Stranger to the Ground

“Zero Five has three green, pressure and brakes.” Tap the brakes.

“Roger, Zero Five, you are now one zero miles from touchdown, recheck your gear, the tower has cleared you for a full-stop landing. Turn heading one seven five, stand by this frequency for final controller.” Inside the rain-spattered red-checkered Ground Control Approach van at the side of Chaumont’s only runway, the search controller looks across to his companion, framed dimly in the green light of his own radar screen. “He’s all yours, Tommy.” Tommy nods.

“Jet Zero Five, this is your final controller, how do you read?” He already knows that I can hear him very well. The procedure is part of a time-honored ritual.

“Zero Five reads you five by.” And I say with him to myself his next words, the lines assigned to him in the script for his role as GCA Final Approach Controller.

“Roger, Zero Five,” we say. “You need not acknowledge any further transmissions, however there will be periodic transmission breaks on final approach which will be identified.” Fuel aboard shows just under 2,000 pounds on the big tank gage. At my airplane’s present weight, I should fly down final approach at 165 knots. “Repeat the tower has cleared you for a full-stop . . .”

When I am under the direction of a good GCA operator, I might just as well be on the ramp and shutting down my engine, for my landing is absolutely certain.

“. . . you are thirty seconds from the glide path, correcting left to right on the centerline. Turn heading one eight zero. One eight zero. Transmission break.” He lifts his foot from the mic

rophone pedal on the floor under his screen, giving me a few seconds to speak. I have nothing to say to fill his silence, and his foot comes down again. “One eight zero is bringing you out on centerline, drifting slightly from left to right. Ten seconds to glide path. Turn one seven niner. One seven niner . . .” That is a little compliment for me. One-degree corrections are very small, very precise, and require smooth aircraft control from the pilot. I hear one-degree corrections only in still air, only when I am flying well. A smile under the oxygen mask. He should have seen me thirty minutes ago.

“On glide path, begin descent. Suggest an initial rate of descent of seven hundred fifty feet per minute for your aircraft . . .” What could be simpler than flying a GCA through the weather to the runway? There are the cross-barred pointers of the Instrument Landing System to accomplish the same job, but the ILS is not human. Technically, an ILS approach is more consistently accurate than a GCA, but I would much rather work with a good man behind a good radar, in any weather. Speed brakes out with left thumb aft on sawtooth switch. I lower the nose, visualizing as I do the long slide of the invisible glide slope in front of me. The rate of climb needle points on the down side of its scale to 1,000 feet per minute, then moves back to 800 feet per minute.

“Rolled out nicely on glide path . . . on centerline . . . drifting now slightly left of centerline, turn heading one eight three degrees, one eight three. On glide path . . .” Airspeed is 170 knots, back on the throttle for a second, then up again. Airspeed 168. Back again and up again. 165.

“Going five feet low on glide path, adjust your rate of descent slightly . . . on centerline . . . transmission break.” I think the stick back a little, think it very slightly forward again.

“Up and on glide path, resume normal rate of descent. On centerline . . . on glide path . . . on centerline . . . an excellent rate of descent . . .” Sometimes, I would bet, a GCA operator runs out of things to say. But he is required to give continuous direction to aircraft on final approach. What a boring life he must lead. But bored or not, I am very glad to hear him.

“On glide path . . . doing a nice job of it, lieutenant . . . on centerline . . . tower reports breaking action good . . .” How does he know that I am a lieutenant? I could be a major or a colonel out in the night weather to check on the standardization of GCA operators. But I am not, I am just a man happy to be through a storm and grateful to hear again a voice on my long-silent radio.

“. . . you are two miles from touchdown, on glide path, going ten feet left of centerline, turn right heading one eight four degrees . . . one eight four. On glide path correcting back to centerline . . . one eight four . . . a mile and a half from touchdown . . .”

I look up, and realize suddenly that I have been out of the cloud for seconds. The red and green and twin white rows of runway lights stretch directly ahead. Back a fraction on the throttle, slowing down.

