Fragments of what I was seeing and hearing and thinking in those early days when I flew as a copilot in a Convair 240.
March 2015-
We are back again at my archeological dig, wherein old boxes of aviation notes had been ferreted out of deep storage and dusted off. These are fragmented creations from decades ago when I was flying the original airliners I had laid my hands on—notes made for a future use which I never got around to.
These piles of observations from my earliest years of driving airliners have been put into a semblance of order to provide a sense of what I was seeing and hearing and thinking in those days. Here is part two.
The Convair 240 splashed through the puddles as it swung from the gate. The columns of churning wind behind the propellers had swept a spray against the empty terminal. The agent, who knew better, had already hustled inside to watch from behind thick glass as the lights of the airplane moved across his rain-smeared view and disappeared around the corner.
“Three-eight-six, ready for your clearance?” The controller’s voice was clear and it filled the pilot’s headphones with a friendly closeness, as if the controller were sitting at the next barstool. Damp and dreary weather on a quiet night would somehow become the glue that bound together all those who used the frequency.
“To Boston,” he began in rounded tones, then continued on with his measured litany as he recited the electronic route that had been reserved for them.
The copilot wrote what was said in cryptic shorthand on a clipboard in his lap. The clipboard was lit by a narrow arc of light from above his head. The copilot wrote quickly but carefully, the mechanical pencil etching out the routing in neat numbers and letters on the blank side of their flight plan.
He paused for a moment after he finished writing, then reached for his microphone and read back what he had put down.
The Convair was slowly traveling down the stretch of blacktop that led to the runway. The airliner responded to the motions of the captain’s hand on the nose steering control, and the noises from the hydraulic valves floated up from beneath the floorboards to add a steady and nearly eerie undercurrent to the quiet in the cockpit.
The flight attendant had silently come up to the cockpit and without a word, handed the load slip to the copilot. He examined the paper she had given him: 19 passengers, 500 gallons of fuel. With the cargo, the gross weight was 41,200 pounds.
“Nineteen in the cabin,” the copilot announced. The captain said nothing.
The Convair trudged through the puddles on the taxiway and toward the runup area ahead. The white taxi light beamed from the airplane and groped ahead as new portions of the blacktop were swept into view. The blue lights that lined their path glowed in the misty, watery night air.
“How about another coffee after takeoff?” the captain asked without bothering to turn his head. He had sensed that she was still standing there.
“Sure thing.” She quietly turned and left the cockpit.
They had reached the runup pad. The Convair stopped moving. The captain slid his hand off the steering and reached for the parking brake. He began to push the throttles forward for the customary engine check.
“Forty-one thousand, two hundred on the weight,” the copilot repeated as the increasing sounds from the engines began filling the airplane. The copilot watched as the captain worked the throttles forward slowly and carefully.
There was no expression on the captain’s face; his eyes were fixed on the center panel gauges. The powerplant sounds were smooth and evenly metered.
“Forty-one thousand, two hundred,” the copilot repeated a third time.
“O.K.,” the captain answered, with seeming indifference and without looking away from the instrument panel gauges. The roar of the two radial engines now being asked for a hefty amount of power pressed down on both of them. “Right side,” the captain announced in a loud voice.
The copilot’s hand went to the overhead panel in response to the captain’s command. His fingers grabbed the number-two ignition switch as he watched the captain. The captain nodded curtly toward the panel, and the copilot obligingly turned the switch.
The output from the individual banks of spark plugs were checked: all normal. A propeller check quickly followed, then a duplicate performance for the other engine. Runup complete, the final items on the pre-takeoff checklist were mumbled through.
“Ready,” the captain said, then turned his attention toward adjusting his seatbelt.
The copilot rotated the transmitter dial to the new frequency. He glanced over his shoulder—the cockpit door was closed, as it should be. “Three-eight-six is ready,” he said.
“Three-eight-six,” a different voice from the control tower repeated, and then, “Cleared for takeoff.”
The captain flipped on the outside wing lights. The angular entrance to the runway was washed in the airplane’s powerful beams. The Convair lumbered onto the concrete, then turned to align itself with the painted centerline. Then it was brought to a halt.
“Seatbelt,” the captain said, and fiddled again with an adjustment that didn’t quite satisfy him.
The copilot was posed, his left hand riding a low guard below where the captain would hold the throttles, the copilot’s right hand holding the control wheel in preparation for the captain’s grabbing hold of it when the runway speed was near to what they needed for flight.
