John O'Brien - Chaos

Starting the aircraft up, we taxi to the runway and take off into the early afternoon sky. “Okay, it’s 1300 so we should expect to arrive around 2230 East Coast Time,” I say turning the aircraft on an easterly heading of 075 degrees then reach up to set the pressurization system. “Let me know if you have any problems with your ears.”

We climb with the sun overhead, the mostly forested hills of the Cascades float below. Mount Rainier slides by to the south of us, its snowy peak still reaching up above the horizon. At 16,000 feet, I raise the nose slightly and retrim the aircraft to 160 knots from the 180 knots we were climbing out at; the steady roar of the engines reverberates throughout. There is not a car moving on the few roads and highways that thread their way through the high, desert plains of eastern Washington below us, growing smaller as we continue our climb.

“Set altimeters to 29.92,” I say as we pass through flight level 180 and reach ahead to make the setting, watching Robert do the same with his altimeter.

We level off at flight level 250 and let the aircraft accelerate to 250 knots before powering back to maintain that cruise airspeed. “Robert, look on the nav system. It should give a ground speed readout on the front screen,” I say looking back to check on the pressurization system and ensure I have indeed stabilized at the 10,000 foot setting previously inputted.

“396 knots,” he replies back. Nice , I think, we have a tailwind . If that continues, it should shave about thirty minutes off our time. I am worried about our long leg from the Azores to Kuwait and any headwinds we might encounter there. We can’t afford to have much of one due to the distances involved.

“Bri, let’s switch to the external tanks,” I say looking over my shoulder as the ground continues to slide beneath us.

The props keep turning giving a strong indication that she switched everything correctly. I set the autopilot and reflect a moment on the days past and what to expect in the days coming. Eventually, without any manufacturing, everything mechanical will fail. Fuel will eventually dry up, autos will break, anything with a moving part will cease without any way to manufacture and replace the parts. We will begin a fast or slow decline back into the medieval stages or beyond. Any energy source will depend upon some type of heat production which probably means coal, and, without any way to transport that from the coal producing regions, that will mean limited ways to manufacture anything. There is solar or wind power to consider but those also rely on parts that eventually fail and need replacing. Mankind and civilization as we know it has reached it pinnacle.

My mind tracks along this theme wondering if this has happened before. Has mankind flourished in the past only to be brought down again to re-establish itself from scratch? Did we miss something in the growing up process that brought this about? Do we continually miss something? The civilizations before leaving only small markers of their existence, whether by physical markers or by legend or myth. It seems we grew up with intelligence only, leaving the wisdom of our actions behind. Blinding ourselves or ignoring the ramifications. Certainly the indications were there, but in our selfish ways and thinking only of our own time, we ignore them and continue on as before, hoping others would rectify our mistakes. Yes, our time has reached its pinnacle during this evolution. We will crawl and scratch our way back, hopefully doing it right this next time. Respecting and being a part of nature rather than over-controlling it. Living in harmony with it rather than trying to bring it to heel, for, nature seems to take care of itself when pushed over a boundary. We need to live in synchronicity and have a synergy with the world rather than a destructive and over-controlling one.

The drone of the engines pushing us through the sky slowly seeps back into my consciousness as the tall peaks and mountain chain of the great continental divide appears on the horizon. The dry, barren, rocky hills of what was once northern Idaho crosses under our nose and wings, sliding behind us as we push our way eastward.

“Otter 39 on UHF guard for anyone receiving,” I call, switching the UHF radio to guard and listening in between calls. I switch over to the VHF radio, “Otter 39 on VHF guard.” Although silence is the only greeting to our calls, I continue to make radio calls on both frequencies every thirty minutes.

The only exceptions to the blue sky around us are a few lonely high clouds to the south. The air is completely smooth as we drone ever more eastward. I spend some of our time showing everyone the various aircraft systems and letting them take turns flying from the right seat. Approaching the Rockies, we pick up a little turbulence from the westerly winds sweeping up and over them. Not much, but enough to bounce us around a little. Just as the last of the Rocky Mountains pass under our wing and we begin crossing over the high plains of Colorado, I make my usual thirty minute radio call on UHF. This time however, a static-filled response crackles in our headset, “Ot….. Che….. res…. on thr…… co…….”

“Calling on UHF, say again. You are weak and garbled.” I transmit.

“…ine…. enne…. col… ngs…. rep…..” The static interferes with the message to the extent that I can’t come close to making out what they are saying. It’s like playing audio ‘Wheel of Fortune’. Being on UHF, it is most likely military in origin and I am itching to hear and talk with them. I call for the next twenty minutes, even turning south in order to close the distance but am met by silence. The turn to the south assumed that the radio call was American in nature and, with us cutting the US/Canadian border — or what used to be the US and Canada, the caller would almost assuredly have to be to the south. I look at the coordinates on the nav system and mark the map with a small circle and put ‘UHF contact’ with the time and altitude and turn back eastward to intersect our route.

Much of the flight is spent stretching our legs, switching tanks, developing systems knowledge, and taking turns flying. Although some conversation is spent on speculation of the past events and the future, most of the time is spent wrapped up and absorbed in our own thoughts. The only change is the land below as it transitions from mountainous areas to the flatter plains and hills of Montana and then North Dakota. The occasional smudge of smoke billows skyward from fires to the south of us. Some are small with light brown smoke but several others are large and the smoke is dark and oily; the nature and size of the plume indicates the possibility that some large refinery or city is burning.

As we drone on across the northern part of the country, I spot the tops of a line of cumulus clouds on the horizon directly on our route ahead, stretching far to the left and right. This , I think, is the problem of flying distances without any weather forecasting . I was really hoping to avoid weather of any kind but it is hard to navigate the distances we are without encountering some.

“Are those going to be a problem?” Robert asks as the dark clouds loom larger in our windscreen.

“I’m hoping not,” I reply back with some trepidation.

With the autopilot engaged, I unbuckle and walk over to the nav station where Michelle and Nicole are sitting. Reaching across Nicole, I turn on the radar to warm it up. The radar has both weather radar and forward looking infra-red capabilities. With the radar warmed up and on, I step over to Robert, “This is a repeater scope,” I say pointing at the round dial by his right knee. “The grand master plan is to maneuver around anything red on that scope so you give me the number of degrees to turn left or right. The red will be the thunderstorm cells. As we turn, you’ll see the objects on the radar move in relation to our line of flight. The idea is to maneuver around those cells having the red objects either left or right of center. We’ll thread our way through as best as we can. Keep us going generally eastward though.”