“Dad-o, I’m so glad you’re a pilot!”

My 9-year-old son Jacob has been saying that, always with a big hug and his fond nickname for me (“dad-o”). It has now been a year since the first time I sat in the pilot’s seat of a plane, taking my first step towards exploring the world from the sky. And now, one year after I first sat in the pilot’s seat of an airborne plane, it’s prompted me to think back to my own memories.

Flying over the airport at Moundridge, KS

Memories

Back when I was a child, maybe about the age my children are now, I’d be outside in the evening and see this orange plane flying overhead. Our neighbor Don had a small ultralight plane and a grass landing strip next to his house. I remember longing to be up in the sky with Don, exploring the world from up there. At that age, I didn’t know all the details of why that wouldn’t work — I just knew I wanted to ride in it.

It wasn’t until I was about 11 that I flew for the first time. I still remember that TWA flight with my grandma, taking off early in the morning and flying just a little ways above the puffy clouds lit up all yellow and orange by the sunrise. Even 25 years later, that memory still holds as one of the most beautiful scenes I have ever seen.

Exploring

I have always been an explorer.

When I go past something interesting, I love to go see what it looks like inside. I enjoy driving around Kansas with Laura, finding hidden waterfalls, old county courthouses, ghost towns, beautiful old churches, even small-town restaurants. I explore things around me, too — once taking apart a lawnmower engine as a child, nowadays building HF antennas in my treetops or writing code for Linux. If there is little to learn about something, it becomes less interesting to me.

I see this starting to build in my children, too. Since before they could walk, if we were waiting for something in a large building, we’d “go exploring.”

A patch of rain over Hillsboro, KS

The New World

A pilot once told me, “Nobody can become a pilot without it changing the way they see the world — and then, changing their life.”

I doubted that. But it was true. One of the most poetic sights I know is flying a couple thousand feet above an interstate highway at night, following it to my destination. All those red and white lights, those metal capsules of thousands of lives and thousands of stories, stretching out as far as the eye can see in either direction.

Kansas sunset from the plane

When you’re in a plane, that small town nowhere near a freeway that always seemed so far away suddenly is only a 15-minute flight away, not even enough time to climb up to a high cruise altitude. Two minutes after takeoff, any number of cities that are an hour’s drive away are visible simultaneously, their unique features already recognizable: a grain elevator, oil refinery, college campus, lake, whatever.

And all the houses you fly over — each with people in them. Some pretty similar to you, some apparently not. But pretty soon you realize that we all are humans, and we aren’t all that different. You can’t tell a liberal from a conservative from the sky, nor a person’s race or religion, nor even see the border between states. Towns and cities are often nameless from the sky, unless you’re really low; only your navigation will tell you where you are.

I’ve had the privilege to fly to small out-of-the-way airports, the kind that have a car that pilots can use for free to go into town and get lunch, and leave the key out for them. There I’ve met many friendly people. I’ve also landed my little Cessna at a big commercial airport where I probably used only 1/10th of the runway, on a grass runway that was barely maintained at all. I’ve flown to towns I’d driven to or through many times, discovering the friendly folks at the small airport out of town. I’ve flown to parts of Kansas I’ve never been to before, discovered charming old downtowns and rolling hills, little bursts of rain and beautiful sunsets that seem to turn into a sea.

Parked at the Smith Center, KS airport terminal, about to meet some wonderful people

For a guy that loves exploring the nooks and crannies of the world that everyone else drives by on their way to a major destination, being a pilot has meant many soul-filling moments.

Hard Work

I knew becoming a pilot would be a lot of hard work, and thankfully I remembered stories like that when I finally concluded it would be worth it. I found that I had an aptitude for a lot of things that many find difficult about being a pilot: my experience with amateur radio made me a natural at talking to ATC, my fascination with maps and navigation meant I already knew how to read aviation sectional maps before I even started my training and knew how to process that information in the cockpit, my years as a system administrator and programmer trained me with a careful and methodical decision-making process. And, much to the surprise of my flight instructor, I couldn’t wait to begin the part of training about navigating using VORs (VHF radio beacons). I guess he, like many student pilots, had struggled with that, but I was fascinated by this pre-GPS technology (which I still routinely use in my flight planning, as a backup in case the GPS constellation or a GPS receiver fails). So that left the reflexes of flight, the “art” of it, as the parts I had to work on the hardest.

