Memory of the Day: First Flight

There I was, 1500 feet and climbing…

Well maybe I should start at the beginning. In my senior year in college, I was privileged to have the US Government pay for my training and testing to receive my private pilot’s license. During my ROTC Summer Camp in 1968 I had an opportunity to take my very first helicopter ride in a CH-47 Chinook. I fell in love with flying from that point on. When school started again in the fall of ’68 I signed up for ROTC flight training, knowing that it would result in a 3 year active duty obligation rather than a 2 year.

The first step was to take a written aptitude test to determine if I had the “Right Stuff” to be a pilot. I passed that and it was on to the flight physical. They brought an Air Force flight surgeon over from Barksdale AFB in Bossier City, LA to conduct the test and I passed with no problems. I did sort of cheat on the vision test though. I stopped wearing glasses a month before the test. It didn’t help me see any better, but I did learn how to recognize the blurs pretty well.

So eleven of us made the grade and started our flight training with ground school at Fleeman Flying Service in Monroe, LA. We didn’t even see an airplane for the first month. Anyway, we finished most of ground school and then were introduced to our flight instructors. Because of my schedule, the flight instructor that had been contracted by the school to teach the ROTC student pilots, A.W. Steed, was unable to take me. A.W. Steed was a former Army helicopter pilot that had been the first in his ROTC class to solo. That gets to be important a little later. So I was the only cadet student pilot being taught by a flight instructor that had no military experience. His name was Skip, can’t recall his last name and he had a point to make.

Skip pushed me pretty hard in our first few hours of flight instruction in the air. When I reported for my 7^th hour of in the air flight instruction, Skip and I did our usual pre-flight walk around and climbed into the airplane, a Cessna 150 with a tail number ending with 24 F. We took off with me at the controls. Skip had me do a couple of touch and goes then told me to land and taxi to the tower. OK, I can do that, but not sure why. We pulled up just beneath the Tower and Skip opened his door, climbed out, turned and said go back and make two rounds of touch and goes then come back here to the tower. Uh oh, I was about to solo with only 6 hours of experience under my belt. Of course, I couldn’t say I’d rather not so I taxied to the active runway and reported the tower that Cessna 24 F was ready for takeoff. Skip came on the radio, he had climbed up into the tower, I guess so he’d have a better view of the carnage. Anyway, he told me I was cleared for takeoff. I made my run down the runway and rotated at 80 knots. I was in the air, by myself, for the first time in my life. My hands were sweating and my heart was racing. I was wondering, what was I thinking. Well I made my turn onto the downwind leg and reported to the tower that I was about to turn on short final for a touch and go. The tower rogered and that’s when my legs started shaking. See, when Skip was in the right seat, I knew he would bail us out if I screwed up. Now the right seat was empty. I made my turn onto final and made a pretty fair landing (only a slight bump) and gave it full throttle to go around again. This time the landing, while not perfect, was one to be proud of. I landed and taxied to the tower, picked up Skip and taxied over to the Fleeman ramp. Skip was beaming as he got out the scissors to cut my shirttail off to hang on the wall with the details of my first solo. Part of his pride was that I was the first of the ROTC class to solo. Quite a feather in his cap. I got my picture in the local paper, but not with Chip. The story was about the former Army helicopter pilot, A. W. Steed, the first to solo in his ROTC class, and his student making his first solo. I am guessing that made for some awkward water cooler conversation.

Fast forward two months and Skip had me ready for my first solo cross country. Again, I would be the first in the class to make a cross country solo. I made out my flight plan to fly to Jackson, MS, land have lunch and return to Monroe. Skip approved the plan and I filed it with flight services. The attendant at flight services gave me the obligatory weather briefing so it looked like I’d have good weather for the flight. I climbed into my trusty Cessna 24 F and headed to the runway. I received clearance from the tower to take off with instruction on how to depart the pattern. I climbed to 3000 feet, set my nose toward Jackson with flight chart in my lap to track my progress (no GPS in those days). I had plotted my trip to fly over my home town, Oak Grove, and managed to find my house below. I continued south and east toward Jackson crossing the Mississippi river a little north of Vicksburg. It was then that I noticed that the clouds were lower than I had expected so I dropped to about 1500 feet to get underneath the overcast. I didn’t want to lose my bearings on the ground. I found that I was skirting the base of the overcast and from time to time my visibility was pretty short. Eventually, I had stayed in the cloud bank longer than I intended and descended a bit lower. When I broke out of the cloud cover, I had no idea where I was. I couldn’t find anything recognizable on the ground to check against my flight chart. To say I was a little anxious would be an understatement.

Finally, I decided that discretion would be the better part of valor in this case so I raised the Jackson tower on the radio and in my best airline pilot’s voice (neither a quiver, nor a squeak) I reported the following: “Jackson Tower, this is Cessna 24 F, Student Pilot, lost somewhere east of Vicksburg.” It’s pretty amazing how quickly things happen when you say “Student Pilot” and “lost” in the same sentence. They got me onto an exclusive frequency first so that there wouldn’t be any interference from other aircraft. The Controller told me to make a 90 degree left turn and hold for one minute. I did. Then he told me to make a 90 degree right turn and hold for one minute. I did. Those maneuvers allowed them to find me on the radar. The tower controller came back on with his equally calm and serene voice and said: “24 F, climb immediately to 2500 feet and hold, there are towers ahead at your current altitude.” Well, you can gain altitude pretty quickly if you have to so I made the 1000 feet gain in altitude quite quickly. I leveled off at 2500 feet and began getting instructions from the tower. Unfortunately, at 2500 feet, I was back in the overcast and couldn’t see the ground. The tower vectored me in with minor course corrections and from time to time would ask if I could see the field. Each time I said no. Finally, the tower told me that I was directly above them. I requested permission to descend below the cloud cover and they thankfully agreed that was a good idea. They had cleared all other traffic out to make sure I wouldn’t surprise anyone as I came down. I began a slow spiral down until I broke out of the overcast and, again, in my best Chuck Yeager voice, announced, “Cessna 24 F has the runway in sight and requests landing instructions. I entered downwind and then made a turn onto short final for a landing.

I landed without difficulty, taxied to the ramp as instructed, sat in the airplane for a few minutes collecting myself and realizing I had to fly back to Monroe. I grabbed a quick lunch and had the plane refueled. I was supposed to be able to make it there and back on one tank, but my rambling around lost had used up more fuel than I was comfortable with. While I was having lunch I decided to fly home following highway 80 that ran from Jackson to Monroe.  I was qualified for Visual Flight Rules (VFR) only, not Instrument Flight Rules (IFR). Of course there is another way to read IFR…I Follow Roads. I took off, found highway 80 and managed to follow it all the way back to Selman Field in Monroe. I landed and filled out my log book.

The end of this story comes a year later. I had gotten my commission and was on active duty. I was required to take the flight physical at Fort Bliss before going to my first assignment. The Army flight surgeon failed me for color deficiency, so I never got to fly helicopters in the Army. The upside of that is that I know several helicopter pilots that were shot down in Vietnam. I guess there is a moral there somewhere.