| A few words taken from |
| Thirty-five Years ot the Outer Marker |
| by Dutch Redfield |
| . . . . The airman’s sky, like the sea, has great fluidity and power- ful current flows and boiling tide rips, and whirlpools and tidal shears, and fogs, and ice, and at very high altitudes and around the world stretch river-like streams of fast-mov- ing air with velocities in excess of 200 mph. Where these high cur- rents border on surrounding air there will be powerful shear effects that cause great boiling unseen eddies that can punish an airplane and its crew for fatiguing hours. Great storms can cover half of the nation with 30,000 to 40,000 feet of deep, dense clouds with their wet lower fringes touching the ground. To the airman there is no escape from their enveloping dark mists that endeavor for hour after hour to smother his airplane with their wetness, their gloom, their stratas of shifting air, and stratas of performance-damaging tempera- tures, their icy mists freezing to the vital foils of flight, and impact tubes, and intakes. Imbedded in the vast cloud cover can lurk powerful thunderstorms with energies of bottled-up nuclear bombs and ominous foreboding blackish-green skies. Sometimes there is no out and the airman must drive through. Shoulder harness and crotch straps snap into place and are snugged. Engine and airfoil heat is switched on. One pilot, in- tent at the controls and his instruments, the other, peering head down at the radarscope, gives left steers and right steers to the other in an effort to circumnavigate the heavy rain reflected echoes ahead while rain and hail pelt the cockpit with such intensity the crew are un- able to make out one another’s shouts. Blinding lightning flashes and deafening thunder crashes ex- plode only a few feet outside their thin aluminum, glassed-in shell as violent currents of vertically rising and descending air severely buffet the airframe and twist and flex the wings and engine pylons. In sec- onds, heavy hailstones may batter cockpit windows into screens of opaqueness and severely damage the leading edges of supporting air- foils and vital engine intakes. A few airmen have brushed with river-like deluges which have some- how quenched the tremendous roaring fires deep in the heart of the great engines. |
And, the airman’s sky is not the blue on long, lonely descents through darkness, and wet clouds, and shifting winds, and turbulence, with circling, seemingly endless cir- cling flight at a bustling terminal’s outlying holding fix while approach delays, alternate airports, fuel re- maining, diversions, passenger handling, are reviewed and decisions made over the radio with the com- pany dispatcher far below, sipping cold, stale coffee at his cluttered desk in the noisy dispatch office. During breaks in the cockpit, under tem- porarily glaring chart lights, diversion fuel and endurance charts are referenced and frugal powers set on the engines while with a watch- ful eye the flying and navigation of the other pilot is monitored. A glow from distant lightning causes a glance outside. Around and around in the mo- notonous holding patterns. Overhead the navigation fix ob- scured on the rain-pelted ground far below. Then a reversing turn during which speed falls off due to the in- creased drag of the prolonged turn, and altitude sags from the lift lost. Wings level, the sweep hand of panel clock is actuated and a 60-second run is flown, then another turn back to overhead the fix. Compensation must be made for a strong crosswind by crabbing flight, crabbing first one way, then the other. Around and around. Time passes. As night falls, the red and green navigation lights on the wings cast a glow in the glistening fog although the wing tips themselves cannot be seen. Beyond the cockpit there has been nothing to look at since the first dusting through of the cloud tops in the dusk as descent was stated into their depths at 28,000 feet. Concentration has had to be on the instruments of flight and navigation, with the outside viewed peripherally, the opaqueness out there being of no assistance to the control of flight . . .. Return to Order page |