A message made its way to me this morning via the Internet. Whether the message is one of profound importance or not is entirely subjective.
Me? I choose to take it as a confirmation that I’ve spent my life doing worthwhile things.
The message came in the form of a video clip. The sender is a friend who makes his living as a musician. He is not a pilot. He doesn’t have any direct connection to aviation save one important factor. He has the ability to recognize true beauty when it smacks him in the face.
The video is only a few seconds long, too short to be a Hollywood blockbuster. But it is every bit as intriguing as any Oscar winner of the modern age.
It starts with a static shot of an early morning scene. The sun is rising, casting golden light onto high clouds glowing in the distance. The reflected light exposes a tranquil grassy field. Establishing the background is a line of tall leafy trees. A thin layer of fog hugs the surface of the earth. The grass glistens with dew.
The wispy early morning veil is no more than five feet thick. Undisturbed it looks very much like a blanket of cotton candy laid upon the land. Almost immediately an airplane enters the shot. It is in a graceful descending right turn, aligning itself with the camera. For a moment, as the wings level, the fuselage disappears behind the mist. The wings remain visible above the blanket of white. The airplane bursts through a barrier of water vapor, its wheels mere inches above the surface. The touchdown is delicate and smooth.
As the airplane passes through invisible air, the lift acting on its wings impart a swirling motion to the fog. The center of the shot clears. Wingtip vortices become clearly visible, spinning wider as they move outward from the grassy center of the shot. The airplane passes the camera, leaving only the sound of an idling engine behind.
In the clip’s final seconds, the sound of the engine increases as it powers up for a touch and go.
This, from a non-pilot friend who simply wanted to brighten my day with a video clip he instinctively knew would appeal to me.
The airplane is a Piper Cub — perhaps the most iconic airplane in the general aviation fleet. It’s not fast. It can’t carry much of a payload. It came from the factory in a time before television was common. It had no high-end technology in its panel. The Cub is undeniably slow.
As a friend once said, you can fly anywhere in a Cub. All you need is a compass and a calendar.
You will rarely meet a pilot who doesn’t either have Cub time in their logbook or want Cub time in their logbook. For all its simplicity, it is an elegant machine. Easy to fly, hard to fly well, it moves through the air with as much grace as any flying machine ever could. It’s simply beautiful.
Of course, my friend the non-pilot didn’t make the video he just shared it. The originator of the clip is a guy by the name of Joe Costanza. No relation to the fictional George Costanza of Seinfeld fame.
Joe can be found on all the typical online social media sites. He’s got a YouTube channel, a Facebook page (you can see the video on Joe’s Facebook page), and whatever the kids on Instagram call having a presence there. He can be found by searching on his name, or his online call-sign, Bananasssssssss. Yes, there are 9 s’s in his handle. The man has a sense of humor.
He’s also got a wealth of insight into aviation at the low and slow end, as well as at the high and fast pinnacle of the industry. Joe flies for fun, as well as for a profession. It’s encouraging to know the guy in the front seat of the Boeing 737 I’m riding along in has every bit as much passion for flight as little guys like I do.
I use the term little guys as an indicator of the small, single-engine aircraft so many of us fly. As anyone who has met me can attest, my physical presence does not suggest the word “little” at all.
The point of all this is aviation truly has something for everyone. Some of us want to fly. We seek out opportunities to climb aboard and fire up that powerplant. Whether it’s a 65-hp Continental that’s decades old, or the newest Rotax straight out of the box, we’re interested.
Catching up with a guy like Joe, excuse me, Bananasssssssss, gives any of us the chance to enjoy the art of flying through visual media. But for those who might want to go a bit deeper, perhaps even to the professional level, there is insight to be gleaned on his channel that can make any one of us a better, more knowledgeable pilot.
Aviation truly is an art and a science. Both descriptions are equally valuable. For my non-pilot friends, the visuals intrigue them. Over time as they view more and more positive material, they become aviation enthusiasts. Direct participation is not required.
The wider the market of individuals who see aviation in a positive light, the better the environment is for those of us who do participate in some fashion.
Thank goodness for creators like Joe who shed an accurate and often enthusiastically positive view of the industry via social media. From the smallest and lightest to the largest and most powerful, we all have a place at the aeronautical table.
It is nice to have the things like this to try and counteract all the bad publicity that aviation gets anytime there is a small plane accident. So many times my wife has been asked by acquaintances “how can you let your husband fly in those things?” Granted, the vast majority of what I fly are experimental aircraft, but still fun.