Prairie Sky

A Pilot's Reflections on Flying and the Grace of Altitude

W. Scott Olsen

• Publisher: University of Missouri
• Year: 2013
• ISBN:
  9780826273048
• Topic: Technology & Engineering
• Subtopic: Transportation & Navigation
• Index: Technology & Engineering

"It's almost like ballet. Preflight. Starting. Warm-up. The voices from the control tower—the instructions. Taxiing. The rush down the runway. Airborne. There are names for every move. The run-up. Position and hold. Every move needs to be learned, practiced, made so familiar you feel the patterns in every other thing you do. It's technical, yes. But there is a grace to getting metal and bone into the sky."

Prairie Sky is a celebration of curiosity and a book for explorers. In this collection of contemplative essays, Scott Olsen invites readers to view the world from a pilot's seat, demonstrating how, with just a little bit of altitude, the world changes, new relationships become visible, and new questions seem to rise up from the ground.

Whether searching for the still-evident shores of ancient lakes, the dustbowl-era shelterbelt supposed to run the length of the country, or the even more elusive understandings of physics and theology, Olsen shares the unique perspective and insight allowed to pilots.

Prairie Sky explores the reality as well as the metaphor of flight: notions of ceaseless time and boundless space, personal interior and exterior vision, social history, meteorology, and geology. Olsen takes readers along as he chases a new way of looking at the physical world and wonders aloud about how the whole planet moves in interconnected ways not visible from the ground. While the northern prairie may call to mind images of golden harvests and summer twilight such images do not define the region. The land bears marks left by gut-shaking thunderstorms, hard-frozen rivers, sweeping floods, and hurricane-size storms. Olsen takes to the midwestern sky to confront the ordinary world and reveals the magic--the wondrous and unique sights visible from the pilot's seat of a Cessna.

Like Antoine de Saint-Exupery's classic work Wind, Sand and Stars, Olsen's Prairie Sky reveals the heart of what it means to fly. In the grand romantic tradition of the travel essay, it opens the dramatic paradoxes of self and collective, linear and circular, the heart and the border.

Deep SWE

Day One

Of course, it has to be a fluid that keeps us on the ground.

Standing in a hangar at the Fargo Jet Center, two NOAA pilots, Johann Gebauer and Paul Hemmick, WDAY television meteorologist Daryl Ritchison and his photographer, and I are all staring at an airplane wing. We are supposed to be in the sky already. It's midmorning in early February, eastern North Dakota. We are supposed to be in the sky, measuring the amount of water in the snowpack, the snow-water equivalent, the SWE. The numbers are supposed to be sent to the National Weather Service's River Forecast Centers. The numbers will tell us about the floods we all know are coming to the Sheyenne River and the Red River of the North. The floods that are coming to Fargo, Moorhead, Grand Forks, Winnipeg. This is important work. The weather is perfect. Cold and clear and calm. No ceiling. Unlimited visibility. A day made for flying. But the airplane is broken. The scavenge pump is dead.

“Scavenge pump?” I ask.

“It moves fuel from the outboard fuel cell to the inboard fuel cell when the level is low,” Johann says. “The airplane has a five-hour range, and we're scheduled for a three-hour flight. We're not going to need it. But we can't fly with a broken pump unless the office signs off on it.”

The fluid, the jet fuel, won't move on its own. We can't make it move because the pump is broken. Outside, the water won't move either. It's frozen in place and frozen to the ground. Daryl and I stare at the airplane, a Gulfstream Jet Prop Commander. Twin engine, high wing, it's a fine airplane for looking at the ground. It all makes perfect sense.

Johann makes a call on his cell phone to the NOAA Aircraft Operations Center at MacDill Air Force Base in Tampa, Florida. Both men, young and dark-haired, dressed in blue flight suits, seem annoyed at the delay. NOAA is part of the Department of Commerce, yet they use navy rank. Outside the airplane, Johann is an ensign, and Paul is a lieutenant. But inside the airplane, Johann has more flight time, and he is the aircraft commander. Paul is the copilot. They trade who sits in the left seat.

Paul walks by and raises an eyebrow. “We might fly today. We might not,” he says.

Time is slipping by. We are supposed to fly up to the Devil's Lake basin today. That snow is deep, dangerous in what it means downstream. There is another mission on the docket for a flight south, a look at the Minnesota side of the Red River, so if the airplane is fixed fast, we might go that way.

Daryl and I follow the two men into the Jet Center terminal. Daryl sends his photographer away. There's nothing to do but wait, stare at the snow and sky, and wish we were flying. So we find coffee, a table, and some chairs. Outside the sun is bright on the snowfields.

“It's the switch,” Johann says. “Activation of this switch is manual when there is around three hundred pounds of Jet A remaining inside each of the tanks. The purpose of the scavenge pump is to get any fuel remaining in the outboard fuel cells to flow into the inboard cells. But the light is on all the time now. That doesn't mean the pumps are running. There is a short keeping the light on even though the switch and pumps are selected off. So, basically, we need it fixed because if we went flying and the right pump doesn't turn on, we wouldn't know since the light is on regardless.”

