THE BEST OF JODY’S BOX: IT’S BEST IF YOUR HOBBY HAS THE SAME THRILLS AS YOUR JOB

By Jody Weisel

I glanced to my left to make sure the wings were level, and at the same time grabbed a furtive peek at the altimeter to double-check that I was at 5500 feet. Content that all was well with the world, I let go of the stick with my right hand, gripped it with both knees and gave both shoulder straps an extra tug. They were already tight, but I had come to learn that there was no such thing as too tight.

I LET GO OF THE STICK WITH MY RIGHT HAND, GRIPPED IT WITH BOTH KNEES AND GAVE BOTH SHOULDER STRAPS AN EXTRA TUG. THEY WERE ALREADY TIGHT, BUT I HAD COME TO LEARN THAT THERE WAS NO SUCH THING AS TOO TIGHT.

Assured by the belts biting into my collarbones, I pulled the stick back and allowed the 180-horsepower Lycoming to drawn the lightweight plane upward. As the plane climbed vertically, I took one last glance out the window at Mother Earth. In a second or two the only view out of the windows would be of sky, more sky and the sky beyond. The engine strained and I took the time to scrutinize my airspeed. I was reassured by the steady decrease in airspeed, and did two things that would insure no escape from a precipitous plummet — I pulled the throttle back to half and abruptly tugged the stick as far between my legs as it would go. The planes reaction to my crux moves was fast enough that any thought of aborting was moot. The plane shuddered like it was hitting a bad stretch of railroad tracks. With or without full power, there would never be enough horsepower to keep theaerobatic plane crawling vertically upward.

Flying, like motocross, is a controlled thrill ride. You make all the decisions. You chose the limits. You can make it tame or insane. The beauty of flight is like enhancing the air time of the biggest double you ever jumped tenfold. That is probably what drew motocross greats like Bob Hannah, Preston Petty and Feets Minert to aviation — and brought me along for the ride. It didn’t hurt that my father was a career U.S. Air Force pilot, my brother has his pilot’s license and I had been a motorcycle test rider since 1972 and wanted a hobby that I could do when I was young and when I was old (after my motorcycle racing career came to an end), so flying aerobatic airplanes seemed perfect.

I squirmed in my seat as the plane struggled to keep gaining altitude, I wished I had pulled the belts tighter and gave the right rudder a little more pressure to keep the P-factor from rotating the plane to the left. As though on cue, the stall buzzer went off. I ignored it. In truth, I enjoyed it. I had put myself in this position. I voluntarily forced the plane to climb straight up, while purposely cutting back the power to insure that the plane would lose all aerodynamic efficiency.  Once the factors of drag, lift, gravity and power were all equal the plane snapped violently from tail down to tail up. Gravity had won the war. I felt like I was in an elevator with a broken cable. I regripped the stick and pulled it harder towards my stomach. I then shoved the left rudder pedal to the firewall to initiate a dizzying series of nose down spins.

AT THE THE SIXTH SPIN, I COUNTER INTUITIVELY PUSHED THE STICK FORWARD, EVEN THOUGH EVERY CORPUSCLE OF BRAIN MATTER CRIED OUT THAT IT WOULD BE SUICIDE TO PUSH THE PLANE INTO A DIVE IN THE MIDDLE OF A DIVE.

As the earth spun like a patchwork quilt, I counted each rotation out loud. There was no need to actually count, but hearing the numbers in my headset brought numerical logical to the swirling sensation of a brain in over-rev. Somewhere between three and six I checked the gauges to make sure that I wouldn’t blast past the “never-exceed speed” and, paradoxically, that I would get close enough to the “never-exceed” to launch the plane into a vertical recovery. At the the sixth spin, I counter intuitively pushed the stick forward, even though every corpuscle of brain matter cried out that it would be suicide to push the plane into a dive in the middle of a dive. Amazingly, diving cleaned up the plane’s surfaces and allowed me to stop the crazy spinning by stomping on the right rudder pedal.

The world had stopped gyrating, but it was still rushing towards me at 140 mph. With my left hand I jammed the throttle wide open to the stops to bring the Lycoming back on the pipe and simultaneously pulled back on the stick to make the nose down plane get back to nose up.

THE PLANE FLATTENED OUT AND IN LESS THAN A SECOND HAD REVERSED DIRECTION FROM DIVE TO A CLIMB. THE G-METER READ MORE THAT 5 G’S AS THE PLANE BOTTOMED OUT AGAINST GRAVITY — WHICH MEANT THAT I WEIGHED FIVE TIMES MY NORMAL BODY WEIGHT.

The plane flattened out and in less than a second had reversed direction from dive to a climb. The G-meter read more than 5 G’s as the plane bottomed out against gravity — which meant that I weighed five times my normal body weight (the equivalent of 242 Thanksgiving dinners). The blood drained from my head, it felt as though someone had put a vice on my forehead and I had to lock my wrist to resist the urge to push the stick forward and nose the plane over into level flight.

My 140 mph exit speed now rocketed me skyward towards my original 5500 foot starting point. At the top of the arc, I toyed with a loop or at least a Split-S, but knew I would fall out of the move midway into the arc (and my lunch would soon follow). Instead, as the plane hung from its propeller, I pushed the stick steadily forward, floated my stomach to three negative G’s and cranked a hard 180-degree peel off.

Content that I had done a workmanlike job, I leveled the plane and looked groundward to see who might have seen my bravado. There was no one in sight and, even if there had been, they would have been a tiny speck. All that was below me was empty expanse of SoCal desert, over which I was a tiny dot in the sky one-mile high. The next day, as I sat in the pits at Glen Helen Raceway, Jimmy Mac asked me if I had jumped the double on the back straight. “No, and I’m not going to,” I said.

“What? Are you scared? Aren’t you the crazy aerobatic pilot? What’s the difference between risking your life in an airplane and jumping that double?” asked the Mac derisively.

“5485 feet,” I replied.

 

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