“Destination Unexpected—Borger, Texas”

from “Aeromancy” © 2005, Paul Berge
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In open-cockpit flying you learn to navigate using senses suppressed by a closed-cabin, and approaching Borger airport (BGD) in the Texas Panhandle, I leaned my face into the slipstream to sniff my way toward the refineries in the surrounding hills. It reminded me of being a kid in New Jersey on hot summer days when chemical plant exhaust tinged the sky Dr. Seuss yellow from the stuff that makes modern life possible if occasionally unhealthy.

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Borger wasn’t my planned destination. I wondered whose destination it could be outside anyone associated with the petro business. But I didn’t ponder too long as I banked onto downwind leg and pulled the power abeam the numbers to drop the way biplanes do in a slipping descent on base leg to the flare and a burnt-rubber touchdown. It’s a fluid, twisting dive and with all that drag from wings, wires, and the pilot’s wide grin there’s rarely any float. Lacking straight-ahead visibility past the long nose, the pilot feels for the ground and senses drift through peripheral vision. Landings aren’t always pretty, especially on pavement when a crosswind demands stick into the wind and opposite rudder with a nose-high blind path ahead. Tail draggers are made for grass fields and old tail dragger pilots do our best when forced onto the hard stuff. Here, in Borger, the runways were perfect for jets full of oil execs.

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The Marquart Charger holds 27 gallons to feed its 180 horses giving two hours range with a puckered-up reserve. At 120 mph that’s about 250 miles, but I plan 150 or so between stops, longer when the winds allow. On this day nothing allowed.

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I’d been in the air since somewhere in New Mexico with stops throughout the high plains including West Texas (T27) on the east side of El Paso. It has a long skinny runway that leads to an FBO with a shaded porch where you could sit, drink a Dr. Pepper, and watch ultra lights drag around the pattern in the heat. Free cookies came with the avgas, and after an hour’s stay I slogged off northeast only to be stopped by the rear guard of thunderstorms ransacking Oklahoma. Borger, just above Amarillo, was in the clear, but as my wheels rolled through steaming puddles on the runway I knew it hadn’t been clear for long.

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A tall gray man with a leathery face and a silver belt buckle the size of a Volkswagen hubcap waved me into a tie down spot while a second man, younger with a smaller buckle, stood by holding chocks. They treated my dusty two-seater biplane as they might a corporate jet. At the crossed-arm signal to stop, I applied brakes, killed the engine with mixture, and before I could push the goggles off my eyes, Big Buckle called, “Need to use the car? We can bring that ‘round for ya. Getchya hotel room in town should you need it, good restaurants, too.”
“I’m just topping off and heading out,” I answered and unhooked my harness to stand in the cockpit. The buckles clunked on the floorboards. But before I could grab the upper wing handles and drop a leg over the side, Little Buckle had run for the fuel truck, and the other man said, “We’ll getchya turned right around. You can use the weather radar inside and help yourself to coffee, should be a doughnut left, too.” I imagine if I’d asked them to wash the biplane they would’ve dragged out a hose; it was that kind of friendly. Mostly, though, I nodded and waited for the fuel truck.

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I never let anyone fuel the biplane because it’s, frankly, a nuisance. The 27 gallons are dispersed among two wing tanks, each smaller than a shoe box, and the larger fuselage tank beneath the upper wing and just aft of the hot engine compartment. All three filler necks were designed for fuel nozzles no bigger than soda straws, so spilling is common. I’d rather swear at myself than pretend to not notice when a helpful line guy shoots a fountain of 100LL into his face.
“Where ya say you’re headed?”
“Iowa, eventually, but next stop Liberal, maybe Dodge City,” I said and receiving no response, I pointed in the wrong direction and added, “Kansas.”
“I know where it is, but weather’s not so good up that way.” He pointed in the correct direction. Texans are masters of understatement. "Not so good" meant that anything smaller than a four-bedroom brick ranch house was probably getting tossed at the moment. “Might want to check weather,” he muttered as the fuel truck approached.

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After washing the upper wings with avgas and pumping a quart across the cowling around the main tank so it ran into the front cockpit, I handed the hose down and mopped up. All that fuss for fifteen gallons made me feel almost guilty, but when I noticed that the price was lower than anything else I’d found over two weeks, I wished I could’ve held more.