There are people at the River Forecast Centers waiting on these numbers. There are people in the Weather Service waiting for what the numbers mean. There are city officials planning how many sandbags to fill. There are schoolchildren filling sandbags. It's only February. Insurance companies are pushing flood insurance.

“It's possible they can fix it,” Paul says. “If not, we can overnight the part, and we can trade it out and fly tomorrow.”

I look over at Daryl. We've known each other for years. Tall and thin with sand-colored hair, he's the kind of meteorologist who chases tornadoes. Solid science and a bit of adrenaline. He can't wait to get in the airplane.

“Tell me how the scanner works?” I ask.

“What's in there now,” Johann says, “is a gamma-radiation detector. It's a passive detector. It's got its own computer and a series of crystals—downward-facing crystals and upward-facing crystals—and we measure the upwelling gamma radiation. The naturally occurring gamma radiation, coming out of the top twenty centimeters of soil. The radiation that's been coming out of the ground for forever, for billions of years.”

“Got it,” I tease. “We're going to blast the countryside with radiation from a low-flying airplane.”

“No,” Johann smiles. “It's a passive system. We're not actively sending out any radiation. We're simply absorbing it; it's a gathering of isotope signatures. We're looking at potassium, uranium, and thorium. Those are the three main isotopes that we're really concentrating on. These are the core isotopes that were discovered to allow us to measure the snow-water equivalent. The SWE.”

“How does it all get processed?” Daryl asks.

Paul leans forward. “As for collecting it,” he says, “there's a data-processing unit that's going to actually be computing the SWE value. It's also going to take into consideration certain coefficients, not only with the crystals but within the radiation detector, and also interference with the aircraft. Then we're also setting the outside temperature because there is a mass of air that the isotopes have to travel through. So we're inputting things into the data-processing unit, the data-processing unit is making those calculations airborne, and then at the end of the day, we're going to process those because as we fly those flight lines, we're also writing comments, such as, ‘Deep drifts,’ or ‘Source river open at this point, not frozen.’ Once we FTP this stuff that night to the NOHRSC office, that's the National Operational Hydrologic Remote Sensing Center, in Minneapolis, that's then distributed to whoever uses it. The River Forecast Centers and the hydrologists at the forecast centers, they're able to plug our information into their flood-outlook models. You have ground observers and you have the satellites, and we basically fill in the gaps. The satellite is a broad picture, doesn't give you much detail, and when you look at the people taking their own little SWE samples in their backyard, that's a very localized thing. A lot of places are very sparsely populated, so what we're doing is we're going out and getting that fifteen- to twenty-nautical-mile stretch, a thousand feet wide.”

We watch a jet take off, a couple private planes come and go. We watch students and their instructors in white Cessna 172s get a feel for the flare. We are sitting in a conference room, waiting to go. It strikes me that NOHRSC is pronounced like “no risk,” which makes me smile.

Johann's cell phone rings. Daryl and I sit up, suddenly hopeful.

“We might still fly today,” Paul says. “But it's looking doubtful. We're losing daylight.”

Daryl calls his photographer and offers an update.

The airplane is warm inside the hangar. The coffee is strong. Somewhere in Tampa, someone is deciding the risk of letting this airplane fly. We're told that it might be possible to simply disconnect the pump and placard the switch as inoperative, sign a waiver, and get on with it. We wait, and we get to talking about history. Paul says he went to sea when he joined NOAA, was the navigation officer on the Oregon II, then worked as an admiral's aide in Washington, DC. Then he had to make a decision. Either back to sea or take up something completely new. He took to the air. Off the phone, no news yet, Johann says he studied aviation and meteorology in college, became a flight instructor and pumped gas at a FBO (fixed-base operation), flew for Delta's Comair, and then jumped over to NOAA. Together, they fly the prairie, and they also fly the Brooks Range in northern Alaska. They do harbor-seal surveys in southeastern Alaska during summer. “Because of television,” Johann says, “my mother thinks I'm flying blind in Alaska storms, almost hitting hills.”

“But you fly very low,” I say. “Five hundred feet above the ground is nothing.”

“Once you are exposed to that environment,” Johann continues, “you begin to feel comfortable with that environment, and there are measures that we take to ensure safety. Like I mentioned before, we have a waiver that allows us to fly at five hundred feet anywhere in the country. Canada, too. We have a military planning software called FalconView. It's a DOD program that basically displays sectional charts, and even more detail as we go through the layers of maps and scales of maps of where we are flying over. You are able to highlight obstructions before you go.”

“When we're surveying at five hundred feet, we have to maintain between 100 and 120 knots ground speed,” Paul says. “If we're not surveying, it would be about 250 knots true airspeed. Those planes have to survey between 100 and 120 knots ground speed, which is what the systems are calibrated to. It allows us to collect the most data that we can and maintain safety. Any slower, and we are jeopardizing our own safety.”

