A buzz job with attitude

A flight instructor once told me, “If you survive the first 500 hours and the first visit to the farm, you will live to be an old pilot.�

I was flying out of Cape Cod to practice mock intercepts on incoming targets, when I reached altitude. My radar blinked off and I had to abort my primary mission. I was not needed as a target, and was left to my own devices. With a couple of hours of fuel to burn off in order to lighten the aircraft, I could practice instrument approaches or do some sightseeing over New England. I decided to visit the family farm, a couple hundred miles west of the Cape.

I made a high speed pass at treetop level, lit the afterburners, climbed vertically and did a few aileron rolls. The second pass was somewhat slower and I waved to my mother, who was standing in the driveway.

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I returned to the Cape at maximum speed and was on the phone with my mother in a little over a half hour, hoping to impress her. Her response was curt. “Dummy, didn’t you realize I had baby chicks?� Click. Sudden noises startle baby chicks and they pile into corners, smothering each other. My mother tended the flock immediately. Fortunately, none were lost.

Some time later, I was on an instrument check ride with a Captain Sharp. I flew some standard maneuvers under a hood. The check was completed and I came out from under the hood somewhere over Maine. The Captain made a lazy, circling descent and eased down the main street of a small town, at minimum speed and power.

A slow turn around the countryside took us back down Main Street, now filled with people. He sensed what I was thinking (“ho hum�), and said, “The first rule of a proper ‘buzz job’is not to startle people, or animals for that matter.�

With that he pushed the throttle to the firewall. We were vertical at the end of Main Street. I spent the next five minutes white-knuckled or blacked out from G-forces.

In short, he put on a helluva air-show.

The above was prompted by the recent low-altitude flyover of Manhattan by an “Air Force One� clone and a fighter escort, shooting photos.

Captain Sharp would have alerted all media well in advance. My mother would have said something like, “Captain, the country is in a deep recession and even in the best of times, the flight would be frivolous at best. You’re grounded.�

A pity such sense or sensibilities are lacking at the highest levels of our government.

The writer is a North East resident.