Page 8 - May21T

Using Tech
Without Losing Your Mind
by Stan Dunn
Idiscovered aviation at 19 when I won a free hour in a United Airlines DC- 10 simulator. It was one of the most intense experiences of my life. The
realistic bumps and vibrations were enough to make me nervous about crashing. I immediately fell in love with the idea of an office filled with gauges, yokes and throttles. I had dis- covered not only a pursuit but also a profession.
September 11 happened shortly af- ter I graduated college. I was quickly introduced to the cyclical volatility of the aviation sector. It was a hor- rible time to start flying, but I began anyway. I enrolled in a few classes at Metro State College of Denver, largely to gain access to their fleet of Frasca training devices. The first entry in my logbook was a block for the entire semester, logged on May 7, 2001.
The Frasca is a basic device with a six-pack used as the primary means to establish aircraft orientation.
Gyroscopic precession requires reset- ting the heading indicator against the compass every 15 minutes. There is no flight director or autopilot. It is a touch more sophisticated than what Lindbergh used to cross the Atlantic. I joined the Metro State Precision Flight team before I had logged any time in an actual aircraft. We ran competitions in the Frasca that utilized altitude, heading, and standard rate turns. If you were off altitude or heading, you accumulated points. Climbs and de- scents had to occur at exactly 500 fpm or you got more points. Like golf, the lowest score won. It was a fun way to develop instrument f lying skills.
I walked into the Centennial Airport for my “intro to flight” in June of that year. I marched up to the counter of the local f light club and told the owner that I was “looking to learn to fly.” She gave me a direct response, “I have an instructor who can teach you... as long as you don’t mind learning
from a woman.” Barbara endorsed my first flight and went on to endorse the next few pages as well. I would eventu- ally go through a handful of different instructors (Barbara left for a job at Jeppesen), and I eventually finished my f light training in Los Angeles.
My first flight was in N737XE, a 1977 Cessna 172N. The flight school at the FBO had a dozen 172s – nearly all of them 1970s variants. Six-packs pro- vided basic flight information. Fixed cards and VORs provided for navi- gation. The radios were analog. The only way you knew when the battery was on was the hum of the gyro spin- ning up. A good portion of my initial cross-country f lights were via pilotage. The VORs were used sparingly and only to verify that I was not transgress- ing controlled airspace around Denver. Hills, antennas, railroad tracks, and the occasional private airport were used to establish position. Dead reck- oning with heading, airspeed, and a
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