Sex Flight

I didn’t know it was gonna be a sex flight, but that’s the way it worked out. That’s the cool thing about sex flights, they are like the real thing—you try for it all the time, but usually come up short. When you have a sex flight, you are pleasantly surprised.

I flew to Lancaster, PA (KLNS) today. I’d never been there before, and they supposedly have a great pilot shop: not one, but two excellent reasons to fly there. A little over 80 nautical miles from my home base, I could make it there in about an hour. This would give me time to check out the place and head back before the snow that’s forecast for tonight.

The tower staff there were quite friendly, as was the flight instructor at the helicopter school, who loaned me the keys to his truck so I could drive down to the pilot shop (I had mistakenly taxied to the wrong FBO at the other end of the runway, thinking that was where the pilot shop was). The pilot shop did indeed have a wealth of pilot goodies: books, videos, airplane models, clothing, flight sims—it was like walking through a Sporty’s Catalog, with the added bonus of fair pricing. Picked up a book about a guy who flew around the world in a Beech Starship, and a new carbon monoxide detector.

On the way home, I stopped at Alexandria Airfield, which is this really nice little airport/airpark in western NJ that I not-so-secretly wish I could have a home at. After an uneventful landing at Alexandria, I headed for home.

So what’s this about a sex flight? Oh yeah, that.

Well, there’s not much to tell, really. I throttled back on the downwind leg, flaps ten, trimmed for ninety. Turned base, flaps twenty, settled on 80 MPH, and turned final. Setting flaps to 30 degrees and lining up on the centerline, I noticed there were a lot of airplanes around, planes waiting on both sides of the runway for me to land so they could get on with their own business—I had an audience. I generally don’t perform well with an audience, but…

Here come the numbers, flaps 40, slow power reduction, rounding out, one eye on the sock, it’s limp, the runway’s all mine—no wind…

Pulling back on the yoke, and then a little more, I feel a sensation in my seat. It’s the subtle vibration of the main wheels beginning to roll on the pavement. The aircraft is in the midst of very gracefully converting itself into a land vehicle. No bumps, no chirping sounds, just a teeny-tiny vibration in the seat and then the dull rumble of the wheels over the pavement. The smoothest landing possible.

Sex flight.