PAGE FOUR

I now knew where the SNJ got its reputation and why Junior put his students in the back for the first hop. If things were this bad taxiing, I wouldn't have any trouble at all getting us into such a bad corner on takeoff or landing that Junior might not be able to get us out.

The first hop is more for orientation than anything else. Junior finds out if you know your left foot from your right and you find out how Junior likes things done. You find out early that Junior has very definite ideas about how to do things, and you do them that way or get a slightly unpreacherly sounding sermon. We did stalls and all of the other checkout rituals, concentrating on getting the nose attitudes right for climbs and glides and figuring out power settings-there's no manifold pressure or tach in the back. Just stick and rudder.

Following the first hop, you get three or four hours in the front seat. Visibility up front is almost adequate, but taxiing, takeoffs, and landings are still an experience in terrified frustration. On my first takeoff from Burchinal's strip, I suddenly saw the entire runway off to the right of the nose as the torque swung me left ... right rudder, right rudder. I never knew my right leg was so short. The torque isn't excessive, or even bad, but once you let it start swinging, you have bad problems because of the inertia it builds up.

All of your practice work is done across town at Cox Field, an old military base with delightfully wide runways and, at times, you need all the pavement you can get. Burchinal takes great pains to make you fly the SNJ like a fighter, as if it has much more power and a much higher wing loading than it actually has. No steep turns, keeping base fairly high with a slightly steep final. The SNJ can be flown like any airplane in the world, but the object is to learn to fly fighters, not SNJs.

My first couple of landings were pretty exciting. I'm basically a rag-leg, puddle-jumper driver, so by the time I would turn final at 90 knots, usually I'd already forgotten several things, and my mouth turned to cotton every time we even got close to the ground.

The SNJ doesn't have much float, especially with the flaps out, so you have to get it set up right the first time; there's not much chance to correct at the last minute. If the wind is on the nose and gear, prop, mixture, hydraulic systems, and all that other complex stuff added to the burden of flying a new plane. To get the gear down on an SNJ, you first have to hit the power lever at your left to energize the system and then put the flaps or gear where you want them. Then you check gear-down indicators through little windows in the wing roots that show whether the locking pins are in place or not. Then you go for some flaps and the prop control.

If you hit perfectly lined up, the airplane will roll straight for a hundred yards or so and then make a gentle swerve one direction or the other. If speed is gone, you have to use brakes to keep it straight, otherwise rudder will do it.

If you are anything but perfectly straight when you hit, all hell breaks loose. The second you touch in a drift, the nose darts for the bushes. It's not a quick turn, it's an instantaneous sort of jerking, careening swerve that happens so fast it's almost impossible to believe. The brakes take so much pressure that I would find myself landing with my heels on the rudder bar so I could have a little extra leg to hit the toe brakes with. A number of times I thought it was all over, as I had all I could put on the pedal, but I'd feel Junior mash the brake and save the bacon.

Crosswinds in an SNJ aren't the most hysterical thing I've ever played with, but you've got to learn to whip them because Junior will have you taking off and landing in the worst left crosswind he can find.. Since most of my flying is in taildraggers, I pride myself on my crosswind technique (at least, I used to), but I'll be darned if I could make things work for me in the SNJ.

In a hard wind it would take a tremendous amount of rudder to keep the nose straight on final, and even more during flare-out. I'd bet a hundred dollars my nose was straight and I had enough rudder, but Junior would scream for more. Even if you're straight when you touch, you can depend on the SNJ to swerve into the wind shortly after landing. It must be terrifying to land in a crosswind with the tailwheel unlocked.

When I could almost (but not quite) handle the front office, Junior moved me back to the "black hole of North American." Junior isn't going to make things easy no matter what. Not only are you short on instruments in the back, but he insists on taking off and landing with the front canopy open, which means your already nonexistent vision is reduced further by having to look through the double pane of oil-smeared glass when he slides his canopy back.

The lack of ground vision didn't bother me too much because I do a lot of instructing from the back of Citabrias, but flying final was like backing into a dark room. With Junior up there, arms folded across the panel top, the runway disappears, the taxiways go, and in the case of his own strip, the entire airport disappears the second you're lined up on final. The cure for that problem is a rounded base to final turn and a steep, short final.

We made landings of every type in every possible configuration. Full flaps, half flaps, no flaps, crosswind, into the wind, no brakes, everything Junior could think of. Although he generally favors three-point landings, we did do some wheel landings and variations. The SNJ wheel-lands so easily that he had me landing on one wheel, a la Hoover, to check if that gear leg was down and locked or to keep the other on up as long as possible if it wasn't locked. He made me land to a full stop, keeping the tail in the air, simulating a situation in which the tailwheel hadn't locked down on the Mustang and we didn't want to lose any more hide off her fanny than necessary.

I knew when he started throwing in little goodies like one-wheel landings that I must be showing some promise. I also knew I had lost nearly 10 pounds since I started the course (he doesn't charge for his reducing plan).

Throughout all the flying and the many, many coffee breaks, the Burchinal philosophy on flying would come out. In the first place, he judges the student's personal attitude toward flying and life in general very carefully. He doesn't have time for smart alecks or the overconfident "Sure I can fly the SNJ, let me go in the Mustang" type. Even though he won't make things easy, he also won't push you too hard. At first, he'll push to see how much you can take and then work from there on at that level. He spends quite a bit of time showing how you should always structure the situation so that you always have an alternative, an out, and he shows you how to take care of any emergency operation of any system. He also judges your progress very critically, watching how you improve.

The first five hours in the SNJ went so badly that I thought about burning my pilot's license. I was really dejected. Then, he put me in the Mustang and told me to taxi for a while. Sitting in the Mustang, with all those horses blowing past the open canopy, I knew I was going to whip that idiotic SNJ because I really wanted to fly the Mustang. It was like giving a full bottle to a reformed drunk; I was hooked.

After seven or eight hours in the SNJ, I began to notice that Junior didn't have to jump on the brakes any more. We were still swerving down the runway, but I was catching it myself. My legs would be shaking, but they'd still be doing their job. In still another hour, I found I wasn't using brakes on a normal landing and just a little on crosswinds, and taxiing had become second nature. What's this? Am I finally conquering the SNJ?

I guess I must have been learning something because Junior told me to take it around a couple times myself. He figures it doesn't do any good to fly a student dual in an airplane if you don't have enough confidence in your own work to solo him. He even solos you in the B-25. I wasn't afraid to solo the SNJ, but what scared me was that I knew I was close to the P-51. I knew he now considered me ready to start making the transition from trainer to fighter, from rag-leg to ace.

Somehow or other I seem to have this magic sense of timing because I had to leave the Mustang hanging for a month to attend to some previous business appointments. I read the Mustang handbook as if it were the Bible and finally got back down to Texas. What transpired then is a story (or two) all to itself. So, tune in next month or so and see if a boy from a small town in Nebraska can find true happiness in a 400-mph Plexiglas bubble.

GO TO PAGE FIVE --Mustang is next!

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