One day recently, while flying by myself in a
Piper Archer, a single engine low wing plane, I started making a series
of landings at the deserted Half Moon Bay airport. I just kept landing
and taking off, time and time again.
I found that I love landing a small plane. Great fun. Why?
In a commercial plane, the passengers are happy to get the plane on the ground smoothly and gently. That is reward in itself.
But I am a
pilot and like a bird who uses all the feathers on its body and most of
its delicate muscles to land, for me the landing is a precarious
transition from the air, where you have to keep moving to stay aloft ... to
touchdown on the ground where your static weight is all that matters.
Everything from the gentle glide that begins at 1,000 feet above the airport to the touchdown on the numbers at the start of the landing strip, is exciting. Like a biological bird, the transition for the mechanical bird's pilot requires flexibility, full attention and an ancient gut level response to the moment by moment changes in every tactile physical extension of the plane that reaches into the cockpit. What fun.