The Good, the Bad, and the (Plane) Weird

The Good


One of the most memorable flights I ever had was one fourth of July night a few years back. My friend (who was working on his IFR ticket) flew left seat while I sat up front in the right. We took off from 29J (now KUZA) and just flew around for about an hour that night, around 3000' AGL. It was a blast. We watched fireworks rocket up from the ground below us before exploding into brilliant colors in the night sky. At any given moment we had our pick of a dozen different fireworks shows as we could see for miles. None of the "missiles" ever made it higher than 1500' AGL - before the flight we wondered how high they might go. We were ready to climb if we needed to, but never had to. :)

The Bad


One summertime flight that gave me a "never again" moment was my first time flying into a short grass strip solo. That same flying buddy needed to go there to pick up his Piper Cub so I flew him over. It was a really short hop from my airport in the rented 172 and the landing must have gone fine, because I don't remember anything about it. But when it came time to take off the trouble arose. I did my best short field takeoff but as many of you know that is hard to combine with a soft field takeoff (the former has you stopped to rev up the engine, the latter has you trying to never stop for fear of getting stuck in mud). The 172 was struggling to accelerate on take off but finally got off the grass and into ground effect. I stayed there for a bit building up airspeed when I started to notice that the trees ahead getting very close. Very very close. I watched the airspeed intently and the second it was fast enough I pulled up to get my best climb angle. I ended up barely clearing the trees (by maybe 10 feet) and wiped the sweat and fear off my brow. I vowed to give myself more wiggle room with airplane performance from then on.

The (Plane) Weird


One of the weirdest aviation related events I've experienced was with my feet firmly planted to the ground. I was visiting a friend's house one night in 1997 and went outside around midnight. Looking up I saw what appeared to be a super massive airplane flying silently above. All I could see were the lights - they were solid white and in a boomerang shape that must have been miles wide. At first I thought it was a formation of some 40 aircraft - and maybe it was - but I never saw any change in the relative position of the lights and never heard a sound. I watched it smoothly fly across the sky and off past the horizon. I mocked up roughly what it looked like:

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