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Later, after I’d finished their last doughnut and spilled coffee in the pilots lounge, I strapped back into the biplane and fired up. Warm, sulfurous air from the refineries washed over me like a monstrous baby fart as I taxied past jackrabbits with no sense of adventure.

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Opening the throttle the biplane’s nose pulled left, and the prop breeze turned to hurricane force. Tail up and with gentle back pressure the collection of wings, struts and wires popped off the earth, and we banked north toward what I’d planned as my next destination. But, even though the thunderstorms were now well into trashing Nebraska and moving away from me, I knew that when it comes to biplaning cross-country, what I planned was of little value. I’d just have to see what awaited a hundred or so miles away. And, at 500 feet above Texas, as the last whiff of oil refinery was replaced by endless flat green of the western Oklahoma, I was gently reminded of the whole point of open cockpit navigation. It ain't the destination that matters but the almost getting there that counts.

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(Next stop: Guyman, Hooker, Oklahoma)
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The End
© Paul Berge
ailerona@aol.com

American Skies

by Paul Berge
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Looking down from America’s skies you see a country that spreads itself open like a family album. As a flight instructor with a passion for antique airplanes, I cruise across the middle of the nation between the Mississippi and Missouri Rivers rarely above the height of my fellow travelers--the red-tailed hawks and turkey vultures. From 500 feet above the cornfields, rolling pastures, and second-growth forests, we literally have a birds-eye view of a country that often forgets to look up.

It’s a country that sprawls itself out like a fat uncle beneath a shade tree after a summer picnic—content and well fed.

It’s a country that loves its parks and scenic overlooks, yet cuts great ribbons of Interstate highways through the glory of the prairie so that those on the one coast won’t dawdle getting to the other.

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And from the altitude of the bald eagles that migrate through Iowa each year, I throttle back my 56-year old airplane and drift with a uniquely American wind over small towns that have been missed by the freeways and remain the resting stops of faded souls.

From the Midwestern sky I track the Mormon Trail and can follow the dozens of abandoned railroad lines that once linked countless forgotten prairie towns together so long ago. From just above the noise of the 21st century, seated behind a 65-horsepower engine, with two cloth wings stretching from my core, I fly through this sky that has been the dome of a vast continent since long before anyone envisioned our manifest destiny.

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The American sky is unlike any other. When I’m aloft, alone or with a student, with the wind singing through the struts and into the cockpit, I glance at the few ancient instruments on the airplane’s panel and feel the connection with other American fliers who’ve lived in these skies--Lindbergh, Earhart, or Ernest Gann. We’ve shared a sky that’s less than a half-mile above the real estate we call our nation. We who fly on fabric wings live in a stratum that time has graciously overlooked. For the few hours that the fuel tank allows us to stay in that sky we’re the guests of something truly ethereal that so few Americans ever touch. Yet, oddly, this album of beauty is there for the taking. It’s open to all who believe in this country’s ability to amaze, inspire and—inside this old airplane—rejuvenate. It’s there provided we Americans never forget how to fly.
--Paul Berge

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© 2002, Paul Berge, all rights reserved.
Photo courtesy of Curtis Kelly. Taken over Blakesburg, Ia., (IA27)

Toto's Revenge

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Kansas Ain't Flat When Viewed From a Biplane

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by Paul Berge.

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Best FBO? Hard to say. I’m no fan of metropolitan airports with their Berlin Wall security and prefer, instead, the outback fields where crop dusters fly 200-foot traffic patterns and tick-pimpled dogs sleep beside a broken pop machine with a sign that reads: “Leave money in coffee can. Signed, Betty.”

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Million Air at Van Nuys, California surprised me when I’d expected big-city snubs only to be treated like a fat-dollar celebrity. (Some say I’m easily mistaken for Robin Williams before liposuction, so maybe that was it.) Ramp fees were waived after I purchased a skinny ten gallons and swiped the last brownie off the counter.

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Guymon (shown below) located in the accusing finger of Oklahoma’s panhandle is an unsung bargain close to a great Mexican diner. And if you behave yourself at Frasca Field (C16) in Urbana, Illinois, you can tour Frasca’s simulator factory. Show a respectful blend of awe and gratitude, and you may get the VIP trip through Rudy Frasca’s private museum of war birds, old birds, and odd birds. Don’t touch anything; you break it, you probably can't afford to buy it.

