A writer's wild ride

You'd be surprised at how quickly looking up at the ground becomes normal when you're soaring hundreds of feet above the earth, even when all that separates you from the dirt is a thin pane of glass and the thin air.

After just a few minutes in a Pitts Special biplane, that lesson becomes either painfully or blissfully clear, depending on your constitution and desire for adventure.

Friday afternoon I got the chance to do something many people have never tried when pilot Brett Hunter took me over the skies around Cape Girardeau in his Pitts, going through maneuvers that exerted forces up to four times normal gravity, some of the same maneuvers he'll be performing today and Sunday at the Cape Girardeau Regional Air Festival.

All those rides on the Mr. Freeze and the Ninja paid off for me.

Of course, roller coasters pale in comparison to inverted flight, barnstormer loops, Cuban Eights, hammerhead turns and snap rolls, but the thrill is the same sort -- the fright reaction creates an adrenaline rush that becomes one of the most empowering feelings ever.

All you have to do is let go and let the seat belts do their work.

To understand what it's like to ride in a small craft like a Pitts, you have to understand what a Pitts is -- a flying engine.

Hunter's biplane carries a six-cylinder, 260-horsepower engine that pushes a mere 1,200-pound craft through the atmosphere. Made of a tube steel frame with a wood cover, the plane is so light that it can be pushed around by one person. As Hunter calls it, the Pitts is "a modern muscle biplane."

Scarier than the ride

The preparation for riding in such an aircraft is really scarier than the ride. First of all, I had to sign a liability waiver that basically said that if we crashed, I couldn't sue. After all, the Pitts isn't an airliner; it's a plane made specifically for trick flying.

After the waiver was signed, it was time for a quick crash course in how to work an emergency parachute. Here are some tips: Be sure to pull the D-ring (which releases the parachute) with both hands, keep your knees flexible when you land and look at the horizon when you get close to the home planet.

Then there are the rules governing removal of the canopy (one knob goes backward, the other goes forward).

After those initial instructions, it was time to sit back and enjoy the ride, or endure it. From the first split second of take-off in the Pitts, it became obviously clear to me that this wasn't the jumbo jet I rode from St. Louis to Wichita about 10 years ago.

First of all, there's the noise. The rumble of the engine is loud, so loud Hunter calls the plane an aluminum megaphone. Not to worry, the headset takes care of that, making sure the loudest audible sound is that of numbers and words like "bravo" and "tango."

It didn't take me long to get over the case of the chuckles I got from hearing that foreign language -- once we left the ground, my stomach stayed down there. As a general rule, I always try to take my digestive tract intact wherever I go, but just this once I made an exception and told it to stay on the ground.

Good riddance, stomach. Now you can't cause me trouble later on.

And it was a good thing, since the maneuvers I was subjected to (actually, maneuvers I volunteered for) could have easily made my little food-loving buddy upset.

Among them were those I mentioned earlier, but those terms are just pilots' lingo. Now it's time for layman's terms.

Take the hammerhead turn, for instance. One second, you're looking straight up at the sky. Before you know it, what was once blue has turned green, as the plane plummets toward the ground in what seems like a sure ticket to death. But not in the hands of our capable pilot.

Started to black out

Then there's the Cuban Eight, which from the ground looks like a number eight laying on its side. From the cockpit, it's hard to tell exactly what's going on. The only sure thing is that the ground is on the left at one point, and on the right at the other.

The gyroscopic tumble is one made for only the most adventurous, or most stupid, thrill seekers. Basically, the plane tumbles end over end in the air, with the horizon flying by at amazing speed. Try that in a car.

I think this is the move where I started to black out, but was somehow able to maintain consciousness.

And you might not think it would be fun to simulate stalling and losing control of a plane in midflight, but Hunter does. He seems to really have a ball doing the snap roll, in which the plane careens toward the ground in a tailspin. At that point, this passenger just had to let go of all cares and put his life in the trusted hands of a virtual stranger.

It worked.

Hunter tells me I handled the flight like a trooper, as good as probably one in 20 people. Of course, when I exited the Pitts, I was soaked in sweat and my stomach had returned with a vengeance. I guess it wasn't happy about being left behind.

But that kind of flight is an experience I recommend for anyone. If you get the chance and have the money, look Hunter up after today's show is over. The flights aren't cheap, but they're better than Mr. Freeze could ever be.

msanders@semissourian.com

335-6611, extension 182