chapter 52
Harvey
Takes a Flight Check
Harvey needed to have a flight check. He
hadn't had one since WW II.
And
now one of the FAA inspectors was getting on him to get his bi-annual
flight check, as the new regulations required.
"Look," Harvey said to me over
the telephone. "This FAA SOB is getting
all
over me about not having one of these here new pain-in-the-ass flight
checks."
"Yeah, well, you ought to get
one," I said.
"Well, can you give me one", he
wanted to know?
"Yeah," I said, "I can do
that. When do you want to get together?"
"Get together hell," said Harvey!
"I'm gonna mail you my log-book this
afternoon. When you get the damn thing, just write
down
something-or-other in it that will make the FAA happy. Then
mail it back."
"Harvey, you know I can't do
that," I said. "You and me got to get
together
somewhere, talk a
little bit about all these new regulations, and go fly around
a
little bit. Then I'll sign you off. It won't be any big deal."
"Fly around a little bit," Harvey
howled! "You want me to go 'fly around
a
little bit'? With you? Are you nuts? I'm sick and
tired of 'flying around a
little bit'. That's all I've been doing since I
was eighteen years old, and I'm
sick
of it. And even if I did want to go 'fly around a little bit', I sure as hell
wouldn't want to go flying around with you."
"Well," I said, getting mad,
"If you want to get a flight check from me,
you're gonna have to go
'fly around a little bit' with me."
"Well," said Harvey, "I ain't gonna go 'flying around a
little bit' with you
or
any other of you smart-aleck flight instructors. I was flying airplanes
before you was potty trained, and I don't need
you to explain to me what
it's
all about. I'm gonna mail you my log-book this afternoon
and you can
just
write down some of those fancy words that you smart-alecks use to
keep
the feds quiet." Then he hung up the telephone.
A couple of days
later Harvey's logbook showed up in the mail.
Harvey's logbook was an odd document. It
was a standard pilot's
logbook that had entries in it going back about
twenty-five years. But very
few
entries were records of particular flights. Mostly, it was a record of
aircraft bought and sold. Also, it recorded engine
changes or other
modifications to particular airplanes. Most of the
aircraft mentioned were
crop-dusters.
Some entries were particularly mysterious.
'Seven-Seven-Tango', for
instance, was an old Navy N3N that came to an
unknown fate. She had
been
fitted with a 220 HP Continental engine, and "flew good" for the
first
two
hundred hours. Then some unexplained event occurred, and
"Seven-Seven-Tango
got tore up and I busted my arm."
Another airplane, identified only as the
"black and yellow T-6", was
"sold to a man in Mexico." A J-5 Cub was "traded
for a pick-up truck".
For the first ten or twelve years of the
record, yearly entries simply
stated: "I flew about 800 hours this
year." Each succeeding year would
hold
a similar entry. The only entry dated in 1953 stated, "I must have
flown
over 1200 hours this year" As the years went by, even those scant
entries ceased to appear. When I received the
logbook, the most recent
entry
was almost five years old. That year Harvey had flown "only about
200
hours."
Knowing Harvey as I did, and knowing the
business as I had come to
know
it, I realized that that slim little log-book was the cryptic record of a
lifetime of flight, and the untold experiences of
an old time Texas
crop-duster pilot.
Harvey, like Bob, was one of several old
pilots in South Texas who
automatically gave me a phone call any time they got
crossways with the
FAA.
It never seemed to occur to any of these old-timers that it wasn't my
responsibility to see to it that they stayed legal with
the feds. But just
about
everybody in the crop-dusting business in that part of the country
seemed to think I was some sort of liaison
officer between ag. pilots
and
the
civilized world. So when Harvey needed a flight check it was
automatically assumed that I would see to it that he got
one.
Within a week I was on my way to Hondo. I
had borrowed a Piper
Cherokee
from a friend and was determined to give Harvey a legal flight
check.
Harvey was happy to see me. Right away he
wanted to see his signed
logbook.
"Dammit,
Harvey," I said. "I told you I wasn't going to sign that log
book
until we made a flight."
"For cripes sake," said Harvey.
"You mean you're still yammering on
about
flying around in some airplane."
"Yeah, I'm still yammering on about
flying around in some airplane," I
said.
"It's called a 'flight check'."
