Pilot Amenities

So as I mentioned in my last posting, after a couple of postponements, I finally trekked off to the west, instead of the east, in search of good weather and small town airports. A town called Wessington Springs in South Dakota was the destination… or Philip… or Chandler… or Pipestone. It all depended on the weather, and on my endurance. To celebrate my release from low ceilings, New Ulm was the first airport to visit on my route. A lot of pins and needles were plucked from my behind after ducking under the clouds and trying to stay legal. By that point, a break was welcomed. 

It was similar to my own home airport. A city owned and managed facility with a meeting room, lounge area with plenty of chairs and magazines, kind of like a doctors office - only bigger. And often occupied by a collection of local senior men, at around coffee time, for chat and an occasional cribbage match. Attending are an airport manager and an assistant. I entered the lounge and took a picture. As you might be able to see, the managers assistant was busy at her computer (in the back behind the counter on the right,) so much so that she never took notice of my presence. Facebook was being interrogated on her screen. 

The restrooms were large and very clean, and the pilots briefing station very organized, with all kinds of reference materials and a desktop computer workstation, used primarily for getting the weather. Unlike South Saint Paul’s terminal, however, adjacent to the terminal was a very large public hangar. It was available to be shared for rent - by day, or week, or month.

After a pit stop, the Warrior charged back into the air to the next break and landing practice. We made it to Pipestone, Minnesota, one of the candidate overnight stops, but too early to quit there. The lounge was much smaller, but the chairs much more comfortable. The airport manager and his buddy were lamenting about Houston over CNN on the television. Asking if there happened to be a restaurant nearby for lunch, they said no, but I could use the courtesy car to go into town and find something.

A courtesy car is a common amenity offered to pilots for any stop in town they’d like to make (and leave some cash behind,) Most often they are extremely well used vehicles, as was this Impala. It hadn’t been vacuumed in a while, creaked around corners, and not very responsive to the throttle, but got me from point A to point B… and C… and D. Along with a stop at McDonalds, I visited the Pipestone National Monument, recognizing the sacred ground that provided Indian Tribes from all over the U.S. the special pipestone used to make their ceremonial pipes. To this day, only native American Indians are allowed to mine the pipestone in this monument. It’s fascinating to drive by the poor (discarded) rock  that’s been dug up and set aside over who knows how many centuries to get at the reddish colored stone that’s ideal for containing small fires of tobacco. But, alas, it was time to move on.

Back in the Warrior, up into the now entirely blue sky. Wessington Springs looked like just the right distance. It was nestled in the middle of no where, amongst a bunch of wind farms. It’s the first time I’d really flown over those lumbering windmills. It feels like they’re reaching up and trying to pluck you out of the sky, even though it’s clear they’re at least two thousand feet below…. aren't they? Though their blades appear to be making a leisurely arc, they travel faster than the plane I was flying at their tips. Unfortunately, they sliced into a plane load of South Dakotan’s, including a star football player, not that many years ago. Poor visibility caused the pilot of the twin engine airplane to miscaculate their elevation, swatting the plane out of the sky. Those windmills are not to be trifled with, for sure.

As I announced my approach over the radio, back came the reply of a fellow that was already in the pattern. 

“Warrior on approach to Wessington Springs, we’ve kind of set up shop there. We hope we won’t be in your way.”

I told him that was not possible, and that we’d make whatever work. It was a crop duster and his customer farmer working the 3200 acres of his farm 150 acres at a time. The plane would fly in, park in front of the farmers large flat bed loaded with chemical tanks and load another 350 gallons of the mixture concocted by the farmer while the plane was away spraying. All the while the pilot never stopped his engine, the whine of the turbine penetrating all corners of my ear canals. Then off he would go, ever so slowly climbing with his heavy load of liquid, never getting very high. I guess he didn’t need to. Forty five minutes later he would swoop low in a sharp bank to the runway for another load.

Between fillings, the farmer shared a story about his grandfather, who was the second generation in the area. One day, in about 1909, when his grandfather was around nine years old, he was told his chore of the day in the school house was to fetch water at the well. When he arrived at the well with his two buckets, a bunch of horse riders were gathered around to give their horses a drink. It turned out to be Teddy Roosevelt on his way to his vacation spot in North Dakota, which would eventually become the Teddy Roosevelt National Park. Touching history a bit, both then and now in the telling.

It’s amazing what you can learn from someone on their brief break. He and his two brothers,  who worked the farm, all of middle age, were obviously very successful. At least partially because of the sophisticated way they managed their crops and their land. All three graduated from South Dakota  State University. There’s a lot of technology in farming these days, he said, and you have to keep up with it. In a small way, I could relate, spending time the last couple of years trying to catch up with the technology in modern airplane navigation systems. The Satellite positioning system in the crop duster was at another level entirely. It shows coverage maps, where he’d been and where he needed to go, along with a visual depiction of where it had been. 

That’s all there was to Wessington Springs. And when the crop duster left for his home port of Mitchell, I was left alone in the dead quiet with a small shack that contained a desk, a phone, some power outlets (the most critical service needed for those navigation instruments that use batteries), and another door in a hangar that opened to a single stool bathroom and a sink. All I needed for my first camp out under the wing. 

I’d always imagined “camping under the wing,” as they call it. However, in my case, it was more like camping next to the fuselage between the wing and elevator. Eric was kind enough to loan to me his tent, which holds three people and stands about as tall at the tail of the fuselage. I had space more than enough for my foam pad and sleeping bag, along with duffle bag and backpack. It was a star filled night, made bright by the lack of any urban light. It was still as could be as I sat in my lawn chair, taking in the cool South Dakota night. 

The next morning I discovered the disadvantage of camping under the wing. Everything was wet from the dew. Even after dallying and planning and cleaning and taking of a washcloth bath, the tent fly was still wet. A bit of a delay in departure, made irrelevant by my infinitely flexible itinerary. Which this morning said go north to the northern Dakota, direction Teddy Roosevelt.

Here are links to the other segments of this series following my (some would say Don Quixote-ish) barnstorming escapade.

Part 1 - A High School Daydream Part 3 - A Study in Topography
Part 4 - What I Thought I Saw
Part 5 - S.U.M.M.E.R.