The first time I was allowed to fly a plane I was 8 years old in Santa Fe, New Mexico. We were at a religious conference there and it was the first big trip I went on in my life outside of California where I had lived since I was 4 or Seattle where I was born and lived on my Grandad's 2 1/2 acres of Apple trees, Black Cherry trees, and raspberries and boysenberries. At age 3 and 4 I could walk out my back door and eat all the raspberries or boysenberries I wanted to eat (as long as I didn't get caught in the prickles of the berry bushes) which was a little difficult for a 3 and 4 year old to negotiate alone sometimes.
So, that fateful day in 1956 when I was 8 we flew a red and white Piper Tri-Pacer, a new one all shiny and red and white. I wasn't allowed to take off the plane of course, but I was allowed to fly it all over the area for 1 hour which was a life long dream of mine. Because, more than anything at that point I wanted to be a pilot when I grew up. My Dad tried to calm this desire a little in me because his brother, who was a military test pilot, never came back from World war II. The family thought likely he died trying to make takeoffs and landings on an aircraft Carrier as a part of Jimmie Dolittle's early strike on Japan to freak them out early in the war when they landed in china (those that didn't run out of gas and wind up in the Pacific instead or get shot down over Japan).
So, though Dad was happy to let me fly (because he remembered his brother's love of flying) and because he had been a Marine Core Gunner in a Hellcat Bi-plane in the Reserves himself from 1934 until 1937 before world war II began.
So, when his friend asked us to fly out to the desert with him in his 1949 Stinson 4 passenger plane, we went along for the ride and his friend let me fly back from the desert for an hour or two. I was about 10 years old then. So, he showed me how to crab into the wind (which means basically how to fly sideways so the winds don't blow you into a mountain and you crash. We were flying between San Jacinto mountain above Palm Springs and Mt. San Gorgonio which is over 9000 feet high which is over 11,000 feet high and the highest mountain in Southern California. We were flying at about 7000 feet for safety but still the winds were coming across our nose from left to right and blowing us into San Gorgonio mountain which if we hadn't crabbed left into the wind we would have crashed into by the wind blowing us sideways into it. Because even though we likely were flying 125 to 140 miles per hour forwards we were also traveling 50 mph sideways from the winds left to right across us. So, I had to turn the nose with the pedals into the wind and so we crabbed along sort of sideways fighting the wind. So, though we lost ground speed this way we didn't crash into San Gorgonio. This was a lot for a 10 year old to take in but I was up to the task. I found in these kinds of conditions it was more like sailing a Super Sabot at Newport Harbor more than anything else. However, at 12 I capsized a super sabot sailing boat and was very embarrassed in a gust of wind.
However, flying through the canyon between San Gorgonio and San Jacinto at 7000 feet put flying into a completely different perspective for me and made it much more akin to sailing ever after that. In flying there are a whole lot of different things that can happen. When you are trained to solo like I was in 1987 they make you fly figure 8s over the ground in a cross wind to have you get used to the fact of cross winds on your flights anywhere. It is really hard to do a perfect figure 8 in relation to the ground in a cross wind. IN fact sometimes it's almost impossible. And as a pilot you have to understand that you cannot always do what you want because of cross winds and you have to figure out ways to survive this especially in mountains when up and down drafts and cross winds can be the worst and the most unforgiving. (as in your death and the deaths of all your passengers). Because flying alone a plane flies much differently than with passengers. it is much worse with passengers than when you are alone the way a plane flies.
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