossing each other but none was going anywhere into the wind. I decided on the least wind angle runway and flew a long, flat airline approach and had one wing down and flew it solidly onto the runway on one wheel for a while and then carefully put the other wheel down and let it roll out with a lot of brake on the downwind wheel. Later watched a twin try it eight times and he never got down (went somewhere else). I was a bit tuckered by then so grabbed a sandwich and slept under the wing for an hour. I got out of there okay and had to fly high to cross over the mountains by Salt Lake. It was afternoon as I approached Provo, I had a lot of altitude and I thought being in Provo, Utah with a cold would be no fun at all, so I kept on going to St. George. It was hot there and uncomfortable too, I decided to keep on going. It took the plane a bit of runway to get off. Flew over Vegas during a thunder and lightning storm, saw strikes all around the casinos. Hoped I wouldn't be hit. Terrible way to go, spinning into a casino somewhere. By this time I was getting pretty fatigued. The noise, heat, sun and excitement were taking its toll. As I approached Van Nuys the visibility was terrible. From the mountains I couldn't even see the field but I was cleared to 16L (the short runway) and I kept on boring on. Suddenly it showed up. I was too fast and too high and too tired to go around so I did a quick dive and a slip and got on the runway with too much speed, hopped a bit and finally rolled to the end. Taxied back to the hangar and shut down. I felt that I had accomplished this magnificent thing. It is one thing to jump on an airliner and have the system drive you someplace. Very much another thing to make it happen yourself. I had completely changed my environment. I had a wonderful time doing it. I still had the cold though. Several times Jim and I flew out to Flagstaff together, but on one occasion he was delayed so I went on ahead. As I passed over Lake Havasu I noticed that my ground speed was low which indicated that I was flying into a headwind. Theoretically I had enough fuel. Went past Prescott as it was getting dark but felt that I could make Sedona. By this time it was pitch black. We had no landing lights, strobe, etc. on the plane yet so I was up there dark and alone. I could see the lights of Sedona ahead and barely could pick out the airport situated on a mesa near town. It wasn't lit either which would really make it interesting. By this time I also didn't know how much fuel was left. We had never really measured the tank; it held either 28 or 30 gallons. How much useable was another enigma. The gauge was around empty, but since we had never gotten this low on fuel, how empty was empty? (When you build an airplane there are a thousand questions that eventually must be answered. In a store-bought plane for instance, they say the tanks will hold 30 gallons and 26 useable. In a last resort you figure the last four gallons you can use if you stay flat and level in flight and run her dry. If you tilt the wings you can starve the gas outlet pipe and stop the engine so you work with that.) I was at 10,000 feet with no lights attempting to land in mountainous terrain with low or no fuel. I think I have it right. The good news was that I wasn't lost and the weather was fine. So, I pointed the plane downwards and eased off the power, kept on enough to keep the cylinders hot and went for the field. (I had also landed there before. It is one of the aircraft carrier fields, a good two-hundred-foot dropoff on both ends so you better have it right.) Just then another plane in the area turned the lights on at the field with his radio (You're right, I did not have the proper code with me either.) and he landed. I went screaming down after him, slowed down, flared to land and the goddam field lights went out. They are only on for about five minutes and then they automatically go out. I was again in the dark in a very hot airplane with not enough fuel to attempt a go-around if I was wise. But, I could barely see the field, certainly enough to feel for it and that is what I did and made it down all right without running off the end. Everybody had gone home and I couldn't refuel then, so I left the plane and trudged off. Later, Jim came in and looked in the tank and allowed that there wasn't enough gas to start a fire. Personally, I didn't want to know. Richard and I came to understand and solve all our mechanical problems with the airplane and we both flew it all over the place for three years. Richard would take it to ecology conferences, I would go to the Midwest and give lectures at colleges. Locally we took it everywhere except the offshore islands. I thought of it but, no. One Australian pilot who flew the T-18 out to the Outback all the time told me that it could almost get away from him on the ground. Too risky. My last trip in the plane was all you could ask for, may be a little too much. Departed Van Nuys with Noni Chernoff on June 4, 1977 for a great swing around the United States. We camped out under the wing, dropped into the University of Kansas, went up to Cedar Rapids to see the Gant Wood Museum but hit the wrong day and it was closed, on to South Bend and Owosso to see Paul Hood. He took us out to a monumental old county courthouse where we witnessed a murder trial in progress. Two youths had killed a gas