Fear of Flying
I struggled to contact Westchester Tower this morning, confusing the rules of contacting New York approach and whatever dim recollections I have on trying to enter the Binghamton class D airspace. This would make even less sense if you knew what I was talking about, because Westchester is right under the class B airspace. Not only are they totally different rules for B and D, the skys in Binghamton are empty while the skys are filled with international flights making approaches for Laguardia and Newark over Westchester so there are way more un-understandable accents on the radio. I like the European accents on the radio — the Germans and Scandinavians just sound more precise, something I like out of a jet pilot. The south americans don’t give me that same sort of feeling.
I was flying the old green Cessna which I trained in last year, but I had stolen it for a joy ride thinking that since I’m not rated to fly in this weather — in fact, not really rated to fly alone at all — that the best thing to do would be to try and fly, quite literally, under the radar. I had non-pilot souls in the plane, and we were flying “to travel” i.e. there was a purpose of some sort, and it was necessary to get from point A to point B. (The sort of flying I haven’t done for a while.) Why was I flying this Cessna from the 50s? Why did the GPS nav fail to work? (Why was I flying in plane with that old crappy model with still used the amber LCD screen from the 80s?) Why can’t I get the words out on the radio? Is something wrong with the headset? Radio failure? ATC overloaded?
In my mind, I could see the runway. It was the narrow runway from Randal with the ever-present crosswind but in top of the hill just like Binghamton is, where the wind blows up the mountain and tosses you around at the last minute, and naturally surrounded by Westchester’s traffic. No problem. I’m in the pattern, flaps are down, throttle adjusted, correcting for wind, easing on down. And then all this goddamn jibber-jabber on the radio. What? I’m talking to the tower, there’s another plane, I’m at the wrong airport, no wait I got clearance to land on 34 not 29, how could I have repeated the wrong numbers back but thought something else, and then confused noises.
And then I was pulling myself up and up, the radio not working, the GPS off and slowly going through it’s self test, a passenger flailing around accidently turning off the avionics, strugglingly to go up and turn things back on but all of a sudden it’s like I’m waking up parts of my mind instead instead of bits of airplane equipment and they slowly spin up like a gyro and I slowly ease away from the confusion to being laid in bed, at 4 am, trying to figure out how I’m going to forge the log book so the next person who gets in the plane won’t notice the missing hours on the tachometer.
