Chapter 8

“Are you ready for this? Because I’m not,” Adam Leblanc, another instructor at Lou Fields, said as we carried our parachutes out to the Citabria one bright Oakland morning in April 1988. He held out a hand. “Look, I’m actually trembling.”

I was nervous too, but I was trying to keep it to myself. Adam and I were going to fly one of Lou’s Citabrias to Taft Airport, where we would take turns flying at our first aerobatic contest. Over the past few months, we’d fallen into a kind of informal camaraderie after running into each other at the Oakland airport nearly every day. We were both new instructors fanatical about flying, and at the end of each day, we’d flop into folding chairs at Lou Fields’s to hang on the words of the older pilots as they regaled us with stories of narrow escapes and flying adventures, in what was known as “hangar flying.”

Adam was barely twenty years old and clean-shaven with light skin and curly brown hair. Everything was dramatic and emotional for him: he’d either flown with the best student ever or the worst that day. He told stories of near misses with relish, his eyes wide and voice breaking. He’d decided to forego college to become an airline pilot.

Neither of us had ever flown in an aerobatic contest, and we didn’t know what to expect.

An hour by Citabria from Oakland, Taft is a dusty, potholed strip at the southwestern edge of the San Joaquin Valley, surrounded by oil fields and brown foothills stretching up into mountains to the west. A sleepy town with a shrinking population, Taft was once the site of the largest mouse infestation in US history. In 1926 an estimated one hundred million mice converged here. Devouring an entire lamb in its pen in a single day, the rodents scuttled through town until a horde of birds arrived and put the ecosystem back into balance.

On this day, there were no mice around that I could see. We arrived a little before eight in the morning, and the air was cool, although the sun clambering up the sky promised a scorching day.

When we landed, we were surprised to find the airport silent and empty. Unlike an airshow, there were no signs, crowds, or loudspeakers. If I hadn’t known a contest was going on, I’d have thought it was a typical sleepy weekend at any small airport. A group of maybe thirty pilots milled around a dilapidated tie-down area, tending to their aerobatic planes. I recognized another Citabria, a Decathlon—which is a beefier version of the Citabria with more horsepower and a stronger airframe—and a couple of tiny biplanes that could fit inside a living room, most likely the famous Pitts Special, supposedly one of the best aerobatic airplanes ever built. I sighed at the tiny Pitts’s beautiful lines. I had to admit it was far more elegant than the well-worn, familiar Citabria Adam and I would compete in.

Other than us, the field was deserted. A sagging barn at one end housed the FBO, or “fixed base operator,” the fuel service on the field. Inside, a red-headed teenager lounged behind the Formica counter, facing a Naugahyde couch patched with duct tape along one side. I headed for the tiny bathroom. The toilet bowl was ringed with rust, and there was no soap.

When I came back out, the contest director, Roger Nichols, gathered everyone in front of a portable whiteboard set up on the tarmac for the official contest briefing. He explained the rules and safety procedures. Just to the east of the runway, there was an area where we would perform our maneuvers called the “aerobatic box,” a cube of air about three thousand feet on a side. Roger read out the order of flight, and we all scattered; the pilots to prepare our airplanes and get ready to fly, the judges to drive out to the “line,” where they would sit on folding chairs for a couple of hours, watching our maneuvers and scoring them on a scale of zero to ten.

Adam and I were flying in the lowest category, known as “Basic” and intended to introduce raw beginners to the joys of competition aerobatics. We would each fly three maneuvers: a single-turn spin, a loop, and an aileron roll in immediate succession. There were five categories in total. In order from least to most difficult, these were Basic, Sportsman, Intermediate, Advanced, and Unlimited. At most regional contests, all five categories flew.

I’d only practiced a sequence of spin-loop-roll a couple of times with George. Sequences are significantly more difficult than flying loops or rolls one at a time. Flying one maneuver directly after another meant that you didn’t have time to set up your entry speed or even catch your breath between aerobatic figures. That made competition flying substantially more challenging than ordinary aerobatics.

Adam and I pushed the Citabria into position, and I waited anxiously for my turn to fly. I settled my headset onto my ears and wiped sweat off my forehead with the back of my hand. I took off, climbed to four thousand feet, and circled to the south of the airport.