Five hundred feet above the ground at only 115 knots. Pilots call it flying low and slow. All things considered, it's the most dangerous way to fly. Make a mistake, and you're inside somebody's bean field fast.

“Is there a favorite flight?” I ask. “One that is just a better story?”

Paul laughs. “Johann?”

Johann says, “It actually doesn't even involve a Snow Survey. This summer we were doing a national geodetic survey, a gravity survey, all over the state of Alaska. Gravity for the redefinition of the American vertical datum. We were flying all over Alaska, checking gravity, just basically cruising along between twenty and twenty-five thousand feet for four hours straight, two times a day, so eight hours a day, all summer long. I got to see a lot of the terrain in Alaska, which was pretty neat. But as far as surveying, when we survey in the Kenai Peninsula in Alaska, around south of Anchorage toward Homer, Seward area, that's a really pretty area to fly in.”

“Just a couple of weeks ago, we were out here surveying North Dakota,” Paul says, “and Daryl, you might remember low, low ground fog to the point where you couldn't even see the ground? So we're flying at five hundred feet, and this low, low ground fog is just hovering over the surface. We really can't even see streets, but we're surveying because we have our moving maps. And that was really odd to me, because if you're flying VFR, visual, those are your reference points. We could see the ground, barely, and we were safe; we maintain safety at all times. But, you know, that kind of sticks up in my mind. We're on top, as if the fog was clouds, but we can survey. It was very pretty.”

We wait, drink more coffee, watch other airplanes take off and land. When the phone rings, the news is not good. The part will be here in the morning, but we cannot fly today. The disappointment is heavy in the room.

“It is an awesome plane to fly,” Johann says. “They are really awesome planes to fly.”

Day Two

At system check, the airplane bucks like a racehorse in a starting gate, every muscle wanting to go. Paul flying left seat, Johann flying right seat, I sit in the middle, just behind the scanner, and Daryl sits in back. The temperature is twelve degrees below zero, Fahrenheit. The windchill is minus thirty. The sky is clear. A great day for flying. We all want to get into the air.

We've finished the safety briefing, what to do in event of fire, how to use the oxygen, how to exit the airplane. Paul and Johann go through the checklists like a well-tuned pair. I turn around and look at Daryl. “I am totally stoked for this!” he says, a wide grin on his face.

Earlier, we played a terrible joke. Just by coincidence, Paul and Johann and I arrived at the Jet Center at the same time. The airplane was towed onto the ramp, and the pilots began the preflight checks. Daryl's photographer showed up. Daryl had one last segment to do on air this morning, so we knew he would be the last to arrive. But as we saw his pickup on the Jet Center road, we suddenly had a plan. We hid around a corner in a very dark room. When he came in, with the straightest face possible, a woman named Tabitha, who was working the Jet Center desk, calmly informed Daryl that we had left. She said there was a weather problem, and we couldn't wait. For just an instant, you could feel the despair fill the room. But Daryl is not that easily fooled, and we all came around the corner laughing.

At the same time, a young woman, college age, stood a bit hesitantly near the desk for a while, then asked if this is where the flight lessons started. The excitement and nervousness of it all poured out of her face and smile. Tabitha directed her one building over, to the flight school.

Now, watching the auxiliary power unit being wheeled away from the NOAA plane, we can see her getting her first walk around and preflight of a Cessna 172. And what I wish I could tell her is the joy never goes away. What she's feeling today, she will feel when she solos, when she passes her check ride, and every time she takes an airplane into the sky.

At 9:46 a.m. we are cleared for takeoff on Runway Two-Seven. Engines and props set to full forward, brakes released, and this plane bolts down the runway. Acceleration, I believe, is always a thrill. It doesn't matter if it's quick feet, a fast car, or a hot airplane. Acceleration is an expression of both power and desire. It's impossible not to smile.

Rotation and we are airborne. The gear come up before we clear the end of the runway. We make a right turn, toward the northwest, but then we have to hal...

Table of contents

• Cover Page
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Dedication
• Contents
• Prologue: Walking Chaucer
• River Flying: The Sheyenne River
• Short-Hop Notebook: Dakota Sky
• A Wall of Old Trees
• Short-Hop Notebook: Math Class
• River Flying: The Red River
• Short-Hop Notebook: Fame
• Afternoon at the Atomic Café
• Ground Reference
• Short-Hop Notebook: Stats
• Storm Flying
• Short-Hop Notebook: Jazz
• Tag
• Short-Hop Notebook: The Swoop
• That Thing Up Front
• A Very Deep Low
• Monster Sky
• Thin Places and Thick Time: A Duet for Two Worlds
• Deep SWE
• Collecting the Horizon
• The Beautiful Line
• Acknowledgments
• About the Author