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Salina, Kansas makes any tramp pilot’s Top Ten list. And it’s not just because of the pretty girls in tight shorts who direct transients into tie-down spots and then cause middle-aged men to drop jaw-first from their airplanes watching them bend over to chock the tires. Okay, that might be one of the reasons. The other is the lobby where you’ll eat fresh chocolate-chip cookies and get sworn at by a parrot, macaw, or whatever that foul-speaking thing is that was obviously raised by Navy linguists.

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Parked midway between everything hip on the West Coast and urbane on the East, Kansas needs to do something to get noticed. Cookies alone won’t do it, so the state offers a bigger show as I relearned when wandering through on no particular route in something unsophisticated that taxis with its tail in the dirt and no lid over the cockpits. Four wings completed my barnstorming ensemble, so wherever I’d arrive someone usually remarked, “Nice biplane; think you’ll ever learn to land it?” At least in Salina they smile when they say that—giggle, actually.

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For those unfamiliar with the Midwest, here’s a quick lesson: It’s not all flat. Iowa even has ski resorts, although, they are a bit silly; my favorite is located near the Boone (BNW) airport, where there’s a homebuilders’ workshop/co-op open to anyone having trouble riveting together a quick-build RV.

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Kansas, however, is a flat billiard table stretching to all horizons covered in endless pastures and whatever it is growing below in waving green felt. In the cool morning sky a few hundred feet above all that waving, I could see as far as the earth’s curvature allowed. Beyond that I didn’t care, because the openness sucked my mind dry, removing all remnants of 1970s Rocky Mountain highs and filled the void with a 2-D vision that staggers most viewers but made me want to fly above it forever. Or at least until the afternoon sky warmed and all that green below sweated into the air currents rising to colder heights. Plus, I was hungry and almost out of gas, so taking a tip from a freight dog who knew where to find free cookies, I headed to Salina.

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The tower controller wasn’t particularly friendly, and to punctuate my disdain for his indifference, I demonstrated a triple-bounce wheel landing on the 12,000-foot runway.
“If able, turn left at the end,” he said, “And taxi to the ramp.”

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I was able and did, following a shorts-clad ramp rat waving parking batons like a KU cheerleader. I think his name was Daryl, and it was apparent that he handled the lesser customers while the biz jet behind me received the full Flower reception. Still, like Odysseus on the Isle of Babes I lingered until the weather soured. Flight Service painted an optimistic picture of the route: “If you hurry and get real lucky, you may survive the line of Level Six thunderstorms forming between Salina and Topeka.” Once in Topeka (TOP) the forecast called for clear skies and sweet siren songs all the way to my final resting place, er, destination in Iowa. So, I departed and, like Odysseus, I must’ve irritated the weather gods, and because I didn’t understand that Kansas could morph into a mountain state I found myself weaving through canyons of vertical development the likes of which gives any sensible barnstormer pause. Unfortunately, every airport where I’d hoped to pause went down the weather toilet.

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Smart pilots avoid anything made of water vapor the color of scorched marshmallows growing to 70,000 feet. It was late afternoon, and Kansas having broiled all day in the sun now released its steamed energy skyward. The air was deceptively smooth at the feet of these towering thugs, but as I tuned nearby AWOS frequencies, reports deteriorated from rain, to wind, to blowing frogs.

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I monitored Flight Watch (122.0) with the thought of climbing on top, but heard an anxious Bonanza driver several thousand feet above me trying to make the same mistakes only to report that the clouds grew around him so fast that he turned tail for Texas. I decided to do likewise back to Salina only to find my back door closed. Cut off, my plans shifted from reaching Topeka to considering a survivable side road landing. The gods toy with the wayfarer who ignores evidence of his own stupidity. So as clouds boiled around me in unbelievable glory and terror, thumping their vaporous chests, I pressed eastward through a twisting alleyway of narrowing sanity above Kansas greenery, and running just a little faster than the squall line, floated into Topeka. No cookies, no bargain-priced avgas, or Playmate staff, just a guy in a blue work shirt leaning into the wind to help me tie the biplane down shortly before the sky unloaded.

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Best FBO? Tough to say, but as lightning chiseled the sky, I was damn glad this one was there.

.............................................................The End
© Paul Berge, all rights reserved.

Cockpit photo courtesy of Curtis Kelly.