The exam with the FAA is not like getting your driver’s license. It’s a multi-stage and difficult process. So when the FAA Designated Pilot Examiner said “congratulations, pilot!” and later told my flight instructor that “you did a really good job with this one,” I felt a true sense of accomplishment.

Some of my prep materials

Worth It

Passengers in a small plane can usually hear all the radio conversations going on. My family has heard me talking to air traffic control, to small and big planes. My 6-year-old son Oliver was playing yesterday, and I saw him pick up a plane and say this:

“Two-four-niner-golf requesting to land on runway one-seven…. Two-four-niner-golf back-taxi on one-seven… Two-four-niner-golf ready to takeoff on runway one-seven!”

That was a surprisingly accurate representation of some communication a pilot might have (right down to the made-up tailnumber with the spelling alphabet!)

It just got more involved from there!

Jacob and Oliver love model train shows. I couldn’t take them to one near us, but there was one in Joplin, MO. So the day before Easter, while Laura was working on her Easter sermon, two excited boys and I (frankly also excited) climbed into a plane and flew to Joplin.

We had a great time at the train show, discovered a restaurant specializing in various kinds of hot dogs (of course they both wanted to eat there), played in a park, explored the city, and they enjoyed the free cookies at the general aviation terminal building while I traded tips on fun places to fly with other pilots.

When it comes right down to it, the smiles of the people I fly with are the most beautiful thing in the air.

Jacob after his first father-son flight with me

It’s now official: I’m a pilot. This has been one of the most challenging, and also most rewarding, journeys I’ve been on. It had its moments of struggle, moments of joy, moments of poetry. I wrote about the poetry of flying at night recently. Here is the story of my first landing on a grass runway, a few months ago.

Grass

Where the air is so pure, the zephyrs so free,
The breezes so balmy and light,
That I would not exchange my home on the range
For all of the cities so bright.

– John A. Lomax

We are used to seeing planes in these massive palaces of infrastructure we call airports. We have huge parking garages, giant terminals, security lines hundreds of people deep, baggage carts, jetways, video screens, restaurants, and miles and miles of concrete.

But most of the world’s airports are not like that. A pilot of a small plane gets to see the big airports, sure, but we also get to use the smaller airports — hidden in plain sight to most.

Have you ever taken off from a strip of grass? As I told my flight instructor when I tried it for the first time, “I know this will work, but somehow I will still be amazed if it actually does.”

I took off from a strip of grass not long ago. The airport there had one paved runway, and the rest were grass. Short runways, narrow runways, grass runways. No lights. No paint. No signs. No trucks, no jetways, nothing massive. In fact, no people. Just a mowed path and a couple of yellow or white markers.

I taxied down the grass runway, being careful to never let the plane’s wheels stop moving lest the nose gear get stuck in a pothole. I felt all the bumps in the ground as we moved.

End of runway. Turn the plane around. A little bit of flap for more lift, full throttle, mind the centerline — imaginary centerline, this time. It starts picking up speed, slower than usual, bump bump bump. Those buildings at the end of the runway are staring me down. More speed, and suddenly the runway feels smooth; it has enough lift to keep from falling into every bump. Then we lift off just a touch; I carefully keep the plane down until we pick up enough speed to ascend farther, then up we go. I keep a watchful eye on those buildings straight ahead and that water tower just slightly off to the one side. We climb over a lake as I watch that water tower pass safely below and to the side of the plane. It had worked, and I had a smile of amazement.

With a half mile of grass, you really can go anywhere.

