What it's like to be a pilot
 

Seen some of these, but not all. Something for the youngsters to look forward to-


You won't have all of these memories, but enough of them to make you smile . . . . .
Some may be hard to understand unless you've been there.
Add your own one-liners anywhere herein and keep it moving.



WHY IT'S GREAT TO BE A PILOT

Flying close finger tip formation in a flight of four.

Losing an engine in an F-84F while taxing back to the ramp after a mission.

Terminating afterburner at 1.85 Mach in an F101 and experiencing deceleration so hard that I flew off of the seat and into the harness so hard that I had strap bruises on my body, and needed a change of underwear.

Full afterburner take off in a clean F101 in 20 below zero weather at night.

Somehow, all the jet-lag and other problems had a compensating balance!

Doing formation join-ups in the F4 around big beautiful columns of Cumulus out of every fighter base.

Sunrises seen from the high flight levels that make the heart soar.

The patchwork quilt of the great plains from FL 370 on a day when you can see forever.

Cruising mere feet above a billiard-table-flat cloud deck at mach .86, with your chin on the glare shield and your face as close as you can get to the windshield.

Knowing you got to land a fighter on a five thousand foot runway, that is covered with hard packed snow, and no drag chute.

Punching out the top of a low overcast while climbing 10,000 feet per minute in AB.

The majesty and grandeur of towering cumulus.

Rotating at VR and feeling 400,000 plus pounds of airplane come alive as she lifts off.

The delicate threads of St. Elmo's Fire dancing on the windshield at night.

The twinkle of lights on the Japanese fishing fleet far below, on a night crossing of the North Pacific.

Cloud formations that are beautiful beyond description.

Ice fog in Anchorage on a cold winter morning.

Seeing the approach strobes appear through the fog on a 'must do' zero, zero approach when there is no other place to go.

Seeing geologic formations that no ground-pounder will ever see.

The chaotic, non-stop babble of radio transmissions at O'Hare during the afternoon rush.

The quietness of center frequency at night during a transcontinental flight ... or over the Amazon at any time.

Watching St. Elmo's fire all over your windscreen in the winter night skies over Alaska.

The welcome view of approach lights appearing out of the mist just as you reach minimums.

Finding yourself in a thunderstorm with 750# bombs hanging on your wings.

Lightning storms at night over the Midwest.

Picking your way through a line of huge Thunderstorms that seemed to go all the way from Chicago to New Orleans

The soft, comforting glow of the instrument panel in a dark cockpit.

The dancing curtains of colored light of the aurora on a winter-night North Atlantic crossing.

Passing 30 west . . .

The taxiway names at O Hare before they were renamed: The Bridge, Lakeshore Drive, Old Scenic, New Scenic, Outer, The Bypass, Cargo, North-South, The Stub, Hangar alley,

The majestic panorama of an entire mountain range stretched out beneath you from horizon to horizon.

Lenticular clouds over the Sierras.

The brief, yet tempting, glimpse of runway lights after you've already committed to the missed approach.

The Alps in winter.

Watching a fellow pilot do an engine out flameout approach and making it in an F-100.

Seeing a "dumb" bomb you drop hit a target and knowing you had all the parameters right.

The lights of London or Paris at night from FL 350.

Squall lines that run as far as you can see.

Exotic lands with exotic food.

Seeing Tokyo lights at night from thirty five thousand feet stretching from horizon to horizon.

Maneuvering the airplane through day lit canyons between towering cumulus clouds.

The deep blue-gray of the sky at FL 430.

The hustle and bustle of Hong Kong Harbor.

The softness of a touchdown on a snow-covered runway.

Hearing the nose wheel spin down against the snubber in the well after takeoff. A delightful sound signaling that you were on your way!

Old Chinatown in Singapore before it was torn down, modernized, and sterilized.

Watching the lightning show while crossing the ITCZ at night.

Long-tail boats speeding along the klongs in Thailand .

The quietly turning paddle fans in the lobby of the Raffles Hotel in Singapore .

Dodging colored splotches of red and yellow light on the radar screen at night.

The sound of foreign accents on the radio.

Luxury hotels.

To paraphrase the eloquent aviation writer, Ernie Gann, The allure of the slit in a China girl's skirt.

Sunsets of every color imaginable.

The tantalizing glow of the flashing strobe lights just before you break out of the clouds on approach.

Yosemite Valley from above.

The almost blindingly-brilliant-white of a towering cumulus cloud.

A cold San Miguel in Angeles City after a long day's flying.

The Diamond Horseshoe at Itazuke.

Ocean crossings and in-flight refueling.

Hearing every sound a single engine fighter makes at night over the open ocean.

The taxiway sentry (with his flag & machine gun) at the old Taipei downtown airport.

Seventy-thousand-foot-high thunderstorm clouds in the tropics.

Sipping Pina Coladas in a luxury hotel bar, while a typhoon rages outside.

Chinese Junks bobbing in Aberdeen harbor.

The smell of winter kimchee in Korea.

Watching the latitude count down to zero on the INS, and seeing it switch from "N" to "S" as you cross the equator.