The cockpit panels were soaked in red floodlight. The instrument dials were individually lit by a tiny bulb over each. The copilot moved his head slightly, then moved his eyes further left, so he would be able to see the captain without appearing to watch.
Finished with his seatbelt adjustment, the captain sat upright. He cleared his throat slightly, then said, “Here we go.”
The local controller stood behind the console in the control tower. From that distance and height, the airplane on the runway appeared as an irregular shape set against the background of its own lights. The rotating beacon on its topside turned in a circular motion, providing pulses of red color to sweep across the wings and tail at regular intervals.
The precise instant marking the beginning of the takeoff roll was impossible to determine. The night and the rain-filled sky had made visual references deceiving. The Convair appeared to be standing inertly at one moment, then suddenly it was transformed into a rapidly accelerating body the next. None of the noises of the takeoff could reach in through the thick glass of the tower cab; the controller was watching a silent movie.
The airplane rolled for a period of time, and then it rose abruptly above the lights that outlined the concrete beneath it.
It climbed deeper into the dreariness of the rain, its two forward-pointing floodlights shutting off and causing the airplane to vanish into the darkness.
The controller stood facing the void for several more seconds, then turned toward the inside of the tower cab and other duties.
“Three-eight-six on departure,” the copilot said, his body moving in time to the motions in the airframe produced by the thick, wet clouds. The turbulence was light and continuous. With the power readjusted to a climb setting, the captain had abandoned the throttles and was using both hands to steer. The large metal wheel was worn shiny from the thousands of hours it had spent in the hands of the line pilots.
The two rudder pedals under the captain’s front panel also displayed the effects of years of polishing; its metal ridges were worn nearly flat. The captain’s feet rode on the pedals, and he periodically pressed on one or the other to compensate for the feeling that the nose was yawing left or right.
“Radar contact Three-Eight-Six. Climb unrestricted to eleven thousand. Proceed direct to Albany.”
“Eleven thousand. Direct Albany.” The copilot replaced the microphone into the holder on his side. Without a word between them, the captain started a shallow bank to the left while the copilot tuned in the frequency of the station ahead.
So much of the coordination between crew members was an unspoken, intuitive thing. Each pilot usually knew what the other wanted, and they would operate as if they were gears meshing in effortless sequence. The raising of an eyebrow or a half-gesture with a finger was all that was usually needed to coordinate movements between the members of a well-fitting crew.
The copilot knew that he was onboard, primarily, to please. His function was to assist the captain and to make him happy. That was done mostly by anticipating the captain’s needs. It would—it was hoped and prayed for—not be too many more years before the effects of retirements and route expansions allowed copilots to move up enough in seniority to receive their own commands. Their time spent in the right seat was a finite apprenticeship.
The copilot finished the required entries in the logbook, then switched off the overhead reading light. Some captains insisted that the nighttime bookkeeping be done without utilizing the thin white floods mounted over each pilot’s seat—it was too much of an assault on their night vision, they would say.
This particular captain made no such demand. The level of the interior lighting, the temperature in the cockpit, even the amount of radio static or the magnitude of the turbulence seemed not to make an impression on him. This captain would, nearly always, just sit quietly. He was easy to work with, and popular among the copilots for precisely that reason.
The copilot busied himself for awhile with radio work, then settled quietly into his seat. The continuous turbulence had tapered off, and the body of air that they rode through possessed only a scattering of minor currents to disturb the tranquility. The captain sat in plain view, yet he seemed invisible because of his stoic lack of movement.
The copilot ran his eyes across his own control wheel, fixing his gaze on the places where others had held on and done the job.
They had all sat behind that wheel at one time or another, developing the techniques they would need for the other seat. The names of the different captains that this copilot had flown with during the last two months flowed through his head; each of them had once sat exactly where he was sitting now, looking at the same panel, and waiting to fly with the same control wheel.
But not the captain who was sitting beside him tonight. This man was already a captain when the airline bought the Convairs that they flew in now, so he never would have flown from the right seat. That, for some reason, seemed like a difference that mattered.
The old-timers, they were the men who seemed to have always been captains. It was unimaginable to think of such men sitting in the copilot’s seat. Absolutely unimaginable.
(Next time: The end is near.)
Editor-at-large Thomas Block has flown nearly 30,000 hours since his first hour of dual in 1959. In addition to his 36-year career as a U.S. Airways pilot, he has been an aviation magazine writer since 1969, and a best-selling novelist. Over the past 30 years he has owned more than a dozen personal airplanes of varying types. Send questions or comments to editor@www.piperflyer.com.