Many times I had driven within half a mile of that runway, but never seen it. Never wondered where people go after using it. Never realizing that, although it’s a 45-minute drive from my house, it’s really pretty close. Never understanding that “where people go” after taking off from that runway is “everywhere”.

“We all live beneath the great Big Dipper.”

So goes a line in a song I once heard the great Tony Brown sing. As I near the completion of my private pilot’s training, I’ve had more and more opportunities to literally see the wisdom in those words. Here’s a story of one of them.

Night

“A shining beacon in space — all alone in the night.”

– Babylon 5

A night cross-country flight, my first, taking off from a country airport. The plane lifts into the dark sky. The bright white lights of the runway get smaller, and disappear as I pass the edge of the airport. Directly below me, it looks like a dark sky; pitch black except for little pinpoints of light at farmhouses and the occasional car. But seconds later, an expanse of light unfolds, from a city it takes nearly an hour to reach by car. Already it is in sight, and as I look off to other directions, other cities even farther away are visible, too. The ground shows a square grid, the streets of the city visible for miles.

There are no highway signs in the sky. There are no wheels to keep my plane pointed straight. Even if I point the plane due south, if there is an east wind, I will actually be flying southwest. I use my eyes, enhanced by technology like a compass, GPS, and VHF radio beacons, to find my way. Before ever getting into the airplane, I have carefully planned my route, selecting both visual and technological waypoints along the way to provide many ways to ensure I am on course and make sure I don’t get lost.

Soon I see a flash repeating every few seconds in the distance — an airport beacon. Then another, and another. Little pinpoints of light nestled in the square orange grid. Wichita has many airports, each with its beacon, and one of them will be my first visual checkpoint of the night. I make a few clicks in the cockpit, and soon the radio-controlled lights at one of the airports spring to life, illuminating my first checkpoint. More than a mile of white lights there to welcome any plane that lands, and to show a point on the path of any plane that passes.

I continue my flight, sometimes turning on lights at airports, other times pointing my plane at lights from antenna towers (that are thousands of feet below me), sometimes keeping a tiny needle on my panel centered on a radio beacon. I land at a tiny, deserted airport, and then a few minutes later at a large commercial airport.

On my way back home, I fly solely by reference to the ground — directly over a freeway. I have other tools at my disposal, but don’t need them; the steady stream of red and white lights beneath me are all I need.

From my plane, there is just red and white. One after another, passing beneath me as I fly over them at 115 MPH. There is no citizen or undocumented immigrant, no rich or poor, no atheist or Christian or Muslim, no Democrat or Replubican, no American or Mexican, no adult or child, no rich or poor, no Porsche or Kia. Just red and white points of light, each one the same as the one before and the one after, stretching as far as I can see into the distance. All alike in the night.

You only need to get a hundred feet off the ground before you realize how little state lines, national borders, and the machinery of politics and exclusion really mean. From the sky, the difference between a field of corn and a field of wheat is far more significant than the difference between Kansas and Missouri.

This should be a comforting reminder to us. We are all unique, and beautiful in our uniqueness, but we are all human, each as valuable as the next.

Up in the sky, even though my instructor was with me, during quiet times it is easy to feel all alone in the night. But I know it is not the case. Only a few thousand feet separate my plane from those cars. My plane, too, has red and white lights.

How often at night, when the heavens were bright,
With the light of the twinkling stars
Have I stood here amazed, and asked as I gazed,
If their glory exceed that of ours.

– John A. Lomax

I’ve been pretty quiet for the last few months because I’m learning to fly. I want to start with a few quotes about aviation. I have heard things like these from many people and can vouch for their accuracy:

Anyone can learn to fly.

Learning to fly is one of the hardest things you’ll ever do.

It is totally worth it. Being a pilot will give you a new outlook on life.

You’ll be amazed at what radios do a 3000ft. Have you ever had an 3000-foot antenna tower?

The world is glorious at 1000ft up.