Wake Island at sunrise.

Oslo Harbor at dusk.

Icebergs in the North Atlantic.

Contrails.

Pago Harbor, framed by puffy cumulus clouds in the late afternoon.

The camaraderie of a good crew.

Ferryboat races in Sydney Harbor

Experiencing all the lines from the old Jo Stafford tune:

See the pyramids along the Nile .
See the sunrise on a tropic isle.
See the market place in old Algiers
Send home photographs and souvenirs.
Fly the ocean in a silver plane.
See the jungle when it's wet with rain.

White picket fences in Auckland.

Trade winds.

White sandy beaches lined with swaying palms.

Double-decker buses in London

The endless expanse of white on a polar crossing.

The Star Ferry in Hong Kong,

Bangkok after a tropical rain.

Mono Lake and the steep wall of the Sierra Nevada range when approached from the east.

The bus ride to Stanley ... on the upper deck front seat of the double-decker bus.

The Long Bar at the Raffles.

Heavy takeoffs from the "cliff" runway at Guam.

Landings in the B-767 when the only way you knew you had touched down was the movement of the spoiler handle.

Jimmy's Kitchen.

The deafening sound of tropical raindrops slamming angrily against the windshield, accompanied by the hurried slap, slap, slap of the windshield wipers while landing in a torrential downpour in Manila .

Endless ripples of sand dunes across the trackless miles of the Sahara desert.

Miller's Pub in Chicago

German beer.

Oktoberfest.

The white cliffs of Dover

Oom-pa-pa music at Meyer Gustels in Frankfurt

Fjords in Norway

The aimless compass, not knowing where to point as you near the top of the world on a polar crossing. The whiskey compass on a steep tilt.

The old Charlie-Charlie NDB approach into Kai Tak.

Brain bags crammed with charts to exotic places.

The Peak tram in Hong Kong.

Breaking out of the clouds on the IGS approach to runway 13 at Kai Tak, and seeing a windshield full of checkerboard.

An empty weight takeoff in a B-757.

The bustle of Nathan Road on a summer day.

Sliding in over Crystal Springs reservoir for a visual approach and landing on 1R in SFO.

The smell of tropical blooms when you step off the plane in Fiji

The quietness of a DC-10 cockpit.

The rush of a full-speed-brakes descent at barber pole in a B-727.

Deadheading in First Class.

The Canarsie approach into JFK.

The Eiffel Tower

Max gross weight takeoffs.

Cross-wind landings at 29 Kts/90 degrees

Good co-pilots.

Man-sized rudder pedals as big as pie plates.

Leak-checking your eyelids on a long night flight.

And, as one friend so perceptively pointed out, payday!

Making an aural null range approach.........

Then there was Venus coming up before the sun in the Eastern sky, giving the horizon a light show like no other!

And the best .. watching countless rounds of 23/37/57 MM being shot at you, at night, and ALL missing.


Add your own thoughts and keep it moving....................

As Sinatra said, "the best is yet to come!" Thanks for showing what we younglings have in store.

Dodging the Balloons In Sao Paulo, Brazil on deptarture.
Doing an air turnback in the 747 in China because the lever latch didn't release.
On arrival at Diego Garcia with minimum fuel the nose gear won't come down on FRED due to a bad circuit card.
Getting trapped @290 because a certain carrier won't climb on the way back to Narita.( As someone trapped and a trappee..)
A zero G landing in a 727 in SDF in the rain.
Lightning strikes and the smell of ozone.
When the Captain says sarcastically "Do you think you can repower that buss sometime today? :)
Torching #2 engine on a delayed start and having tower inform you that "There are flames coming out of one of your engines."

I could go on and on but gotta take my daughter to school. This is gonna be a good thread.

74plb

Wow! Thanks for posting! I read ALL of them! Makes me start dreaming!;) Some of those definatly are to be added to my "to-do-list" in life!:cool::p

Some of my flying experiences I wouldn't want to miss out on (it's almost embarrasing but I'm just at the beginning!):

-Being called down to the ground by your instructor over the radio after a long solo flight in a glider and having lots of altitude to lose in a short period of time! (That means: Fly fast, loops, 90°+ banks - see how many Gs you can pull in your little glider, rolls, flying inverted etc.)
-Trying to catch small ballons out of the window in your glider and bring them to the ground
-Hearing the grass softly scrape your tailwheel during a really soft landing and thenn the sudden roughness of touching down on the grass.
-Having lots of speed in a winch tow and just hangin' your plane onto that rope and hoping the rope won't break! ;-)
-FIRST SOLO!

Just a few of mine... Again sorry, but I am just a young guy and don't have any spectacular things to tell like you do! I really highly respect all of you!

Blue skies
-Jakob

Feeling a 152 "leap" off the runway on your first solo (because of the missing instructor weight) and realize it's ALL up to YOU now!
Circling a small town water tower on a hazy summer day trying to find out where the HE** you are on a solo cross-country- and finding out the town isn't on the chart!
Raising the flaps to zero all at once and marveling at your new sink rate on a go-around!
(No ack-ack,SAM's,AB departures, but it's still memorable!)

