I only got one ride in. A young man came out at 9 am to fly BOB specifically, bought the front seat, and then we waited the rest of the morning and nobody else would fly in the back so we could go. Finally I asked him if he wanted to give me his cellphone number so he could leave, get lunch, etc., and he said he took today off of work to do this ride, and couldn’t do it tomorrow, etc. So I made a deal with him that if he’d pay to cover the costs of the plane, I’d take him. He agreed, and suddenly I had two more people wanting to go in the back. So that was good, and I finally had my ride.
Then it went sideways. This airport is a mess. It’s huge, airline service, has runways like “Nine Left, Nine Center, and Nine Right”, all the things. The airspace is a mess. It’s a Class C airport under a Class B airspace with Restricted areas, Alert areas, and MOAs ALL over the place. There are special VFR arrival procedures, you don’t just come in. There’s nowhere real “clean” to just go up and enjoy the view. It’s a cluster. They also pick a direction, land everyone in that direction, and if the winds change, they don’t change. That works for airliners and even 172s, but it does not work for Stearman, T-6s or C-45s. At all.
The B-24 landed, unloaded, and there were a bunch of people lined up waiting to go look at the cockpit, while I have started up and am running. I reach for my phone, and it’s not there. I know it’s in the plane because my watch hasn’t alerted me that I’ve left it behind. But I can’t find it. I ask my pax to look which is bad, but they can’t find it. I have two options. Shut down with three concerned passengers and a whole line of people waiting to go see the B-24 staring at me and hunt around for it. Or try to taxi, take off, fly, navigate, get my frequencies, and all that good stuff…without my maps or info, into the worst airspace I’ve flown in in a long time. I taxied straight ahead to get out of the way of the group, then stopped to “let the engines warm up” while I thought about it. I already had my ground, ATIS, tower and departure frequencies in place and knew which were which. I’d been studying the airspace a lot ahead of time, and had a plan of which way to go and what altitudes to be at. I could get a progressive if I got stuck on the ground taxi, but I thought I had that too. I remembered the weird VFR arrival procedures. So I decided I could go ahead and go. My heart rate spiked up from 63 to 110 while I was deciding all this.
I taxi to Runway 9L and don’t get lost. Sit a long time. Then they changed the runway to 27R, and I had to taxi over there, but didn’t get lost. All good. Took off to the west, the direction I wanted to go anyway. Departure cleared me to 4500’ and into the Class B. I said “Um, I don’t want to do that. I want to stay down at 1500’ out of the Class B” (only professionally) so they let me do that, told me to go where I wanted. I said I was going NW, and they said “Cool, go for it, but watch out because the restricted area up there is hot”. I can’t see the restricted area but I knew it was several more miles away than I was. So I circled around an area I knew was safe, pointed out things, chatted with my front seat guy, took his picture, and the whole time I was quite…alert.
Came in to land and ATC wanted me to do a straight in for Runway 9. We took off on 27 because the wind had shifted. I said I needed into the wind, and he said “I don’t know what that means”, and I said “I means I need Runway 27 or 36.” He said “I can’t authorize you to do that against other traffic, take it up with tower.” I go to tower who says “Winds currently 020 at 6, enter right downwind for 27R.” Well, that’s a tailwind, but not a lot of wind. I ask for 36. He says it’s too messy and can I pretty please do 27. I decide to try it with the lower winds. Then he comes back after I’m cleared to land 27 and tells me the winds are 020 at 10 gusting to 15 knots. I’m out. I am not doing a quartering tailwind gusty landing in this Beech. I’ve never done it before and I’m not starting today. I tell him. He makes me extend, he makes me circle, he tries to get me to do it, and I want to say “If you really want to shut this airport down, keep making planes like this one land with a tailwind, so that you have to close the field to pull off a plane from the weeds.” I do say “I’ll stay out here as long as you need to be able to work me in for 36.” He finally sends me to a different tower frequency for Runway 36. They tell me to point for the numbers and hold short of one of the other runways after landing. I say I can’t promise that, as it’s too short. So I made everybody out there mad today, but by God I did not attempt a landing I didn’t feel confident in safely completing, so they can bite me. That was probably the single most stressful ride I’ve ever given in my 15 years of doing warbird rides. That says something. I’ve had some doozies. lol
Tonight Nathan and I and Morgan went out to eat at a place in Orlando called Eddie V’s. It was super fancy, and we were not dressed super fancy. They too can bite me, as he spent $250 on that meal for three people and all she ate was a side dish, and I just had a salad and scallops. So if I’m in jeans and a t-shirt, they spent our money just fine. But MAN it was good. The food was amazing. I don’t know about $250 amazing, but fortunately I didn’t have to pay for it, so it was just REALLY good. Mmmm. I had a beet and cheese salad with blood orange and all that sounds weird, but…so good. And the scallops had oranges and almonds and butter and….good. So good. Fresh warm bread with real butter with pink sea salt on it. Mmm. It was about a 45 minute drive away one way, so I didn’t get back to the room till after 10 or so, and then I had paperwork and a lot of stuff to catch up on before I go to bed, try to sleep, get up, and try to hack rides tomorrow too. I do NOT enjoy being a salesperson and walking around trying to get people to buy a ride. I don’t want to do that any more. It’s not my thing, being a pushy salesman. That’s other people’s strong suite, not mine. But I am doing what I have to do to try to get this to be successful, and if I didn’t, we may not have done more than about 2 rides the entire two weeks I’ve been here. I’ve hunted down most of these people myself that I’ve done. I’ve got 5 days left to try to drum up some business and help us out. Then it’s Glenn’s problem for the last week.
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