I soared with two hawks, last week

Etheric Warriors Archive Misc. section
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I had just taken off and at about a thousand feet I flew right over a red-tailed hawk. I circled tightly to keep him in sight and then saw that he was with another hawk, soaring in a thermal.

I entered the thermal a hundred feet or so over them and we were a little flock for a few minutes, climbing

I can’t express the exhilaration I felt. Hawks are pretty powerful and they were obviously not uncomfortable with my presence.

Yesterday, while coming back to the airfield a little barnswallow flew up to check me out. I was 1200’ up and he came quite close.

When I landed, though, I came down kind of hard and the bungee cords on my main landing gear all broke–embarassing!

Carol had clearly seen that in a dream, a couple of weeks before, and warned me to be especially careful in coming weeks. I thought I was being careful, of course, and my landings are improving a lot. They improved so much that I started experimenting more with the use of flaps and ‘slips,’ which is turning the plane sideways to drop faster in a controlled manner. I feel a need to get proficient at very short landings in case I run into trouble gifting in the mountains.

There was some turbulance and the wind was across the runway. There are a lot of tall trees all around our airfield. I was in a slip with full flaps, flying just above stall speed (25mph with flaps) and at 50’ or so altitude I nosed down, as usual, to gain more speed and control but the wind over the trees to my right had caused a downdraft, so I came down pretty hard.

I dragged it off the runway, walked home, got my lawn tractor, a bucket and some rope, drove back to the other end of the runway, tied the landing gear back up into position, taxied the plane home, walked back and got the tractor.

Fortunately, nobody saw my slapstick landing

When I told my gal, later, she reminded me that it takes hundreds of hours of flying to reach the point where one ‘wears the plane,’ and that just because I had three crash landings doesn’t mean that I’m not a natural pilot–just impatient.
The second crash landing was entirely due to sabotage (some federal sewer rat had backed off the nut holding the nose wheel axle up, but I should have caught that in my preflight inspection–I sure check it, now).

After nearly 90 hours of flying and around a thousand landings I’m just now reaching the stage where I’m comfortable flying a plane. Yesterday’s mishap didn’t bother me much. CArol figures this slow progress is par for the course. Her acupuncturist is a stunt pilot but she took 80 hours of lessons before she soloed, many years ago. I had 23 hours of lessons before I soloed.

I’m in awe of people like Capt. Azti and Tino who are very skilled, accomplished pilots. They had a whole lot of training and have many years of flying experience, though.

I"m pretty sure I wouldn’t have taken this up if not for the nagging problem of mountain top death ray arrays, which the feds made essentially inaccessible after they blew up the World Trade Center. I’m awfully glad I did, though. It seems like I live, eat and sleep for flying, now–I had no idea it would be so consuming. I’m also so determined to never be without a gifting aircraft that I’m buying another one and building two more, with plans to build a gyroplane, which lands on a dime and takes off in your backyard (can’t glide worth a cr@p, though )

I would have considered this immoderate, before I turned into a sky junkie. At least ultralight airplanes are more affordable than the heavy ones. I’m feeling pretty enriched from building them, too, and the feds aren’t involved with ultralights as long as one doesn’t draw their attention. The antilawful, FDR-spawned, Marxist Federal Aviation Administration’s unofficial motto: We’re not happy unless you’re not happy.

~Don

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Soaring with the hawks sounds great. I’m not sure though if I would want to fly with you any time soon.
Better with Tino…
Georg

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Sure, G, it’s a bad idea for anyone to fly with me these days but I’ve caused the corporate world order a whole lot of grief from the air (and evidently have given the Sylphs a whole lot of pleasure and satisfaction) and it will only get worse for the terrorists who pretend to govern us, grid willing.

~Don

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I often cajole my cohorts on EW to provide more personal stories so our readers can relate to them better. I think they assume that telling personal stuff is vain or something

I like to post progress reports of my flying because if anyone has a notion to be in the Etheric Air Corps and has never flown, he/she should understand that flying is as serious as a heart attack and that one will probably move through a transition period of sheer terror beginning with the first solo flight. A lot of people, including my mom, who soloed in 1961, don’t fly ahgain after that. Those of us who persevere do so with the hope that the exhilaration will eventually exceed the fright. I think it usually does.

What we can accomplish from the air is so remarkably more expeditious than trudging up mountains and motoring along waterways that I hope more gifters will take up flying. Even in areas where surface roads are tortuous on account of terrain one can visit scores of death towers in the time it would take a car to get around to three of them. I certainly DON’T advise tossing anytthing from an airplane, of course, because if I explicitly recommended that you toss orgonite devices around death towers and mountyaintop death arrays and/or along waterways, the felonious feds, who pretend to have dominion over the air (or is that Lucifer? ) in this former republic, could roast me on a spit

Tino, my friend in Botswana, gave me some helpful advice after he read about my last mishap. He’s a military-trained pilot who had flown C-130 Hercules transports–my dream plane for desert gifting

He advised me that using slips in a crosswind to lose altitude, fast, is not a good idea on account of the liklihood of downdrafts. He suggests that using full flaps and coming in, crabwise, under a little power will guarantee that one will avoid slamming onto the runway the way I did. The crabbing is done so that the plane is always pointed into the cross wind. In the instant before touchdown one simply kicks the rudder to line the plane up in the direction of the runway. Our runway is lined up with the prevailing wind from two directions, so those crosswind days are kind of unusual…

I’m looking forward to another crosswind day, though, so I can practice those landings some more. I’ll be flying at a friend’s field, southwest of Spokane (about 60 miles from here) that’s on a hilltop, where crosswinds are probably the rule. He promised to connect me up with some other ultrlaight pilots. I really need that, unless Tino decides to come stay for awhile and fly with me

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" the felonious feds, who pretend to have dominion over the air (or is that Lucifer? "

Lucifer is, indeed, Lord of the Air. Baal, too, was ‘lord of the Air’ – his ancient Canaanite symbol can be seen on the back of the Jeep ‘Compass’, among many other places. I’m guessing that’s where ‘Bel Air’ comes from, I’ve found it difficult to research the etymology, go figure. The ‘Air’ references are almost exhausting once you start looking for them, Nike ‘Air’, ‘Aeropostale’, it goes on and on.