When I finally got the signal to enter the box, I was more nervous than usual. The first maneuver was a spin. The top of the box was officially thirty-five hundred feet, but I entered at four thousand for safety. As I reduced the throttle to slow to stall speed in preparation for entering a spin, I checked the altimeter to make sure I wasn’t losing altitude and then returned my eyes to the horizon. It was a beautiful day, the hazy blue sky arching overhead, the dry air seeping into my nose with hints of ranches and pastures, creosote and desert sage. The vibration of the airplane slowed, the engine coughed briefly, and my heart stuttered with the fear that it might quit. Fortunately, it resumed its purr.

Spins still terrified me, but I’d learned how to separate irrational fear, what kept me from taking action, from rational fear, what might save my life. My fear of spins had become relegated to the first category. Since I’d entered so many spins in the Citabria by now, I was convinced I could always recover. And the important thing about irrational fear was to not let it stop you. Stalls and spins were still scary, but I did them anyway.

I pulled the stick straight back into my stomach with all my strength, and the plane entered the spin. The roads and brown fields below me gyrated. The nose swung past vertical like it always did, and the rotation rate sped up. I sweated in my seat as the shrill, urgent voice inside my head screamed that I do something to recover from this spiral dive zooming toward the ground.

But, as I’d been trained, I waited. I held the controls in their positions against all common sense, keeping the plane in the spin when every part of me was yammering to recover, recover, recover! At last I saw the reference line flash into view at the left edge of the windshield, and with a sharp inhale, I pushed the stick forward and jammed on full right rudder simultaneously.

The Citabria recovered immediately from the spin like the sweet airplane it was. But (oops!) I’d misjudged the reference line and overshot, exiting about 30 degrees past where I should have been. George had told me if that happened I should just hold the line and sneak it out later as I pulled out of the dive, but without thinking, I instantly corrected with aileron. Wincing, I was sure the judges must have seen the “over and back” and would score me down. All I could hope for was that maybe they hadn’t seen the full 30 degrees and would take off only three or four points out of ten instead of six. Maybe.

Even though I’d told both Adam and George, and even Ben, that I expected to come in last, I couldn’t help secretly wishing I’d do better than expected. Ben, of course, thought the idea of competing in a flight contest was insane. But there was no time to think about that now.

To recover from the dive after the spin, I grabbed the stick with both hands and pulled. It was heavy, much heavier than when the plane was slow. I tensed my abdominal muscles and breathed fast through my mouth as the g-force came on like a huge hand slamming me into the seat. The edges of my field of vision turned gray—the first warning sign of impending loss of consciousness. I needed to finish the spin cleanly and get ready for the next maneuver, but more importantly, I needed to remain conscious.

I was almost back to horizontal and ready for the next maneuver, the loop, before I remembered, Oops! I need to increase the throttle. I shoved it forward and checked the airspeed indicator. I was supposed to be at 140 miles per hour, the safe entry speed for a loop. But my late power increase had left me at only 130.

It had been drilled into me not to start the loop at too low an airspeed—it could be dangerous. The Citabria could fail to make it past vertical and sustain damage to the control surfaces, maybe even come apart in the air. I really didn’t want to test out one of Lou’s old military parachutes today.

So I pushed forward on the stick to nose the airplane down a little. I dove at the ground, knowing the judges would see this as well, and would mark me down for it. One point for every 5 degrees off horizontal. I hoped I hadn’t lost enough points to earn a humiliating zero on the loop. It wasn’t looking good for avoiding last place.

My airspeed indicator reached 140 miles per hour, and I pulled the stick back. Again, the g-force, the heavy breathing, and the clenching of my abs and quads. This time my vision remained clear. I pulled up, up, up, nose pointed straight into the blue sky as I executed the first half of the loop. I shifted my gaze to the left wingtip, watching as the horizon rotated until I was nearly on my back. Then I eased off on the stick and floated, upside down, over the top of the loop.

Everything slowed down. The engine chugged away, but the airflow noise died down to a whisper. I floated in the seat, weightless, hovering at the top of a thousand-foot circle in the sky, held in place only by my seat belt. My headset slid up my ears, and connecting wires floated past my face. My spine lengthened, and all my muscles relaxed. I always loved this part of the loop—being suspended in the air for a few seconds of peace and quiet with everything moving more slowly—before the inevitable return to the bottom.

