Aerial Strivings

Whole Earth, Fall, 1999

This plane had a special calling. I spent a month working out the design of a camera pod that would ride beside me, replacing the passenger seat. It would be the only enclosed space on the plane that I could reach in flight, and I wanted it to be as handy as possible, so I put a gas-cylinder lift on the upper door to keep it open in flight. I wanted an electrical system for anti-collision lights, a radio, and my gyrostabilizer, so I laid out a wiring harness and built a small compartment for all the black boxes. The plans called for a small nose cone that would house a few flight instruments, but since I planned to go without and fly in the raw, I needed to put the gauges somewhere else. The Twinstar had no real backrest--just a downtube to lean against. So I designed a backrest with an instrument panel by my shoulder, figuring I could make quick side-glances to scan the readings in flight. And I built some extra-strong places in the wing tips where I could hang cameras and trigger them with cables running through the wings, to take pictures of my plane in flight.

All this came together one day in early June, when the FAA put my plane under its harsh spotlight and checked for flaws. By afternoon, I had a newborn licensed flying machine. It took me a dozen hours in the air to get a feel for it. Compared to all my thousands of hours in bigger birds, this seemed like riding around on an oversized dragonfly. It trembled with every whisper of turbulence, and moved around the sky like a dream in slow motion. I began to see things on the ground I had never noticed before, like empty grocery bags and napping dogs.

Now I faced the real test of all my scheming: Could I handle the plane and my camera at the same time? Of course I would never have spent those fifteen months and as many thousands of dollars to make this plane if I didn't believe I could, but I didn't actually know until I tried out my idea. I would hand-fly the plane during takeoff and climb-out, put a strap around my right thigh, just above my knee, and clip the strap to the control stick, which happened to rise beside my leg. I wasn't used to such fine motor control of that part of my body, and if anyone on the ground was watching me, I must've looked frightfully drunk. It was like learning to write with my opposite hand, but I slowly got the hang of it. To be sure, the plane's innate good manners abetted my cause. It was docile of mien and tended to go wherever I pointed it. The throttle stayed where I set it, helping to hold altitude. And a small adjustable trim tab on the tail let me set the neutral point of the control stick. Eventually I began to photograph; I learned what it is to do this work.

When I go out I feel like I am creeping up the side of a steep pyramid. Every level underneath me must be sure and in place before I can climb to the top. To "stand" with confidence is to constantly keep tabs on each block underneath. The base levels are the airframe's integrity, the engine's health, the mood of the weather, the character of the terrain, and the kaleidoscope of ever-changing emergency options that unites all these elements. The upper levels are my camera's condition, the vigor of my gyrostabilizer, the kind of film I've loaded, the position of the sun, the clarity of the air, the scale of the landforms, how slowly I can fly, and how nimbly the plane responds to my moves. The peak of the pyramid is where the magic envelops me, and my time there is brief.