Fasten your seat-belts, put your seat-backs and tray tables in their upright and locked positions and hang on for dear life. Today, long-time friend Doug, shared his passion of sailing in the skies with me as I piloted my first ever sailplane. My head is still at 5,000 feet and I am now deeply indebted to him. Hope you will enjoy the story.
Doug and I met in the early eighties at NBC. The company was not yet called NBC Universal. We did not have a single cable channel yet, our only outlet was the NBC Network and a few television stations. CBS and ABC were the only real competitors. We were dominant in prime-time with hits like “Knight-Rider”, “The A-team”, “The Cosby Show”, “Family Ties”, “Cheers”, “NIght-Court”, “Miami Vice” and “Hill Street Blues.” Doug and I were part of the engineering team that designed the production facilities. We first worked together to commission a state of the art editing room for Nightly News (NY Edit 6), then worked together to build four sports mobile units (N-8 and CH-5) at Centro, an vendor in San Diego California. It just so happened that my Mother was living nearby at the time and so Doug, Dave and the others who worked on the project became part of my extended family.
The N-8 & CG5 team. Top photo Doug, Eric and my sister Andrea. Bottom, Alan, Dave and me.
Doug 1996, preflight checklist for a bell helicopter ride for Sherry & me
If there was a vote for which one of my friends was most like Tom Cruise, it would be Doug. Not only is he an incredible engineer and problem solver, but he simply has had the coolest hobbies. At various times in his life he has played the bass guitar, scuba-dived with sharks, parachuted more than 800 times, and has commercial helicopter and fixed-wing pilots licenses to boot. When you probe, the charming boyhood look and modest demeanor give way to an intrepid curiosity, keen intellect and a desire for excellence. This extends from his projects (he is currently designing his own guitar amp) to the tools he uses to pursue his hobbies.
The tool that he is justifiably most proud of is his sailplane, a stunning Schempp-Hirth Ventus-2cxa, stored in a amazingly small but efficient trailer system at the Blairstown airport. Doug was nice enough to pull the fuselage out of storage for me (the wings, wing-extensions and rear stabilizer attach when outfitting it for flight) show me around the cockpit and let me sit and feel the sophistication of the design. The plane is sleek, built for speed and competition.
I am not a big man, but the space is tiny – Doug explains that he just barely has room himself. Talk about becoming one with your aircraft!
After a nice lunch at the “Wings” cafe (ironically, another hit NBC series), Doug and I went to the Jersey Ridge Soaring building where I met my instructor Bob Cook (Cookie), and spent some time on the flight simulator. I have never flown a plane, even in a simulator before and found that it requires incredible concentration. Doug and I went over some of the basics in our ride to the airport, but I learned that very small corrections are better than large motions. It takes practice!
Bob was encouraging, and after 45 minutes I progressed to being able to initiate and hold a turn, maintain course and speed, and eventually even land safely at the intended airport. That felt great.
I was unable however to follow the virtual tow-plane into the air without severing the tow cable and crashing the plane (twice, yikes!)
The plane for my first journey into the skies would be a Grob 103. Its a dual-seat, fiberglass plane designed for training, high performance soaring and basic aerobatic flying with a 57 foot wingspan. After the orientation in Doug’s plane, it felt like stepping back in time about 25 years, but the seat was comfortable and I felt like comparatively there was a lot of room around me. After Bob and I did the pre-flight checklist, we had the plane towed by a golf-cart to the beginning of the grassy runway, where we added 25lbs of weight to keep the balance, compensating for my smaller frame. After getting in and fastening the four-point harness, we locked down the canopy and signaled for the tow plane.
Doug and I had chatted about what like to be in the air. His engineering mind immediately went to all the things he is thinking about when flying. Alititude, heading, other planes nearby, how far to the nearest airport… the list is long and complex. But when he is in the zone, and everything is good, he and the machine become one, and it feels like a part of him. It is he, not the machine that is actually flying.
On this, my first glider journey – I was too nervous to feel that completeness. What I did feel was an incredible combination of elation and dread. The tow plane connected, we flapped our tail to indicate that we were ready, and the grass began to fly by. With the long wing-span, we got in the air before the tow plane and thankfully Cookie managed the lift off, dutifully following behind and just below the tow plane. The view out the front of the cockpit was spectacular – both stunning and terrifying as the tow plane brought us to 3,000 feet and I was told to release the cable.
Altitude is like gasoline for a glider. The higher you are the further you can go. The Grob 103 can travel about 6 miles on 1,000 feet of vertical, so our first goal was to find a thermal. After a few minutes, we found one and I heard the variometer beeping telling us that we found the rising air. We rode it in tight circles all the way to 5,000 feet. My turning in the simulator was good, so Bob had me take the controls as we flew around towards the Delaware water gap. It was a hazy day but even so, the views were beautiful. Bob soon identified another possible thermal ahead and had me fly to it, and I piloted us under the cloud and took us further up to 5,600 feet.
All told, the flight lasted 45 minutes and could have been much longer. Bob used the spoilers to bring us down – there was so much lift in the air that shedding altitude actually took some work. We radio’d our intentions and did a rectangular approach to the airport – with Cookie executing a perfect touchdown, and a very long grassy bumpy ride, stopping right at our parking spot. Doug took some great photos and videos of the take-off and landing.
I am incredibly grateful that I had the chance to do this. The learning, and time in the air were precious. Even better was time connecting with Doug and sharing a hobby he has so much passion for. Thank you! This was one incredible adventure!