The morning sky hung leadened and somber over our heads but the bracing fall breeze helped shake the remaining cobwebs of the five a.m. wakeup as we got our jets ready for engine start. We did not mind launching into the clouds. The weather guessers said they would not be that thick and that the working areas above should be in the clear.
Flying in close proximity to another aircraft might seem certifiable but it’s really not that bad. Imagine if you had a parking lot of extraordinary size where you get in your car and I get in mine. All you have to do is keep yourself positioned about a lane’s width from my back tire while I drive around. As I steer away from you, the distance between us opens and you steer toward me to return that gap to a lane’s width. If I steer toward you the distance begins to close and you steer away from me to open it back up. If I accelerate, you fall aft and recognizing it, you accelerate to return yourself to the correct position. You don’t have to worry about trees because you trust me completely not to run us into one. That’s the job of the flight lead. He hits no trees and takes the formation where it needs to go. The wingman? His job is to just “be there.”
The runway lights still twinkled along the runway edges because the dawn wrestled with the overcast to brighten the earth. Even with earplugs, even with padded helmets, the engines roar as they're coaxed from idle to maximum power. It still makes me giggle like a little kid.
The takeoff was uneventful and we soon approached the clouded canopy. Imagine being on a lift heading for the ceiling. That's the sensation.
You never know what you’ll get upon cloud entry. Sometimes you can see your flight lead just as well as you could out of the cloud; you just can no longer visually discern up and down. You trust your lead and hang on to his bumper. Sometimes the clouds are so thick you can no longer see the fuselage or body of his plane but can only make out the wing tip. That’s white-knuckling. Sometimes there's turbulence. Sometimes it's as smooth as a lake on a summer morning. These were average clouds, and my student in the front seat did a fine job hanging onto his lead’s wing.
The brightening clouds indicated we were nearing their tops. And then we broke out.
The beauty of the skyscape caught my breath. We emerged in a clouded valley with towering cliffs of billowy white on either side and a sky overhead so blue as to startle the eyes. The dark blue hues faded higher up the cottoned hillsides until at their crest the orange of the sunrise warmed the tops of the western ridge of piled cumulus.
Up we rose out of the valley into the blazing purity of the morning sun. The flight lead signaled to loosen the formation and so my student slid out to a couple hundred feet. The brightness of the sun cast a crystalline halo around the edges of lead’s jet and around the clouds that piled still higher to our east. My kingdom for a movie camera.
Cliffs and crags, mythical mountains and gentle hills, seemingly tangible but nothing more than vapor, all painted with colors no palette on the earth far below has equaled. It was a panorama I’d seen many times before, but as my final days in this violator of gravity drew near, it struck me how blessed I have been to see such things for so very many years. Vaulting out of that valley of wonder, my heart ached that no matter how carefully I crafted my words, I could not replicate what I had seen to my family.
I don’t know if my student in the front seat recognized what he’d just flown past. Perhaps he was maxed-out trying to keep his plane where his flight lead wanted him to be. Perhaps his mind was too focused on the mission he had yet to complete.
Perhaps, though, in twenty years, as he approached his final sortie, God would slow things down enough for him on some pristine morning, slow it down enough to savor the wonder of dancing through the clouds.
Flying in close proximity to another aircraft might seem certifiable but it’s really not that bad. Imagine if you had a parking lot of extraordinary size where you get in your car and I get in mine. All you have to do is keep yourself positioned about a lane’s width from my back tire while I drive around. As I steer away from you, the distance between us opens and you steer toward me to return that gap to a lane’s width. If I steer toward you the distance begins to close and you steer away from me to open it back up. If I accelerate, you fall aft and recognizing it, you accelerate to return yourself to the correct position. You don’t have to worry about trees because you trust me completely not to run us into one. That’s the job of the flight lead. He hits no trees and takes the formation where it needs to go. The wingman? His job is to just “be there.”
The runway lights still twinkled along the runway edges because the dawn wrestled with the overcast to brighten the earth. Even with earplugs, even with padded helmets, the engines roar as they're coaxed from idle to maximum power. It still makes me giggle like a little kid.The takeoff was uneventful and we soon approached the clouded canopy. Imagine being on a lift heading for the ceiling. That's the sensation.
You never know what you’ll get upon cloud entry. Sometimes you can see your flight lead just as well as you could out of the cloud; you just can no longer visually discern up and down. You trust your lead and hang on to his bumper. Sometimes the clouds are so thick you can no longer see the fuselage or body of his plane but can only make out the wing tip. That’s white-knuckling. Sometimes there's turbulence. Sometimes it's as smooth as a lake on a summer morning. These were average clouds, and my student in the front seat did a fine job hanging onto his lead’s wing.
The brightening clouds indicated we were nearing their tops. And then we broke out.
The beauty of the skyscape caught my breath. We emerged in a clouded valley with towering cliffs of billowy white on either side and a sky overhead so blue as to startle the eyes. The dark blue hues faded higher up the cottoned hillsides until at their crest the orange of the sunrise warmed the tops of the western ridge of piled cumulus.
Up we rose out of the valley into the blazing purity of the morning sun. The flight lead signaled to loosen the formation and so my student slid out to a couple hundred feet. The brightness of the sun cast a crystalline halo around the edges of lead’s jet and around the clouds that piled still higher to our east. My kingdom for a movie camera.
Cliffs and crags, mythical mountains and gentle hills, seemingly tangible but nothing more than vapor, all painted with colors no palette on the earth far below has equaled. It was a panorama I’d seen many times before, but as my final days in this violator of gravity drew near, it struck me how blessed I have been to see such things for so very many years. Vaulting out of that valley of wonder, my heart ached that no matter how carefully I crafted my words, I could not replicate what I had seen to my family.
I don’t know if my student in the front seat recognized what he’d just flown past. Perhaps he was maxed-out trying to keep his plane where his flight lead wanted him to be. Perhaps his mind was too focused on the mission he had yet to complete.
Perhaps, though, in twenty years, as he approached his final sortie, God would slow things down enough for him on some pristine morning, slow it down enough to savor the wonder of dancing through the clouds.
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