Just Ship It Fedex!

Howdy. So here I am, safe and sound in Fort Worth. I just got back from my first experience with Sushi. That’s right. The other pilots and I had dinner at “Cowtown Sushi.” I’m not kidding. That was the name of the place. I’ve got pictures. I’m not even sick. Yet.

I’m sittin’ in the laundry room of the Studio Plus extended stay place (contact my agent if you would like to see your business’s name in my blog…) Over the course of my four day, 16.9 hour, ferry flight from Rochester, NY, it occurred to me that when your primary mode of transport is an airplane, the whole world feels like an immense ocean. This perception is particularly noticeable when you’re flying through and on top of clouds. Since you can’t see the land between towns, everyplace you land becomes an island, isolated and discrete.

So there I was, in the soup. I’d just set sail off the Island of Harrison, Arkansas, cleared to join the Victor Airway headed south toward Fort Smith when I noticed my course needle acting funny. It shouldn’t have taken me long to join the airway since the VOR beacon was pretty close to the airport, but after about five minutes, it was still pegged off to one side. That is to say that I was not remotely on course. Upon closer inspection, I made the rather vexing discovery that my gyroscopic compass showed a southwest heading, and my magnetic compass showed me heading northeast. Hmm. Not having the slightest clue as to which indication might be correct, I called air traffic control and asked which direction they saw me going.

“Well, I show you headed north!” the controller replied. “I thought you were going to Fort Smith…” He sounded confused, but if he had challenged me to a "who's more confused" duel at that point, I would have smoked his ass.

“Yeah, that was the plan,” I told him. Then, resisting the temptation to use the phrase “Tango Uniform,” I mentioned to him that my gyro compass was “not functioning.” He gave me a heading to rejoin the airway, and suggested Memphis as the closest VFR weather. By that time, I’d figured out what was the matter. I had plenty of suction and the attitude indicator was working, so I knew it was just the heading indicator. When I tried to reset it, I noticed that the setting pin was already pushed in. The spring that normally pushes it back out and re-engages the display linkage had lost its oomph. I reset the compass, pulled out the pin, and it guided me perfectly to the shores of Fort Worth. I tried not to think about the disastrous consequences the aviation Gods might have dealt me if I’d let that happen in a mountainous region or someplace with other sorts of large airplane catchers. Lesson Learned.

It wasn’t too terribly long after I was back on track that day when I felt the first pangs of another type of emergency. The orange juice from the Super 8’s continental breakfast wanted out. I can hold it, I told myself. Its only another four hours. I searched the cockpit for any sort of bottle, cup, or zip lock bag. Nothing. This was karma paying me back for not being more understanding of the old guy on the ferry trip to Michigan who whipped it out in the seat next to me. I would have given anything for one of those red bottles you see in the Sporty’s catalogs (which is what that guy had). The weather over Oklahoma was horrid; 200-300 foot ceilings over a good portion of my route. I didn’t think it would be exceedingly safe to shoot an ILS to minimums when the overriding thought on my mind was getting to a bathroom.

Finally, I eyed the Fedex box used to store hard drives for the imaging system. “Surely the bottom of that box is well sealed,” I thought to myself. That could work… Especially if I put a couple of rags in the bottom…

I felt something close to inner peace as the cardboard porto-potty floated like a castaway out of sight behind me.