The nose was dropping faster, and the airspeed was building. Now I was pointed straight at the ground, losing altitude at a ferocious rate. I hauled back on the stick, harder, harder, harder, tightening my muscles again as the g’s came on, filling my lungs with hot, dusty air that scratched the back of my throat.

And then I was horizontal again. But there was no time to relax, because I had to start the roll. A quick glance at the airspeed indicator showed I still had 140 miles per hour. All I needed was 120, so I was safe. I pitched up and applied full left aileron with both hands on the stick to shove it to the stop with all my might. I slid sideways in the seat as the roll began. The belt had loosened, but there was no time to tighten it. As I rolled inverted, I dangled a couple of inches from the seat, and the stick slid from my grip, causing the airplane to hesitate upside down.

The engine coughed. It was a gravity-fed fuel system, and I’d just starved the motor of gas. It started to quit. I braced myself and pushed sideways with all my strength on the stick. Finally, the roll continued, the engine roared to life, the nose dropped, and the plane returned to normal upright flight.

It was over. I was level at fifteen hundred feet, right at the bottom of the box, completely drenched in sweat, with my muscles quivering, but I had just successfully flown my first aerobatic contest. We were supposed to give three wing wags at the end of the sequence, dipping one wing at least 45 degrees to indicate the finish. I managed one, maybe two slight dips of the wing, before I decided I really should tighten my seat belt.

And then I faced the most important part of the flight: the landing. George’s voice echoed in my head. “You have to forget all about the sequence; don’t analyze your maneuvers. Just focus on flying a normal pattern, looking for traffic, and making a safe landing.”

I managed to land safely and taxied back to my tie-down spot. I was cheering inside, proud of myself, and a small part of me hoped that Adam or George would be waiting for me, grinning and giving me a thumbs-up.

But as I shut the airplane down, everybody was busy watching the next pilot fly, his 180-horsepower Pitts screaming through the air as its propeller spooled up. It drew an absolutely flawless loop in the sky, and then rolled so fast that I almost missed the wings’ rotation. I sighed with longing.

Adam was waiting to climb into the airplane for his flight. “Great job,” he told me, but I could see he was already nervous about his own turn in the box.

After the flights were over, I joined the group of pilots waiting at the whiteboard for their scores to be posted. I’d always been competitive, building a sense of self-worth on how well I did in contests, on standardized tests, or for scholarships. But this was different. I believed I had no talent for flying; I’d gotten to where I was through dint of hard work. It took me much longer to get my pilot’s license than the national average. For someone who always scored in a high percentile on national tests, it was humbling to play in an arena where I performed below average. At the same time, it was somehow freeing. Knowing I wouldn’t do well was kind of a relief. I no longer had to live up to my own insanely high expectations. I didn’t have to kick myself if I didn’t get a perfect score.

Still, old habits die hard. As I waited for the numbers to be posted, I couldn’t help but daydream about scoring well. Of course there was that overrotation on the spin, the dive before the loop, and then the nose up before the roll. But maybe it wasn’t as bad as it felt. Maybe the judges blinked or got some dust in their eyes at exactly the right moment.

When the scoring director’s assistant finally emerged from the tiny office where they’d set up the computer, he taped the dot-matrix printout to the whiteboard. Everybody gathered around, but of course, I was too short to see over everyone’s shoulders. Someone called out the names of the top three pilots, and there were cheers and laughter. Many of the people here knew each other well. The top pilots were all flying Pitts, and to my surprise, many of them had been flying for years. I thought the Basic category was just for beginners.

Finally, Adam and I got a chance to squint at the sheet of paper flapping in the breeze. I examined the scores. Out of eight pilots, Adam came in fifth and I came in sixth.

“At least we’re not last!” Adam was exultant.

And at least I didn’t get a zero on any of my maneuvers. The judges did detect every degree of overrotation on my spin, so I only got a four out of ten. So much for dust in their eyes. The other scores were respectable sevens and eights. My total score just missed 70 percent. Not bad for a first-timer, I told myself.

Adam and I grinned at each other and high-fived. Our first aerobatic contest was a success.