“. . . one mile from touchdown, going ten feet low on the glide path . . .” Here it comes. I know it, the final controller knows it. I drop below the glide path when I have the runway in sight. If I were to stay completely under his direction, I would touch down some 600 feet down the runway, and that is 600 feet I can well use. It takes normal landing distance and 2,000 feet more to stop my airplane if the drag chute fails on a wet runway. And regardless of drag chute, regardless of airplane, I learned as a cadet to recite the three most useless things to a pilot: Runway behind you, altitude above you, and a tenth of a second ago.

Though I listen offhandedly to the GCA operator’s voice, I fly now by only one instrument: the runway. Landing lights on. Left glove reaches ahead and touches a switch down to make two powerful columns of white light pivot from beneath my wings, turning forward to make a bright path in the droplets of rain.

“. . . one quarter mile from touchdown, you are going thirty feet below the glide path, bring your aircraft up . . .” I wish that he would be quiet now. I need his voice in the weather, but I do not need him to tell me how to land my airplane when I can see the runway. The columns of light are speeding over white concrete now, redlights, greenlights flash below.

“. . . thirty-five feet below glide path, you are too low for a safe approach, bring your aircraft up . . .”

Quiet, GCA. You should have more sense than to go to pieces when I begin the flareout. Either I am happy with a touchdown on the first few hundred feet of runway or you are happy with my airplane landing 600 feet along a wet runway. Stick back, throttle to idle, stick back, a bit of left aileron . . . I feel for the runway with my sensitive wheels. Down another foot, another few inches. Come on, runway.

Hard rubber on hard concrete. Not as smooth a touchdown as I wanted but not bad stick forward let the nose-wheel down squeak of 14-inch wheel taking its share of 19,000 pounds of airplane right glove on yellow drag chute handle and a quick short pull. Glove waits on handle ready to jettison the chute if it weathervanes and pulls me suddenly toward the edge of the runway. I am thrown gently forward in my shoulder harness by the silent pouf of a 16-foot ring-slot parachute billowing from the tail. Speed brakes in, flaps up, boots carefully off the brakes. The drag chute will stop me almost before I am ready to stop. I must turn off the runway before I may jettison the chute; if I stop too soon and have to taxi to the turnoff with this great blossom of nylon behind me, I would need almost full power to move at more than two miles per hour. It is an effective drag chute.

We roll smoothly to the end of the runway, and even without braking I must add a burst of throttle to turn off at the end. Boot on left pedal and we turn. Drag chute handle twisted and pulled again, as I look back over my shoulder. The white blossom is suddenly gone and my airplane rolls more easily along the taxiway.

Left glove pulls the canopy lock handle aft, right glove grips the frame and swings the roof of my little world up and out of the way, overhead. Rain pelts lightly on my face above the green rubber mask. It is cool rain, and familiar, and I am glad to feel it. Landing lights off and retracted taxi light on, ejection seat safety pin from the G-suit pocket and into its hold in the armrest, UHF radio to tower frequency.

“Chaumont Tower, Jet Four Zero Five is clear the active runway, taxi to the squadron hangar.”

“Cleared taxi via the parallel taxiway, Zero Five. We had no late estimate on your time of arrival at Chaumont. Did you have difficulties enroute?”

Tower feels chatty this evening. “A little radio trouble. tower.”

“Read you five square now, Zero Five.”

“Roj.”

Right glove presses the shiny fastener at the side of my mask as I glide between the rows of blue taxiway lights, pushed by the soft sigh of engine at 50 percent rpm. Cool rain on my face. We trundle together in a right turn, my airplane and I, up a gentle hill, and follow after the green letters of a Follow Me truck that appears suddenly out of the darkness.

Above this dark rain and above the clouds of its birth is a world that belongs only to pilots. Tonight it belonged, for a moment, only to me and to my airplane, and across the breadth of it to the east, to another pilot and another airplane. We shared the sky tonight, and perhaps even now he is tasting the cool raindrops as he taxies by a runway that is as much a target in my intelligence folders as Chaumont Air Base is a target in his.