Share your enthusiasm with those around you. You have a perspective very few ever see, except for a few seconds on the way to 35,000ft.

Earlier this month, I flew solo for the first time — the biggest milestone on the way to getting the pilot’s license. Here’s a photo my flight instructor took as I was coming in to land that day.

Today I took my first flight to another airport. It wasn’t far — about 20 miles away — but it was still a thrill. I flew about 1500ft above the ground, roughly above a freeway that happened to be my route. From that height, things still look three-dimensional. The grain elevator that marked out the one small town, the manufacturing plant at another, the college at the third. Bales of hay dotting the fields, the occasional tractor creeping along a road, churches sticking up above the trees. These are places I’ve known for decades, and now, suddenly, they are all new.

What a time to be alive! I am glad that our world is still so full of wonder and beauty.

“For once you have tasted flight,
You will walk the earth with your eyes turned skyward;
For there you have been,
And there you long to return.”

– Leonardo da Vinci

There is something of a magic to flight, to piloting. I remember the first flight I ever took, after years of dreaming of flying in a plane: my grandma had bought me a plane ticket. In one of the early morning flights, I witnessed a sunrise above cumulus clouds. Although I was just 10 or so at the time, that still is a most beautiful image seared into my memory.

I have become “meh” about commercial flight over the years. The drive to the airport, the security lines, the lack of scenery at 35,000 feet. And yet, there is much more to flight than that. When I purchased what was essentially a flying camera, I saw a whole new dimension of the earth’s amazing beauty. All the photos in this post, in fact, are ones I took. I then got a RC airplane, because flying the quadcopter was really way too easy.

“It’s wonderful to climb the liquid mountains of the sky.
Behind me and before me is God, and I have no fears.”

– Helen Keller

Start talking to pilots, and you notice a remarkable thing: this group of people that tends to be cool and logical, methodical and precise, suddenly finds themselves using language almost spiritual. Many have told me that being a pilot brings home how much all humans have in common, the unifying fact of sharing this beautiful planet together. Many volunteer with organizations such as Angel Flight. And having been up in small planes a few times, I start to glimpse this. Flying over my home at 1000′ up, or from lake to lake in Seattle with a better view than the Space Needle, seeing places familiar and new, but from a new perspective, drives home again and again the beauty of our world, the sheer goodness of it, and the wonderful color of the humanity that inhabits it.

“The air up there in the clouds is very pure and fine, bracing and delicious.

And why shouldn’t it be?

It is the same the angels breathe.”

– Mark Twain

The view from 1000 feet, or 3000, is often so much more spectacular than the view from 35,000 ft as you get on a commercial flight. The flexibility is too; there are airports all over the country that smaller planes can use which the airlines never touch.

Here is one incredible video from a guy that is slightly crazy but does ground-skimming, flying just a few feet off the ground: (try skipping to 9:36)

So what comes next is something I blame slightly on my dad and younger brother. My dad helped get me interested in photography as a child, and that interest has stuck. It’s what caused me to get into quadcopters (“a flying camera for less than the price of a nice lens!”). And my younger brother started mentioning airplanes to me last year for some reason, as if he was just trying to get me interested. Eventually, it worked. I started talking to the pilots I know (I know quite a few; there seems to be a substantial overlap between amateur radio and pilots). I started researching planes, flight, and especially safety — the most important factor.

And eventually I decided I wanted to be a pilot. I’ve been studying feverishly, carrying around textbooks and notebooks in the car, around the house, and even on a plane. There is a lot to learn.

And today, I took my first flight with a flight instructor. Today I actually flew a plane for awhile. Wow! There is nothing quite like that experience. Seeing a part of the world I am familiar with from a new perspective, and then actually controlling this amazing machine — I really fail to find the words to describe it. I have put in many hours of study already, and there will be many more studying and flying, but it is absolutely worth it.

Here is one final video about one of the most unique places you can fly to in Kansas.

And a blog with lots of photos of a flight to Beaumont called “Horse on the runway”.