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There I was…
And tradition continues with something like, "five thousand feet, upside down in a cloud, nothing on the clock but the maker’s name, when suddenly..." I guess every pilot has moments he’d rather not have experienced, that scared the living daylights out of him or her at the time, but later, safely on the ground amongst friends, become funny. We ALL screw up once in a while, we’re only human. The trick seems to be not to screw up more than one thing at a time - accidents are usually the result of several mistakes taking place together. Whole books have been written about the times it nearly happened, the days we just missed our ticket to the Pearly Gates. Want a few of mine? The Great Loop in the SkyThere I was, sitting alone in the tightly cramped cockpit of a Ka-8 glider, nearly two thousand meters above the rural German countryside, just below the base of the clouds. I was idly circling around with hardly a care in the world, thoroughly happy with life in general, and myself and the aeroplane in particular. I’d been lucky to catch a fabulous thermal right off the winch, which had yanked me up to three hundred meters. As soon as I’d pulled the yellow release knob, I’d felt my left wing being pushed up by an air current. Two full turns (gliding is mostly flying around in circles) and I had the little wooden plane nicely centered in the thermal and was all set for the ride up to the clouds. At 900 meters (by the way, in Europe all gliders’ instruments are calibrated in meters and kilometers per hour, unlike powered aircraft which use feet and knots), the thermal began to peter out to nothing. I decided to break off and fly straight ahead for a while, looking for the next. Gliding is like a game of snakes and ladders - up one thermal, lose height looking for the next, and up again when you find it. To be on the safe side, I flew off into the wind so I’d be blown back towards the airfield if I failed to find the next updraft. Sure enough, a few minutes later and with only a minimal loss in altitude, there was the next thermal waiting for me. Climbing, climbing, up past 1000 meters, 1200, 1500, 1800 - this was terrific! I could stay up here for hours! The sound level inside my cockpit was about the same as you get on a bicycle going downhill - other than a little wind rush past the canopy, almost totally silent. What a wonderful day! Regularly checking around for other aircraft, I could see I had this part of the sky to myself. The devil inside me awoke, looked around, and gave me a nudge. "How about a loop?" he said, with a grin. "Nobody’ll know." "They’re not allowed," I answered him. "Verboten. Comes
under aerobatics, and, as you well know, if I get caught I’ll be grounded for
two weeks. Forget it, okay? That
little devil just wouldn’t sit still. And maybe he was right. It wouldn’t hurt,
would it? Just one? I mean, I knew perfectly well how to do one: Stick forward
to build up speed, get her up to about a hundred and sixty, stick briskly back,
ease off a little over the top - my God, I’m doing it! Weighing about three
times what I normally do, squeezed down into my seat, I watched green ploughed
fields appear over my head. Other than a few subdued "arrk-arrk-eek!"
noises from the wing
roots right behind my ears, the Ka-8 didn’t object. Over the top and down the other side, I leveled out again in more
or less the same direction as before, and glanced at the altimeter. I’d scrubbed
off only about a hundred meters - wow! That was easy! Terrific! Now I’m a REAL
pilot - I can do loops! It was so easy, I thought, that one or two more
couldn’t hurt! Mistake. Overconfident, I didn’t let enough speed build up. Instead of neatly completing the loop, the elderly glider just ran out of steam right at the top. There I was, upside down, this time not being pressed into my seat by several positive Gs but hanging inverted in my seat belts like an overgrown bat. The rush of air stopped. A moment of silence, and then every loose stone, orange juice carton and dried mud patch on the cockpit floor fell up past my face to clatter onto the Perspex canopy around my nose. Then, as if it had just been taking a little rest, the Ka-8’s nose dropped straight down into a vertical dive. I recovered it easily, no big deal since the Ka-8 pretty much flies by itself. But I realized how lucky I’d been. A little less speed, and we wouldn’t have made it to the top of the loop, but only halfway up the wall. The plane would have stopped briefly, actually coming to a standstill, before plummeting backwards. Rudder and elevator, designed to be trailing in the airflow, would have found themselves blown upon from behind, and would have broken off against their hinges. I would have had perhaps ten seconds to pop off the canopy, climb out of the spinning ruins of the glider, jump clear, and deploy my parachute - fat chance!
Close EncountersThere I was, again, sitting happily in that same old wooden Ka-8, flying around in circles trying to squeeze a few more meters of altitude out of a fairly cooperative thermal, with about 900 meters of warm, upward traveling air between me and the freshly ploughed fields. Kusel airfield, a kilometer of neatly mown grass next to a single hanger and club house, was right underneath. I could just make out my own blue Ford in the parking lot, and I watched as another glider was launched. With luck, he’d be up here to keep me company in a few minutes. I heard it before I saw it. A powerful, deep throated rumble. What? And where? The rumble grew louder, and mixed with the unmistakable high pitched howl of at least two big jet engines. For several seconds, I couldn’t see it! Then, out of a cloud about half a mile away, an Air Force DC-9 barreled towards me. He was a little higher in a slightly nose-up attitude, and clearly had no idea I was there. There wasn’t even time to say an appropriate four letter word. Stick forward, I spiraled right and down. I just had time to see the dumb-stricken faces of several passengers in their windows along the DC-9’s fuselage before heaving the Ka-8 down to safety. As the monster passed, wake turbulence shook my tiny single-seater around like a terrier with a rat in its teeth. Ten seconds later, and I would have climbed right into his path with no chance of avoiding a collision, which would probably have brought both aircraft down. Whose fault? Difficult. The DC-9 had taken off at Ramstein Air Base a few minutes before. Who vectored him directly over a clearly marked glider airfield on a Sunday morning in fine weather? Or was he just off course? I was too close to the clouds - 500 feet of vertical separation is required, and I was closer than that. Should I have been monitoring Ramstein’s frequency - not required, and not standard practice? Could’ve, would’ve, should’ve - all useless when things go bump in the sky! Since that day, I made it a habit to retune my com set to Ramstein’s 123.55 as soon as I climbed beyond about 600 meters. Just listening in for a few minutes gives you an idea what traffic to expect. Radar can just about pick up a glider, but it’s very fuzzy and hard to read the footprint. There’s not a lot of metal in the tiny aeroplane. A case for Charlie-mode transponders, like powered aircraft?
Copyright © 2001 by Mike Graham. All rights reserved.
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