Aerobatic flying: not for the faint of heart
By Jolayne Houtz
Of the Emerald
Imagine yourself in a small
four-seat airplane 1,000 feet
above the ground with the wind
screaming past your window
and the distant crackle of an air
traffic controller's voice over
the radio.
Now imagine pushing in the
controls and watching the nose
of the plane dip 'irther and far
ther below the horizon. Soon
you're looking straight down
into a grove of trees as your
plane hurls itself toward the
ground.
The wind screams louder; the
green-and-brown world starts to
spin in front of you as you lose
orientation.
Then think of pulling the con
trols toward you hard and feel
ing the plane shudder under
your hands as it struggles to
climb upward like a fish swim
ming upstream. Soon the plane
rights itself again, floating on
currents of air.
You have just experienced
aerobatics.
To some people, even getting
into a 747 is an effort. But others
take flight to the limit through
aerobatics, using loops, spins
and other tricks to explore the
parameters of flight.
Allan Cline, a Eugene pilot,
started Eugene Aerobatic
Adventures about five years ago
to teach others the art.
“When you're doing
aerobatics, you don't think of
either past or present." Cline
said. "You’re just right there."
Some of the maneuvers Cline
teaches include the barrel roll;
the hammerhead, which takes
the plane straight down into a
dive, then pulls it straight up
and then back down into a dive;
and an tmmelman Turn, where
the pilot puts the plane into a
dive, pulls it up and does a half
loop before pulling out.
Learning the maneuvers takes
someone with the ability to stay
oriented even when the world is
spinning. And aerobatics is not
for the faint of heart or stomach.
Cline added.
Once Cline took a client up
for a ride, and as their plane was
Flying
Continued from Page 9
pocket or a "bump in the road"
as Duke called them.
"That was a stall." he said
with a smile as he throttled the
engine smoothly back to full
power.
“You're safer right now in
this plane than you will be driv
ing home in your car." said
Duke, who has been flying since
1972 and is the chief flight in
structor at McKenzie.
1 was beginning to get the feel
for it, and he let me steer the
plane this way and that. 1 felt a
little like Chuck Yeager and the
Wright brothers rolled into one.
Finally it was time to head
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back, and he pointed the plane
toward the horizon. Soon the
black airstrip appeared and he
demonstrated how the flaps
help increase lift, allowing the
plane to fly at greatly reduced
speeds to make landings easier.
As we dropped toward the
ground. 1 felt that tingle in my
belly that one feels when going
over a rise in the road in a fast
moving car.
The ground seemed to swell
under us as we got closer until
finally we were sailing only a
few feet above the huge white
stripes of the runway.
We touched down with a
slight bump, and as I steered the
plane back to the parking area. I
realized that I had experienced
more emotional highs and lows
in a half-hour than I usually ex
perience in a week.
headed into a nose dive, the
man froze on the controls. Cline
said it took all his energy to get
the plane back under control.
But some people seem to have
a natural aptitude for aerobatic
flying Another time, Cline took
a 70-year-old man flying The
man's family gave him the ride
as a birthday present, and when
Cline did an aerobatics show
over the family picnic, the man
was delighted, Cline said.
“Normal flying is a little slow
after aerobatics." said Cline,
who has been performing
aerobatics for eight years "It
teaches many people to face
their fears of flying.”
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