Two Decades of Flying

Anniversary Adjacent

Where does the time go?

I always considered my first solo flight to be the moment I became a pilot. Sure, I was not certificated yet, but even that milestone is a bit arbitrary. It is not as if learning stops when the FAA bestows a certificate on a new pilot. Rather, the FAA certificate is nothing more than a legal contrivance that commemorates the start of deeper learning from real world flying. Truly, that evening over Dowagiac, MI on September 26, 2001, when I brought Cessna Two Seven Uniform back to Earth as its sole occupant, that was when everything actually changed for me.
 

Southwest Michigan Nostalgia Tour

  

Date	Aircraft	Route of Flight	Time (hrs)	Total (hrs)
26 Aug 2021	N21481	AZO (Kalamazoo, MI) - HAI (Three Rivers, MI) - C91 (Dowagiac, MI) - BTL (Battle Creek, MI) - SDC (Sodus, NY)	4.7	2343.5

"Kalamazoo Clearance, Cherokee Two One Four Eight One, at Duncan, Kilo, VFR to Three Rivers at 3,000."

After breakfast with Kent and his family, I was ready to depart Kalamazoo for home. I felt truly privileged to have laid hands on the Air Zoo's Night Hawk the day before. The route home would be circuitous that day, beginning with the metaphorical and ending with the literal. I launched from Kalamazoo and made the short hop south to Three Rivers, returning to the crucible where my early experience as an aviator was forged.

The runway layout of the Three Rivers - Dr. Haines Municipal Airport (KHAI) is so deeply imprinted on my brain that merely seeing it again released a merry burst of endorphins. I shut down on the ramp at the fuel farm and refueled the Warrior at $4.84/gallon. When I was actively flying out of Three Rivers, the fuel was full-serve and could only be dispensed by highly qualified minimum wage-earning teenagers employed by the FBO. Those full-service days are long over, but fueling my airplane from that pump still feels like breaking the rules.

Warrior 481 at the Three Rivers Municipal Airport, 26 Aug 2021.

I pushed Warrior 481 to the edge of the ramp and entered the perpetually ramshackle terminal building where I encountered a teenager loitering just inside the door. "I love your airplane!" he gushed as soon as I stepped inside. I thanked him, blushing with surprise at the compliment.

He was there to see Doc Schauer, who still does flight physicals at the airport on Thursdays. Back in the days when student pilot and medical certificates were combined into the same document, Doc Schauer signed mine. His signature was a major step along the road to soloing.

Warrior 481 at Three Rivers Municipal Airport, 13 March 2004.

Back outside, I wandered over to Conrad Aero in search of John. Despite my many years away, John recognized me immediately and smiled broadly in welcome. He always had a youthful aspect, especially when he smiled. It had been over a decade since I last visited and, though his hair was whiter, he seemed to have changed very little.

John owned the flight school where I learned to fly and I have many fond memories of him from my early days in aviation. He personally cleaned the windshield of Two Seven Uniform on the morning of my Private Pilot check ride. When I returned to Three Rivers that afternoon after successfully passing, he rushed outside with his brand new digital camera to commemorate the moment with a photo of me and Bill. I still chuckle about the day we were standing on the ramp watching a Western Michigan University student counterproductively diving for the runway on short final while John chanted "dive...dive...dive..." like a submariner under attack. When a student wrecked Eight Two Foxtrot, I presented John with a framed photo of her that I took just before the accident; I was the last pilot to (successfully) fly her. (The student was fine, if rattled.) John scoured logbooks for the airplanes I considered buying and coached me through the prebuy process from the other side of the country while I made the decision to purchase Warrior 481 in Guthrie, OK. Once I brought her home, he took care of Warrior 481's maintenance until I moved to New York. While I was still distraught over losing my job at "UberCo" and concerned about what the future held, I (rashly) offered to sell Warrior 481 to John to replace Two Seven Uniform, his most-loved training aircraft that was irreparably lost in an accident. "No, she's too nice to be a flight school airplane. You should hold on to her," John responded. I can barely fathom how different my life would be today if he had agreed to my offer in the moment.

"Did you drive here?" John asked. In answer, I pointed across the ramp to where Warrior 481 was parked.

John grinned broadly and his blue eyes twinkled. "You still have her!" he exclaimed, clearly pleased.

Pilotage

It was a brief visit to Three Rivers, but an enjoyable one. When I launched, it was with the GNS-430W's moving map display deactivated. I turned to a heading of 330° and watched for the second of two rail lines. When I crossed the second track near Lawton, I turned southwest to follow it knowing that it would lead me directly to my next destination. It was an exercise that I had done many times in the distant past.

A flash of yellow low to the ground caught my eye. A Grumman AgCat crop duster was working the field below, streaking low over the crops, then pitching steeply upward at the edge of the field, executing a graceful wingover, then diving back toward the ground to spray the next row. I miss watching crop dusters work. Even though we have them in New York, I rarely observe them plying their trade.

Within minutes, the Dowagiac Airport appeared in my windscreen.

The Dowagiac Airport (C91) photographed 09 October 2004.

When I was a student pilot in 2001, my greatest fear was getting lost in the air. At the time, the days of cockpit navigation by GPS were still a couple of years away for me. Bill signed me off to fly to Dowagiac alone and I used to practice navigating there and back based on chart and compass (pilotage). The railroad track between Lawton and Dowagiac was my most trusted ground reference. At the time, the exercise was a tremendous confidence builder.

In 2021, even with all the navigational gizmos in Warrior 481's panel muzzled, Dowagiac was trivially easy to find. What a difference a few years makes.

I had not visited Dowagiac since 2005. It was the site of my first airplane ride in Dave's Citabria and also the location of my first solo on September 26, 2001. With the twenty year anniversary of my first solo a mere month away, I wanted to seize the opportunity to revisit the place where it all came together for me. Both events at Dowagiac, my first flight and my first solo, literally changed my life. Although the landing on runway 27 in 2021 was not as graceful as the ones I made the day I soloed in 2001, it was a pleasure to mark the passage of (almost) two decades with a landing and short roll down Dowagiac's runway before climbing skyward for home.

It is difficult to grasp that I have somehow logged two decades of aeronautical adventure. 

Where does the time go?