AOPA Pilot Magazine - January 2017 - 37

TEST PILOT

DANIEL A. BROWN was a GA pilot with 700 ﬂight hours in

Cessna 150 and 152s. He is a retired public school teacher.

BY BARRY SCHIFF

1. The mammoth Airbus A380
has three ailerons on each wing.
What is so unusual about their
operation?
2. True or false? During World War
II, Germany developed hyperspectral prismatic lenses that enabled
Luftwaffe fighter pilots to "see"
turbulence less than three miles
ahead of the aircraft.
3. The Women Airforce Service
Pilots (WASP) was a remarkably
successful program, so why was
this group disbanded following
World War II?
4. A pilot tunes to a vortac. While
attempting to aurally identify the
station, he hears a dash, four dots,
and a dash clustered together as if
representing a letter of the alphabet in Morse code, but there is no
such letter. What does this signify?

JOHN SAUER

as lecturing to thousands at audiences across the Northeast.
In all, 18 months were spent submerged in the Holocaust,
after which I felt psychically and emotionally poisoned.
I went into therapy to cleanse myself. At the ﬁnal session, my therapist asked me, "You have done so much
for others. What would you like to do for yourself?" The
answer came immediately. "I want to get my pilot's license."
Eighty-ﬁve hours and countless crosswind landings
later, I earned my certiﬁcate at the age of 47. I celebrated
by ﬂying the Hudson River Corridor in early February, and
landing on Lake Winnipesaukee's ice runway one week later.
I had a good run over the 17 years and 700 hours of
my ﬂight career. Mostly I ﬂew locally just for the sheer
beauty of being aloft. I usually ﬂew after sundown. That
twilight hour before official nighttime became my favorite
time to ﬂy. The soft illumination of the sky underscored
by the twinkling lights of towns and isolated farmsteads
was like soaring through an animated Disney landscape.
To be on the wing during this entrancing period inspired
me to resuscitate my art career after a 30-year absence.
After we arrived in Taos, New Mexico, in January
2014, my desire to ﬂy evaporated. Weeks can go by without the thought of ﬂying even entering my mind. My ﬁrst
explanation was that sitting here on my patio, I am already
at 8,100 feet, 1,600 feet above my former cruising altitude, and greeted by a 50-mile view. As a friend of mine
observed, "Dan, Taos has become your airplane."
A deeper realization, however, forced me to admit that
I didn't know what I didn't know. Despite memorizing
my Jeppesen manuals during my initial ﬂight test in 1997
and passing every ﬂight review since, I was more an artist
behind the yoke than was healthy. There were too many
details concerning the science and mechanics of aviating
that were beyond my comprehension. I decided not to
push my limits in a more exacting environment.
So I quit. At ﬁrst, such a thought struck me as heresy.
Much of my personal identity revolved around my being a
pilot. My macho pride whispered I was acting "unmanly,"
a strange thought for a sensitive New-Age guy like myself.
Whether my decision was based on cowardice or wisdom,
at age 66, I comforted myself with the adage about "old and
bold pilots."
These days ﬁnd me content to sit on my patio and take in
the million-dollar view over Taos Valley. I am proud to have
made a lifetime dream of ﬂight a reality, and equally relieved
I knew when to hang up my wings without doubt or shame.
To those reading this, may your tailwinds always be
strong, and may you never lose the wonder of being aloft
in the wild blue.

5. From reader John Schmidt:
A pilot flying near Casa Grande,
Arizona, notices a 289-squaremile grid of 273 concrete Xs on

the desert ﬂoor. Each X measures
25 feet by 25 feet. What is the signiﬁcance of these markers?
6. True or false? The minimum age
for soloing an aircraft in the United
States is 14.
7. Juan Trippe of Pan American
World Airways referred to his airline's ﬂying boats as Clippers, an
effort to link Pan Am with the heritage of the ocean liners with which
he was competing. What were the
four types of four-engine flying
boats used by the airline?
8. A pilot is executing a normal
turn at a constant altitude and airspeed. He then steepens the bank
and increases airspeed. This causes
turn rate to _____ and turn radius
to _____.
A. increase, increase
B. increase, decrease
C. decrease, increase
D. Cannot be determined from the
information given.
ANSWERS on page 40

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Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of AOPA Pilot Magazine - January 2017