* * *

The contest got me thinking. I could have done better on the spin, but a competition roll was supposed to be flown without raising the nose beforehand, something that simply couldn’t be done in the low-horsepower Citabria without an inverted fuel system. (This was the system that kept the engine running when the plane flipped upside down.) I could certainly improve my flying, but if I wanted to score well at contests, I’d need to find something other than the Citabria.

George told me the plane I needed to fly next was called a Super Decathlon, and that there was one available to rent down in San Jose. So, in May 1988, I scheduled a flight with the owner of Super Decathlon Three Eight Seven Juliett Lima. The outfit that rented it was a small flying club called Condor Flight, located in an obscure back corner of the San Jose Airport. I drove all the way down to San Jose and looped around the commercial flight operations to a small, slightly run-down corner of the field that reminded me of the Old T’s, although perhaps even more decrepit.

Martin Johnson, a shaggy man about forty years old in a worn leather jacket, met me in front of a hangar piled high with pieces of broken wing spars, torn-apart engines, and two motorcycles with their cowlings off. He’d been washing the Decathlon, scrubbing grease off one side of its cowling.

He greeted me cheerfully. “I just changed her oil, so she should be ready to go. She hasn’t flown in a while, so it’s great to meet a pilot who wants to do aerobatics.”

I checked the plane over dubiously. It was, without a doubt, the shabbiest-­looking airplane I’d ever seen. Paint flaked off the fabric fuselage and wings, the doors rattled in their sockets, and grease leaked from every pipe and seam. I tested the controls carefully and peered in at the engine. Everything I could see looked okay. “How’s the maintenance?” I asked.

“Oh, it’s great! I know a mechanic on the field who’s a real genius. He’s not one of those high-priced corporate types, if you get what I mean, so his hangar is a little dirty, but what he’s forgotten about maintenance isn’t worth knowing. Kinda like Juliett Lima here.” Martin patted the side of the airplane affectionately. “She may not be the spiffiest airplane on the field, but she’s completely safe.” He showed me the engine and airframe logbooks, and everything was, apparently, signed off properly.

We were getting ready to strap into the airplane when I asked him about his parachutes.

“Nope, don’t own any ’chutes.”

“Um, isn’t it a legal requirement to do aerobatics?”

“No one flies aerobatics in this plane,” he informed me.

Wouldn’t that make me something of a test pilot?

“I’m just going to check you out on takeoffs and landings, since I’m not even an instructor. We’re not going to fly aerobatics today.”

I was a little distressed since I had driven all the way specifically for an aerobatic checkout and had told him over the phone that I wanted to fly aerobatics.

“Of course you can fly aerobatics in it on your own, if you have parachutes. I’m sure if you can fly aerobatics in a Citabria, you can fly them in a Decathlon.” He grinned. “It’s actually a lot easier in Juliett Lima because this old gal has more horsepower than your Citabria, a stronger airframe, an inverted fuel system, and a symmetrical airfoil.”

I drove back from San Jose after the quickest checkout I’ve ever received. Was I making a mistake, flying this airplane? Unfortunately, it was the only Decathlon available for rent anywhere in the Bay Area. I’d looked up the prices to buy a Decathlon in Trade-a-Plane, and they were all well beyond my reach at $28,000 to $50,000. This plane seemed safe enough, even if in poor cosmetic shape. And I wanted to learn to fly more aerobatic maneuvers. I needed to learn the slow roll, and to master inverted flight. I wanted to fly hammerheads and Cuban eights—all maneuvers that were possible in the Citabria but could not be flown to competition standards without pushing Lou’s little airplane too far.

It was Juliett Lima or nothing.

So I’d found myself a Decathlon, the plane that had been touted to me as one of the best aerobatic trainers ever made. But where was I going to find a good aerobatic instructor? George didn’t want to teach in anything other than one of Lou’s Citabrias.

Although it was true that the early barnstormers taught themselves aerobatic maneuvers, they didn’t have a reassuring safety record. I called around, but there were no aerobatic instructors available anywhere in the Bay Area. It was suggested that I fly to Southern California or Arizona, where there were established schools, but I couldn’t afford that much time off work, especially added onto the costs of the training. I was told that what people at my stage usually did was buy their own airplane, but that was financially out of reach for me.

It looked like I’d hit a dead end … or had I?