Flying in a vintage closed cockpit biplane and heading towards Mt. Rainier.

Flying the Hudson VFR corridor and do a few steep turns around the Statue Liberty.

In an old twin Flying to Key West at 6000 and nothing but water all around you.

First Time Solo in Class B Airspace

First Night Flight

Glad I'm not the only one... ;)

Sounds pretty spectacular to me Jakob - thanks for posting.

Thanks! At least I can say I'm having a lot of fun when I'm up there!:D:)

Oh, one more: Making a long landing and flying into ground effect with 180km/h, then being stunned that you just flew 500m just three feet above the ground and pull the flaps out slowly so your plane finally stops flying...;)

I'm looking forward to more of yours!

Likewise! My instructor weighed 260lbs, and were flew a Full IFR 150!

Yeah, my instructor is about a buck fifty and between the two of us we're about three hundred and eighty pounds. With a full IFR 152 we have to be pretty cognizant of our fuel load and CG limits (Ever have to put your gear bags against the back wall of the cargo area? :D)

On my PPL checkride; The examiner was 310lbs and at the time I weight 210lbs all muscle though. The CG was on the line at the limits; It was pretty weird rotating at vr; and touching the examiner stomach with his yoke; and I had to call maintenance to drain fuel off the 172. That was an interesting day ;)

Taking off with the sun coming up at your back, looking down at the thousands of cars stuck in traffic on the highway at the end of the runways.

APC- a place for singles to meet

Your safe here bri, I dont think anyone was going to accuse you of being fat

-- The Northern lights on a cold winter night from Goose Bay to Mildenhall
-- Europe at night ....anytime
-- The vastness of Africa laid out below you droning along at 20,000 feet
-- The stark difference in the green of the Nile valley and the surrounding desert.
-- the quietness of the T-37 cockpit on your first solo
-- Fingertip formation in a T-38
-- The huge cappuccino's at the Navy Base ops in Naples
-- The beauty of the Italian Alps while on approach into Aviano
-- The view from the Apollon Hotel in Athens
-- Happy hour at the Jolly Beach resort in Antigua
-- The quietness of the ATC freqs on a all night transcon....well except for our BOX carrying friends
-- Sunrises and Sunsets beyond belief.....
-- The beauty of the Andes flying into Bolivia
-- The relief you feel when ( back in the day when we had navigators on the C130 who actually shot celestial ) the TACAN/VOR locks on at coast in....AND its where it's suppose to be... :)

more im sure...but those are a few...

It's 10 PM and after an hour of summertime solo flight in the far north bush at 900 AGL, sliding into a perfect approach, hearing the intermittent bleat of the 206's stall horn, the distinct sound of the mains crunching into the gravel, getting out of the plane and hearing nothing except the light rustle of the wind.

Walking into a FBO to buy charts and being swarmed by starving FBO CFI looking to add another 0.1 in their books....

"hey, mister...you need a checkout in the C-172 you just flew in on?"

"How about some IFR training? Please?"

If I had any leftovers from lunch I would let one of FBO CFI have them.

-LAFF

:D Its all good thanks.

Turning off the pannel/interior lights during meteor showers

Flying east to west over Illinois at night, over your right shoulder you see the lights of Chicago, to your left you see St. Louis, and all the little towns in between.

That first greaser landing in an aircraft you just started flying.

Getting cleared direct to the FAF of your destination airport five minutes into the last leg of a four day.

The moment you pass a checkride.

The moment your student passes a checkride.

Following a predawn departure from EYE in Indy on a cold dry fall day. Halfway to Brandywine PA, 11K, Center freq is quiet, watching a perfect half moon directly overhead, sun coming up toward the horizon a little faster than you ever see sitting on the ground, spreading gold fire across the horizon on the nose...looking around, realizing you're sitting right on the terminator, night behind you, day ahead. The towns below are still in the dark, sleeping, and you look up through the canopy to see a jet passing you a couple miles above, same heading and track, lit up like a diamond 'cause he's up in the sunlight. Perfectly balanced moments like that are "what it's like to be a pilot" for me.

Shopping for a sloppy day and destination to practice making/missing approaches.

Flying a J-3 in hot weather with shorts, flip flops, and open doors.

The moment you admit to yourself this is addictive.

soloing my first student

flyin a cub down low over the west texas caprock with the door off at sunrise

hunting coyotes out of a robinson helicopter for texas fish and game dept

first approach to mins in a light plane...and not breaking out

taking a light plane solo into another country for the first time

the hours of silence over the gulf hundreds of miles from shore in a light twin and finally hearing the radio crackle as the mexican coast appears in the haze

flying in rain so hard that the inside of the plane is soaking wet

checking density altitude before taking off from leadville colorado

having passengers thank you after taking them to safety following an engine failure in a light twin

salt water fly fishing in Roatan Honduras and Belize knowing I'm being paid to be there

teaching aerobatics

all that was while I was still in college in west texas...

then...

first takeoff in a jet

catching the jumpseat on a flight my dad was the captain of