NOSE LEFT, LOW RPM HORN SCREAMING

Since the beginning of powered flight, pilots have had one unifying dread – a dead stick landing.

- GEORGE TONKING

I’VE READ MANY ACCOUNTS of the perilous early days of United States airmail flying in the 1920s like how Charles Lindbergh would have to land his de Havilland DH-4 on a short stretch of open land in the backcountry of the Midwest after his Liberty engine gave out.

Lindbergh eventually earned the name Lucky Lindy after his several near-catastrophic moments, including twice bailing out from a dead-in-the-air bird. But we must remember that, by all accounts, it was more skill than luck for this pioneer. Out of pure necessity, Lucky Lindy had developed a sixth sense, a little voice that reassured him: about the health of his bird’s powerplant while flying over hostile land and water, through bad weather and in the dark of night.

He also taught himself to fly with a bit of “money in the bank” – altitude. As the adage goes, “Airspeed is life, Altitude is life insurance.” He may not have said it that way, but he sure lived it. And long he lived – to the ripe age of 72, during which time he mastered the risks of flight, including the famed 30-hour Atlantic crossing in a single-piston-engine plane. He knew stuff.

But how does Lucky Lindy relate to helicopter flight and what can we process and learn through his life?

I’ve mentioned engines being naughty in some of my previous columns – like dropped valves, rocker shafts falling out… even Carl’s engine-coughing impressive 157-metre slide on landing in a crippled R44. All positive outcomes that produced Mount Everest shaped learning curves.