I got out an aviation sectional chart and
started asking Harvey
questions about various symbols, radio frequencies,
and control zones. He
knew
a little bit, but not much. Then I started asking him about some of
the
flying rules and regulations that had been introduced over the last
decade. He had never heard of any of them, and
didn't particularly want to
hear
about them then.
"Look," argued Harvey. "I
don't need to know any of that stuff. I hadn't
used
a radio in 20 years. I haven't flown into a big-city airport in longer
than
that. I haven't flown much over a hundred feet off the ground since
Trueman was president. And I don't ever intend to
do any of those things
again
in this lifetime. All I want to do is fly a few more loads on cotton in
the
summer, and onions in the winter. Hell, a few more years and I'll be
too
feeble to fly anyway. Why don't those fed SOBs just
leave me alone
and
let me wind up my flying the way I want to. I'm tired of it all anyway.
I'd
quit today if I could afford it."
It was hard for me to disagree with Harvey,
so I didn't. "Tell you what,"
I
said. "Let's just go fly around a little bit."
"Oh, so now we're back to 'flying around
a little bit'. I guess you expect
me
to fly around in that tin-can airplane you showed up here in." Harvey
was
referring to the shiny new all-metal Cherokee that I had borrowed.
"Ah, come on Harvey," I said.
"You know I can't sign-off your flight
check
if we don't actually get in an airplane. All I'm gonna
want you to do
is
make a few turns. Just get off the ground and take a turn or two around
the
air patch. It won't take ten minutes."
"No, I'm not gonna
fly that airplane. I don't know how to fly an airplane
like
that. I'll wreck that damn thing just trying to get it off the ground,"
Harvey
insisted.
"Ah, Harvey," I wheeled,
"you'll like this little airplane. She's nice and
quiet.
Flies easy as pie."
I finally coaxed Harvey into the left seat
of that Cherokee. Right away,
he
didn't like it. All his life Harvey had flown airplanes that were controlled
by
a stick. He had no use for airplanes with 'steering wheels.' He also
complained bitterly that this airplane had the 'tail
wheel' on the wrong
end
I fired up the engine and we taxied out to
the runway. Harvey was as
nervous as a cat. He refused to even touch the
controls on take-off. We
leveled-off at about fifteen hundred feet and I tried
to persuade him to at
least
put his hands on the control wheel. He wouldn't hear of it. He just
sat
there all sulled-up with his arms folded. It occurred
to me that this was
probably the first time in decades that Harvey had
been airborne with
another man on board.
"Come on, Harvey," I coaxed.
"Just make a couple of turns here and
there.
Then we'll go back and land."
"I'm ready to go back and land right
now," he said.
"Damnit, you
know you can't take a flight check without even touching
the
controls," I argued. "Now, just put your hands on the control wheel
and
make a couple of gentle turns."
Harvey slowly placed his hands on the
control wheel. The moment I let
go
of the wheel on my side, he let go of the wheel on his side. "Damnit,
Harvey,"
I said, "if you don't make a couple of turns here and there, I'm
not
gonna sign-off your log book."
"Well, I don't know how to fly one of
these kinds of airplanes," Harvey
complained. "I don't like these funny little
things anyway. I don't think
they're safe."
"Well, just quit complaining and put
your hands back on the controls," I
said.
"I don't like flying around with you any better than you like flying
around with me. Just put your hands back on the
yoke and make a couple
of
gentle turns. Just quit complaining and do it, so that we can get this
stupid flight check over with and get back on the
ground."
Harvey put his hands back on the wheel.
After flying straight and level
for
a couple of minutes I said, "Okay, now make a turn one way or the
other."
Slowly Harvey went into a gentle turn to
the left. After about 30
degrees of heading change he released the wheel
and folded his arms
again.
"Let's go back now," he said.
"Okay, okay," I said. "We'll
head on back now. You wanna try to shoot
the
landing?"
"Lord, no," said Harvey! You'd
have thought I had asked him to land the
space
shuttle.
Back in Harvey's office I could tell that
he was still nervous. He found a
couple of coffee cups and poured about a
half-inch of whiskey into each. I
got
out his logbook and signed him off for his bi-annual flight check.
"Thanks," said Harvey.
The last thing he said to me before I
headed home was, "Damnit, you
need
to do a better job of keeping up with all this pain-in-the-ass flight
check
business. And don't forget you're gonna have to sign
me off again in
two
years."
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