jockey, stayed on and pumped gas the rest of the night because the till was low, and then ran off to Oklahoma where they were caught. The two were eventually convicted. Went on from there to New York and up the Hudson dodging rain squalls to Burlington. Stayed with Lance Richbourg in Winooski, slept on the floor of the private school where he taught. I brought back the film I had borrowed for the Ironic series, "The Cowboy Who Ate The World." Lance had left Northridge years before and felt a lot better teaching up there, had access to New York and shows at Ivan Carp. From there we went down the Hudson again to White Plains where I attempted to land at a big executive field. It was blowing a lot, but it wasn't bothering the corporate jets. I hit some shear when I got below the treeline and the plane took a dive, touched down OK but a gust got me airborne again. I got it level back in the air and landed again, and as I was on the ground rolling another gust put me back in the air. I gave full power and tried for another landing. Tower acidly asked when I was going to get in down so he could bring in some CEO behind me. I told him to cool it and eventually got it parked and multi-tied down at a good spot. The local people said they would look after our strange creature and we headed over to the train station and went on into New York City for a week showing slides and not getting anywhere as usual. From there we went to Philadelphia. The infamous argument of my pal with his wife got us a late start leaving there. The weather looked good but it appeared to be moving fast towards us and I wanted to get down before it got too bad. (Weather is also late when they give it to you, and never accurate enough so you sort of believe it and hope for the best but expect the worse. Years later I heard of a pilot who went down in the same area flying a Vietnam-era piston fighter plane. It was not a nice place to be flying in.) We were very fortunate that we got down in West Virginia all right, I saw the airport just after I came out of the clouds and immediately went for it and landed. As I was rolling down the runway, I noticed that there was also a control tower (vast number of small fields don't have them). While gassing up the control tower called and asked us to pay them a visit. I led with my best line, "Oh, we're from California." It worked. No one was flying that day except damn fools and the controllers were sitting around reading comic books. We got back to LA. Richard was subsequently killed. I went through all that and really wondered if flying was worth it. I had a certain amount of survivors guilt. I also knew I had been instrumental in getting Richard into aviation, but upon reflection, if it hadn't been me, it would have been someone else. He wanted to fly. Sometimes, you are the person and you have to live with it. About six months later I was invited by Jim and Bob Bass to enter their partnership in a Super Cub and an entire new life opened. It is amazing how particular kinds of airplanes just by their capacities create a direction for you. I have also noticed that different types of people move towards particular areas of aviation: * The power planes attract a lot of guys with plain pants, white belts, white shoes and big bellies. * Sailplanes are filled with lean philosopher types with white upside down sailor hats. * Parachute jumpers tend toward the whippet guys and gals that hang around gas stations. * Surfers go for hang gliding. * Executives types with blow-dried hair and briefcases fly the twin-engine business. * Airline pilots have a black mustache, always wear dark glasses and a watch the size of a Sumo wrestler. Amazing. It all fits. With the Super Cub I got the islands. The crew around Roger's had been doing it for years and they taught me how to do it. The idea was to fly out there and land on any flat spot you could find, have a picnic, go hiking, sit on a clean deserted beach and come back. One day I found myself out over the water hoping the engine wouldn't quit, on my way to the Channel Islands off Santa Barbara. There is nothing like doing something like that for the first time. All your familiar references are gone, if you crash on landing and survive, there is hardly anybody out there to save you. It is one of the most beautiful places in Southern California, and fortunately, the developers never found it. It is now Channel Islands National Park and anybody can go out and see how marvelous it is. But in the Seventies it was all there, privately-owned (San Miguel and Anacapa were government-owned), pristine, with deer, elk, foxes and the black wild pig your only friends. We found places to land on three of the islands, and later on with Mark Gassaway we expanded on them many times. Imagine, being able to fly out to paradise every weekend. We did this for two years in the Cub. Sometimes I would come in at dusk and land and stay overnight and come back at dawn. We never knew what the weather would be like; we went out and looked at it, and if looked good, we went in. One time I went out on top of the clouds, found a hole, came down next to the ocean, came up to a landing spot, got down and rolled uphill back into the clouds. There were people out there but it was very hard to find us. I was discovered on four different occasions but able to leave without trouble. One time it was with artist Ron