Meet My Twin

You never know who you might meet on a plane...

As I walked down the aisle of the Southwest Airlines plane, I surveyed the rows of seats trying to decide which one I would choose for the flight. I spotted a man in a pilot’s uniform sitting by the window—perfect, that would be a good row to pick. I sat down in the aisle seat, sneaking a glance at the epaulettes on his shoulders. Four stripes; he was a captain. He was also occupied with his tablet, so I didn’t bother him but just pulled out my multiengine ground school materials and began studying. By the time we were descending into Wichita, he had noticed what I was reading.

“You getting ready to do some training?” he asked.

“Yes, I'm planning get my multiengine add-on this week," I replied, happy to be having a conversation with an airline pilot.

“Where are you going to be doing that?”

“Actually, I’ll be training just outside of Wichita at a small airport in Benton,” I explained.

“You’re not going to be training with Herb, are you?” My eyes widened. “Actually, that’s exactly who I’m going to be training with,” I answered, a little taken off guard.

The captain chuckled. “Good ol’ Herb. I did my multiengine rating with him, oh, back in 1987 or so. When I saw what you were reading, I thought, ‘Hey, I’ve seen those articles before.’ So Herb’s still at it, then.” 

I laughed, amazed that I was in the middle of one of those stranger-than-fiction moments. 

“Tell Herb hi for me. I guess he did a good job; I’ve been a captain for Southwest for 26 years now,” he said as the plane pulled up the gate and we prepared to disembark.

It was a reassuring way to start off this latest training adventure. My instructor-to-be had certainly been in this business for a long time, which was a big reason I’d taken a friend’s recommendation and was flying halfway across the country to take this training program. Over the years Herb had given something like 3,000 sign-offs for certificates and ratings—to the point where it was now possible to randomly run into one of his former students! I had the growing confidence I’d be in good hands. I certainly wasn’t disappointed over the next couple of weeks.

One of the resident biplanes taxiing for takeoff

Stearman Field, where Prairie Air Service was located, was the essence of a small-town American general aviation airport. All day long the place was humming with activity, with aircraft departing and arriving and people strolling nearby as they watched the planes or headed to the airport restaurant. Many different kinds of planes could be seen coming and going, from modern homebuilts and traditional trainers, to turboprops and small private jets. There were at least a handful of vintage Stearman aircraft based here as well—which is how Stearman Field got its name—all immaculately restored and maintained. Almost every day at least one of these classic birds could be seen doing traffic patterns around the parallel grass runway, bright paint flashing in the sunlight and a distinctive rumbling growl issuing from its large engine.

The twin-engine Apache

Then there was Herb’s twin-engine Piper Apache: almost old enough to be a vintage aircraft, but certainly not as pretty the neighbor’s planes. It reminded me a bit of the pipeline patrol planes I’d seen in Texas: kind of like a work truck that was well-maintained for functionality and safety but not much more. But that’s essentially what it was; it certainly wasn’t needing to win any prizes. However, as the student who was staying in the room next to mine explained, it was reliable and honest.

The first morning after arriving I rode along in the backseat to watch Steve, my fellow trainee, run through all the maneuvers for his practical test which he was supposed to take that afternoon. It was immensely helpful to get a first-hand look at everything without the pressure of being in the pilot’s seat. It was also another morale boost to see a relieved Steve coming back to his room that evening after successfully passing his multiengine checkride. The next day would be my turn at the controls.

The first order of business in the training course was to go through a detailed cockpit orientation. After doing this for decades Herb had his method down to a well-scripted science and knew just exactly which things needed to be pointed out to a transitioning pilot who had never flown an Apache. He began with the view: “The first thing you’ll notice when looking out the front window is that there is no nose.” I stared out—he was right. Of course there was a nose, but it just wasn’t visible due to the design. The familiar sight of an engine cowling out front was all but missing. “Up until now, all your flying has been done by consciously or subconsciously sighting over the cowling. That won’t work in this plane, so to fly it precisely you will need to really fly it by instruments. You’ll find that’s how large planes are flown anyway,” he explained.

He moved on to some of the idiosyncrasies of the 1958 plane. “Now take a look at the trim,” he said, pointing up at the two rotary crank-handles mounted in the cockpit ceiling. “The trim in this aircraft is not user-friendly; it’s barely user-possible," he quipped. "So make sure you take a moment before you move it and think which direction you need to turn the crank.” He continued to deadpan his way through the explanation of the various switches, dials, and levers. I loved his dry wit.

Finishing off the briefing, Herb handed me the checklist and proceeded to walk me through the steps to start the engines. There was nothing particularly special about starting up the 160 HP carbureted Lycomings except that now there were two of every engine control. Something that would take me a while to get used to, though, was the way the power levers wouldn’t behave identically if I advanced them equally. It always took me several extra glances at the manifold pressure gauge to get the power settings matched. Just another fact of life flying old, small planes.

We took off and climbed away from the town to a good maneuvering altitude. I immediately felt lost over the endless, flat expanse of identical-looking Kansas farmland. Good thing this plane had GPS because I wasn’t convinced I’d have the geography figured out by the time I was supposed to take my practical test!

This first flight was a familiarization with how the airplane handled. Herb walked me through the different airwork maneuvers: steep turns, stalls, slow flight, speed and configuration changes. Steve was right; it was an honest plane, giving plenty of warning before stalls and handling smoothly. After having flown the DA40s the Apache had a much more steady and stable ride. It certainly wasn’t a fast plane, but that wasn’t necessary for training.

After the airwork, we returned to Stearman field for a full-stop landing and an afternoon break. “I usually don’t fly in the afternoon because it just gets too bumpy for meaningful training,” Herb said as we climbed out the plane. “We’ll fly again after dinner and work on traffic patterns.”

At dinner I learned my checkride had been scheduled for Friday afternoon. Today was Tuesday. It was a bit hard to imagine that, if all went well, in three more days I would be multiengine rated—and I had scarcely had one flight under my belt. But that’s the way an accelerated multiengine training program works and that’s why I was here! And I also knew it was going to be a lot of work and a very intense three days. So I did my best to put all thoughts of post-checkride celebrations aside for the time, and followed Herb out to the Apache to learn how to do landings in it.