I keyed the mic with my left thumb and transmitted, “Santa Rosa, Route Sixty-Six traffic, Erco three-niner-seven-six-hotel, taking the active, runway one-nine. Remaining in the pattern for touch-and-goes until the rust is off and the grease is on. Santa Rosa traffic.” That's Santa Rosa, New Mexico, mind you.
What I like about being based at a small airport is that you can make a radio call like that. But I did have a good reason for making that non-standard radio call. Here’s the story.
I normally fly twice per week. I always say that this schedule is sacred, and that I live my chaotic, many-faceted professional life to make flying the top priority—both for the physical health of the family airplane and my mental health. However, chaos had arrived from all points of my compass rose, disrupting my flying schedule.
The chaos started at AirVenture, or more correctly, because of AirVenture, which put me behind the eight ball on my writing assignments and columns. Then, I was tapped to assist with planning and executing the new student onboarding at the college where I am part-time faculty.
On top of that, I foolishly volunteered to write an FAA grant, thinking, well, how hard could that be? Plus, my proposal for the National Association of Flight Instructors Summit (now the Ascend Flight Training Summit) was accepted, so I needed to create a slide deck. Then our tribal elder had a health misadventure. Well, two.
It had been 23 days since I slid into the cockpit and buckled in. I did have one free morning to fly in the middle of all of that, and the weather was spectacular. However, after the seventh snooze alarm, I had to admit to myself that I was too exhausted to fly safely.
Now, despite what I said about the flying always coming first, these periods of chaos are a recurring theme in my life. I always say, “Never again; I live this life so I can make my personal flying the priority,” but… well… yeah. Life happens.
The good news is—and I’m probably deluding myself here—I still fly well after a break. I quickly bond with the winged family antique, her aluminum, cables, and pushrods becoming an extension of my body.
My landings, however, well… those aren’t so good after a flying break. And I think I know why.
I know aviators and aviatrixes who love nothing better than landing an airplane. They spend untold days doing nothing but landings. They thrive on the challenge of greasing a perfect landing, right on the intended spot, despite the myriad variables that the aeronautical gods throw in the way to prevent that from happening. I'm not one of those pilots.
I know other aviators and aviatrixes who always do a couple of extra landings at the end of each flight just to stay sharp. I’m not one of those, either.
While I love to fly, I don’t really care for landings all that much. That is not to say that I am terrible at them; they just don’t bring me joy.
So, I’ve found that when these periodic, never-happening-again flying breaks happen, my landings suffer the most. It makes sense, I guess, as I only do the required minimum—one per takeoff with only one takeoff per flight. While I actually enjoy takeoffs, I keep those to a minimum, too, for the sole purpose of minimizing the landings.
In my twice-a-week flying paradise, I’d only be landing 104 times per year. My hangar neighbor probably does that many on a weekend. She’s one of those landing-lovers I mentioned.
Anyway, given all that logbook and life history, after this latest flying break, I was comfortable in the knowledge that the airplane and I would quickly bond, and my flying would be smooth and artful after a few miles of steep S-turns across Highway 84 south of the airport. However, at the same time, I was realistic in the knowledge that my landings would not have the same level of grace.
I’m not saying they’d be spar-shuddering thumpers, gear-stressing rabbit hops down the runway, or long floats better suited to people with lighter-than-air certificates. But they would be a little to the right or left of the center line. They would be 150 feet long or 75 feet short. The tires would chip with little puffs of gray-white smoke. In short, the landings would be adequate but definable moments.
As much as I have a distaste for landings, my goal is to have doubt in my mind about when the flight ended and the taxi began. I'm talking about a landing so smooth that I can’t say for sure exactly when the wheels started rolling on the pavement. A greaser.
Driving to the airport, I metaphorically put on my big-boy pants and decided that today I was going to channel my landing-loving aviator and aviatrix peers and chain myself to the pattern. I was going to do nothing but landings and, of course, the prerequisite takeoffs.
Hence the radio call. It was not to be cute, but rather to publicly commit myself to a course of distasteful action—sort of like swearing an oath. A proficiency oath.
Intellectually, I know it’s critical to practice all my pilot skills, even—perhaps especially—the ones I don’t like. But it’s human nature to avoid what we don’t like, so we need a way to force ourselves into action. This was my way.
As expected, my landings were not completely terrible. But as expected, they were a little right, a little left, a little short, a little long. Some needed a fair bit of fiddling with the throttle to maintain the stabilized approach, which I guess, technically, makes it an unstable approach, doesn’t it?
But on landing number eight, it all came together. The approach was rock solid. Of course, I had one hand on the yoke and the other on the throttle, but I could have been fast asleep in the back for all the airplane cared.
We—that’s the Lindbergh “we”—came in over the numbers dead center on the stripes. The flare and touchdown were seamless. In fact, I was still waiting for the touchdown when I realized my airspeed was nil and I was taxiing down the runway. It was perfect. The rust was gone, and the grease was on.
Just then, a blind call came over the radio: “Nice landing, Seven-six Hotel!”
Yeah, I like being based at a small airport where people can make radio calls like that.