Cooper who had his little girl with him. A Coast Guard helicopter came down and looked us over but I guess we didn't appear too threatening. I was once intercepted by the island people pointing guns at me but talked myself out of it. Somehow, the entire risk was worth it and I believe I speak for everyone who has gone out there with an airplane and experienced the place. I also know we respected the islands. There was never any evidence of us being there, trash, anything. Only a few bent blades of grass from the tires. The wild pigs tore up the place more than man ever did. The Super Cub had an entirely different combination of physics than the T-18 that allowed it to take off and land in incredible short spaces. It was very rugged, a plane to go camping in. So we did. I took it up to Oregon, camped out all over, down the coast, and landed on beaches. I found a beautiful place with a deserted road and house near the top of Northern California and landed there for a few days and didn't want to leave. Crashing surf, tall mountain behind us, pine trees, no people. Eventually we sold the plane. Gassaway was interested in buying a plane for camping and we settled on the Cessna 170B. The plane had space in it to sleep if you took the seats out, you could put bicycles or a small dirt bike in it, its performance was close to the SuperCub, and although it was ostensibly a four place plane, it was much safer and better with only two on board. The one we eventually wound up with was in bad shape and needed a lot of work so that took up our time. We based it at Compton airport, close enough to Torrance to keep in touch with the Roger circle. With the 170B I was also able to get in on a couple of art pieces. One day I flew way out into the Mojave Desert and met John Duncan on a road in the middle of nowhere. I had never set eyes on him before when he came up to the plane and asked if I was Walter Gabrielson. Just who the hell else wasgoing to land a plane on a road in such a godforesaken place? He loaded his video equipment and I flew in circles until I was dizzy while he documented a piece he planted in the desert. I was sworn to secrecy about the location of the piece. Frankly, I couldn't find it now if my life depended on it. Another time I was drafted into providing airborne documentation services, and circled above Point Dume for an hour while Dave Elder poured green dye into the ocean down below. One of the photographers had to take a leak, but we couldn't leave because it would destroy the photographic continuity of the shoot. I really didn't feel like flying circles above Point Dume another day either so I told him to drink a bottle of wine (I kept it on board for bribing the island people if I got caught again.) and go in it. He happily complied and our art business was cheerily concluded. Flying has been described as hours of boredom interrupted by moments of sheer terror. It is true and what you are in for if you fly airplanes. I was up to accepting the risk when it came at me, as it did many times, but having passengers along is an entirely different matter. When passengers get into your airplane you are responsible for them to such a degree that it is hardly possible to put it on a scale. Many innocent people go in with a pilot who has obviously been stupid and that is really tragic. Yet, they continue to do it. Get into an airplane with a damn fool. I know, I almost took someone with me on three separate occasions. All three situations were weather-related, each one I got myself into all by myself. If you want to be a passenger in a light plane, my advice is to be the only one on board and make sure it is during the day in bright sunlight and no rain at your destination. Never go up with anyone at night. Then you have a reasonable chance. I think having someone along with you makes it somewhat a social situation, you feel the needs, the power of others and you lose your own discipline. Only twice did I have three people with me and I hated it the whole time. Something happens when you squeeze a lot of people into a small airplane, something I don't understand or like. It takes away the magic and concentration of flight and you feel like you are a bus driver. I'll tell one story about it getting tough while I had a passenger on a trip down the Oregon coast in the Cub. We had had a marvelous trip throughout Northern California and Oregon, camping out, dropping into small towns. One sketch I made from a piano bar I turned into a drawing and I still might take it further one day. On the way back down the coast it turned cloudy and eventually rainy so I set down and we camped out overnight. Next day was rainy until afternoon with fog offshore. I waited around and checked with other pilots until it seemed safe to go. I flew down close to the water in and around fog patches, working myself south. One fog patch appeared to be lighter on the other side so I went through it but it was deceptive, after a flash of light I flew right into a very thick patch. I was going about 90 mph, about forty feet off the water so I elected to turn back the way I had come and banked hard to the right. I could see the water and kept the wing tip out of it with one eye, and with the other I watched my artificial horizon and directional gyro to keep the turn flat and to get back to my reciprocal heading. During such a maneuver a thousand