I got to fly like an eagle

“You’re going to throw up,” is something I don’t hear from my father too often, but I understood why he felt that way when I told him about my latest adventure: airplane aerobatics.

After watching the Columbia County Fair banner being pulled across the St. Helens sky, I made a couple of calls to track down the pilot, Chuck Hamm, because I’d heard he also did stunt flying.

He most certainly does.

Chuck was kind enough to take me for a ride in his 1942 Coast Guard Stearman, a two-seat, open cockpit biplane.

Our trip was postponed a bit at first because he had to track down a friend to whom he had loaned his spare parachute. Thinking about needing a parachute wasn’t very comforting.

Before we got into the plane, Chuck demonstrated the maneuvers we’d be doing with a Styrofoam model airplane. There was to be lots of flipping, turning, and time upside down.

Maybe father does know best, piped a small voice in my head.

Nevertheless, we strapped into the plane, using two seat belts. Then I put the radio on, the propeller started spinning, and I started grinning.

The climb to 3,000 feet was unlike any I’d experienced, considering the air was smacking me straight in the face.

It felt good to escape the 90-degree weather into cooler air higher in atmosphere.

I was surprised to see how many bodies of water there are in Columbia County, as there seemed to be little ponds and lakes sprinkled in quite liberally with the fields and forests.

Once we got up to the 3,000-foot mark above Sauvie Island, it was time to start making some moves.

Chuck started out slow, which was wise considering I was in the front seat, so if I didn’t like what was happening, he was going to get the brunt of it.

A 90-degree turn to the left with the plane sideways and another to the right felt fine, so we advanced a little bit.

And by that I mean we did a loop. I felt completely fine until I looked right into the sun when we were on our upswing. That was stupid.

Next was a barrel roll, which was a little different, considering my shoulder straps started heading down toward the ground. I held on tightly to the handrails and learned what fields look like when they spin over your head: eerily similar to what it’d be like if you did one really long cartwheel a few thousand feet in the air.

Once we came out of the barrel roll, we went into what’s called a hammerhead. In this move, the plane goes up, flips around and then goes straight down toward the ground. It’s like being on the world’s biggest, best, and oddly enough, safest roller coaster.

This move led to a similar one, in which we elevated, and then went straight down toward the ground again. Except this time, Chuck spun the plane in a full circle while the ground was coming up at us. It’s weird when the ground looks like a merry-go-round.

Update: No sickness in the stomach; facial muscles getting a workout as a result of the smile that doesn’t seem to want to leave my face.

Frankly, I think Chuck may have been worried about all the sounds I was making over the radio… mostly laughter, giggling and exclamations of “Awesome!”

For the next trick I went through a Half Cuban Eight. The plane did a little more than half of a loop, then half of a roll.

Eight wasn’t enough, as after the Half Cuban Eight we went into a Lazy Eight. Here the plane did about a quarter of a loop up, then the left wing dipped under the plane, another half of a loop, then the right wing dipped beneath the plane, and then we finished the final quarter loop.

All of the flipping in this move reminded me of the slow motion feeling you get when you do a flip on a trampoline.

To top it off, we did a two-point hesitation, which is basically just as it sounds. Chuck rolled the plane but with a bit of a stall while we were upside down. A bird has a good view of Scappoose High School. The track looks much redder from this perspective.

We went from this into a low-ride, cruising over some fields like a crop duster. Then Chuck pointed to two trees and said we were going to split them.

Naturally, as we approached the trees, the distance between them looked a little too short. So Chuck turned the plane sideways and we split them, with the plane perpendicular to the ground.

This was to be the end of the trip, but as we approached the airport, we noticed some smoke coming from the woods. We flew over to investigate but couldn’t get a good look from our altitude. So Chuck peeled off (think: jets leaving the “V” formation in “Top Gun”) and came around for a closer look. Sure enough, there was a fire burning up the brush near some woods.

In all, we hit five-and-a-half positive Gs and one-and-a-quarter negative Gs (when the plane was heading down for moves like the hammerhead).

For the half-hour we were up there, I don’t think a second went by when there wasn’t a grin on my face.

I’ve never really considered myself an adrenaline junky, but this got my blood flowing and was an absolute blast.

If it sounds like fun to you too, give Chuck a call at (503) 939-0252.