Right Rudder

Dad's power chair has a little joystick controller on the right arm.

He stopped every few feet, to look up into the trees.  I tried to remember if I had EVER got him to go out with me like this before - maybe once before, most of a year ago.

Halfway down the first block, we heard the distinctive droning whine of a Coast Guard helicopter coming from the north.  When the bright orange copter appeared over the trees, we stopped, peering at it as all pilots do when a different sound flies over.  It's partly to ID the plane, and partly to see if the pilot is doing anything dumb.  Dad would never own up to it, but I think he held every flight he saw to his own standards, in the back of his mind. I remarked "That's an Aerospatiale design, I think.  With a ducted rotor in the tail.  The Coast Guard seems to love them."

Dad nodded agreement, and I could SEE him remembering those test flights.

We watched it until it was out of sight in the south.  Nothing dumb happened.

"I remember you told a story, long ago, about a Marine chopper that went down in the Sierra.  One of those big old birds with the big radial engine in the nose. There was a guy on board, what was his name? I think you called him the Big Indian?"

"The Chief" Dad said.

"Right.  And the punch line was, when the base commander asked what he had used to set the fire which had caught the attention of the rescue flight, the rescue guy had this stricken look on his face, and the commander said Oh, no, he didn't.  But he had.  The Chief had set the downed chopper on fire, since it was the only thing handy."

Dad shook his head.  Maybe a bit of a smile.  Definitely.  "A Sikorsky something-or-other.  I stood on his foot once."

"What?"

"Sikorsky.  His foot.  Not the real one, of course.  In the 50's"

We made it to the park, and trundled around the paths under the trees for a quarter of an hour.  "How do we get back?"  "You make a 180, right here.  I know you used to have a navigator, but you'll have to cope with me now."

Back on the sidewalk, next to the clinic.

"Are you trying to go cross country, up onto the grass?"

A head shake, No.

"Then I think you need a bit more right rudder - you're drifting left of the centerline."  That got another chuckle and an actual grin.

I said, "Some of the planes I trained in had electric trim.  One of my favorites had the 'hat' on the yoke for elevator trim.  I thought that was very slick, but after a while I decided I didn't like it.  I liked the manual wheel better - it gave me a much better feel for how much trim I'd dialed in.  And how much trouble I might be about to get myself into."

No response.

"Remember in the 195, you told me once you didn't like to use the flaps for landing because they were electric, and you didn't trust the motors to get them up in case of a go-round?"

"Did I?"

"Sure.  But my favorite bit in Four Two Charlie was the calls from the tower asking if we needed help, since we looked like we were taxiing sideways, with the crosswind gear."

Another chuckle and smile.

I did a quick guess at what percent of Dad's experience I had.  By logged hours, it worked out to around one-twentieth of one percent.  In reality, I still had a long way to go to catch up.

[I just realized what his problem with the chair is: the joystick is on the right-hand side. Pilots expect the stick to be in the left hand, throttles in the right hand. I never flew a side-stick, myself, so it didn't strike me as wrong.  The C-195 was N2142C.  Some guy in Napa owns it now.]