One a-Landing, Two a-Landing, Three a-Landing, Four!

Actually, the total count was more like 15 landings in all. It’s difficult to express just how jazzed I am ….and how exhausted I am. I just did more flying in the previous three days than the previous three months. Flying is fun but it can be a work out when you’ve not flow a particular aircraft before. But, let’s start at the beginning.

Ol’ Ran had been working at adding on to his private pilot’s certificate. The first attempt was the “Multi-Engine” rating. That’s about half accomplished as you recall and that story is in the February edition. I’m also studying for my “Instrument Rating” and can prove it by offering for exhibit the stack of study materials falling off of my bookshelf just above my computer. After that will be more brow bending and teeth gnashing for yet other ratings that will allow me to further my part in the field of general and commercial aviation.

OK…now it’s time for a confession. I love WACO biplanes. I helped rebuild a 1941 UPF-7 WACO when I was a teenager with the hopes of getting to fly it. That didn’t happen. I’ve been waiting for 47 years to fly a WACO. Enter “Attitude Aviation” located in Livermore, CA. Guess what the just happen to have in their hanger? YEP…a WACO biplane! It’s a gorgeous, and I mean GORGEOUS, 1991 YMF-5C that has a big 275 hp Jacobs R-755 radial engine glued to its nose. Though classic in design, she’s a modern version but from the original plans. The new company is located in Battlecreek, MI.

I scheduled to fly the WACO (originally the “Weaver Aircraft Company”) but had to postpone three times before the weather finally decided to break and allow me to forge ahead with my plans. Excitement was in the air…on the floor...in the garage….in the barn…on the walls…everywhere. It can’t be stated with all assurance but, when the weather did clear, there possibly, sort of, kind of, may have been a spontaneous flutter in my heart’s left ventricle. The voiding of my bowels in my freshly-washed blue jeans was much more conclusive.

We loaded “El Hoopie”, the Freestar van, and headed north to Livermore the day prior to “fun instruction” (ok…if you have to be precise, “flight instruction”). After unloading the van we settled in for the duration.

Our motel was a modest place (read “cheap”) with all the amenities of a moderately enlightened Amish farmer’s home. The cheap part was on purpose since money wasted on a motel room couldn’t be spent on buying flying time. Anyway, it sported a TV and a bed and a chair with a table holding up one wall. A dangling light lit the table at the far end of the room. The motel was located only about 3.5 miles from the airport so there wasn’t much to complain about. Besides, we didn’t need the room for much other than to keep the cool air and condensation off of us at night. That and a hot shower in the morning would do fine. We weren’t going to host a political fund raising bash for any particular brain dead, moronic, slime bag, snake of a lawyer who is hoping to lead us into the maw of desperation with his unflagging bravado and stupidity.

Anyhoo….”Captain Ran” woke early the next morning and tracked down some hot black eyelid-and-heart-lubricant that, thankfully, was located in the motel’s office. I’ll take strong hot black coffee to get my heart started over a precordial thump any day. After primping a bit so as not to scare my instructor, we headed to the Livermore airport.

My instructor was Rhett Boeger who, though one of California’s premier flight instructors, was terribly un-primped. I’m starting think that, though reared in California, I missed the part about being supremely casual when appearing in public. After all, folks used to dress up to attend the walk-in movie theatres when I was a boy! Nevertheless, what a delightful but heavy chap he was! I tip the scales at somewhere around 230 pounds (albeit, that’s without my primping outfit with change in pocket, three sets of keys, and a fat wallet onboard). Rhett is my size and a half bale of hay. After being introduced, I commented that, “Rhett, I’ve done some preliminary weight and balance calculations for the WACO. If the auxiliary tanks have any fuel in them at all, one of us will have to stay behind!”. I was pleased that he laughed and didn’t pull his UZI on me.

Rhett is a supremely excellent pilot and an even better instructor. I really appreciated that they assigned him as my instructor. The guy is cool as can be and has flown airplanes that I dearly love and some of which I have yet to fly. His faded denim jeans have more flying time than I do.

It didn’t take long to get out to the WACO. There she sat….more beautiful than the jaw dropping pictures of her. We did a long preflight and walk around with most of the time being used to wait for my Huggies to dry. Rhett advised that the usual procedure is to stick the dummy pilot (he didn’t and wouldn’t say that but I did) in the front cockpit for an orientation flight. I would find out rather quickly that “orientation” meant, “work your fanny off, granny”.

There really are not words when it comes to trying to describe what happens to the human psyche and anatomy when you start a big muscular radial engine that is mounted directly in front of him. I can tell you that the rumbling sound has hooked many a good man and made a “believer” out of him. I’ve been “Radial Ran” since I was a boy so you can bet that my heart was in sync with this big round maker of horsepower when the first cylinder fired.

It was hard to believe that I was actually going to have a WACO haul my pink fundament into the air in only a few minutes.

Stay tuned to further episodes of “Captain WACO” and his damp underpants.