thoughts are going through your head. Why did I do this? Don't lose it now or you are going to wind up in the drink. Wonder what the person in the back seat is thinking? I also had to look out the front to see if a sudden darkening ahead would announce a rock that I could easily smash into. Just a lot of things. It seemed to take forever. I couldn't climb out of it because the ceiling was variable. I had to keep in this strange maneuver until I could get out of it. Finally my reciprocal heading came around and I rolled level and seconds later I was back into sunshine. That is how fast it happens. Like the story of how the PT-22 pilot lost his head. One instant you are a god, the next, you could be fish food. When you get down you look at your passengers and you wonder if they know what they just went through. Did the passengers know that they were just that close to ending it all? I have always wondered what the last instant must be, do you know you are being killed as you are being killed? You will only find out one way. I never wanted flying to become boring, although occasionally it would. The hundreds of hours I spent in planes were something like a Zen retreat for me. I did not waste my time flying from point A to point B at 8,000 feet looking at some needles in the cockpit. We flew the 170B for several years all over the place too. Once I took it up to Washington and back down the beaches to California. By this time I sat in the seat of a plane like I was plugged into the thing.Although it never let me down, I really didn't trust the 170B. It is a terrible feeling to be flying along and look out at the wings and wonder if they are going to stay on or not. The plane was old and corroded in places, as much as we kept it up it would remind you that it was getting creaky. If you landed at night, the moment you touched down all the lights went out. Somewhere there was a bare wire that touched the airframe and shorted out all your light which made things very exciting. (Since we were never able to locate the problem, we carried plenty of spare fuses.) It went on from there. But it was a good flying formula and good for the islands. One of my last flights out there I found out just how good it could be. It was a very windy day. The wind was coming from a different direction than it normally did so I came over the place where we normally landed on this particularisland and felt it out. It was gusty but maybe it could be done. It was such a marvelous day and it seemed a pity not to land after having made the trip. I came in from another direction but something still didn't feel right, so I put some flaps down but kept it at about a hundred feet above the place to feel it out some more. Just as I went over the field I caught a huge gust that tipped the plane entirely up on a ninety degree vertical edge in flight. I was slow, had the drag of the flaps and now I was in what they euphemistically call an "unusual attitude." If I had attempted a landing that time, the plane would have rolled up into a ball I am sure. I also had two passengers. But I was feeling the plane so close that I felt the gust coming and I lowered the nose, pushed on full power, rolled level, retracted some flap and dove to the ocean in just about the time it takes to describe it. Again, I think it was the only maneuver that would have worked and it did. Later on we landed at Camarillo and the wind was blowing so hard I couldn't taxi in; the gas truck drove out and my passengers held on to the wings while we refueled. Occasionally the plane would lift off a bit but I would fly it back down again on the ground. After we gassed up, they got in and we lifted off vertically and went back to LA. Jim told me a story something like this: one night he was camped out at the islands and the wind came up, he got back into the plane and sat there, fell asleep and woke up with the airplane having lifted off in the dark. He got it back down. Finally, we sold the 170B, I took it to Colorado and on the way I became reacquainted with Nancy and started another life so I guess the plane helped. I flew to Boulder just grazing the earth and thoroughly enjoying myself. What a wonderful day was my last flight. That was it. I exchanged my flying passion for a private introspection that has continued on until today. Do I miss it? Yes, very much. But not all that much. I was privileged to have been able to have ten unbelievable years in flying. Now it is so expensive and the regulations are more severe that it is out of reach and doesn't seem as much fun. Soaring would be interesting, or perhaps ultralights. Who knows? But, I honestly feel that I have transferred that dream to something else just as heady in its own way. I have thousands of memories about flying that could only be violated if I went back to it and experienced something less. I have learned the lesson of great experience: don't go back and attempt to repeat, it won't be there. You demean and crush that which you love. You simply have to go on and start a new challenge if the old one is over with. In my mind I can go flying anytime I want. It is better to stop when everything has peaked. Then the next morning, it's wheels up for... © Walter Gabrielson 1993 All Rights Reserved ------------------------------------------------------------------------ |
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