Sex and the Seaplane
Sex survival and evolution are all intertwined and very much a part of aviation. Where global aviation has evolved to bigger and faster jets, the seaplane remains the undifferentiated stem cell, capable of operation out of blue barrels of AV gas and nearly any stretch of water. Slow and stately, stable and safe, it operates beneath the weather. In primitive conditions, the floatplane or seaplane will still deliver. The earthquakes in Alaska, the floods in Fiji placed a premium on the floatplane and its ability to define its own landing and docking area. As the beak of the Finch evolves in lush and wet times, and this very evolution proves a handicap in times of drought, modern transportation and high speed jets have evolved beyond their ability to deliver in times of disaster, flood, quake and even war. The floatplane, or call it a bush plane, operates on skies tundra tires or floats. The big flaps can be pumped to achieve truly remarkable landing and takeoff performance. These are hybrid mutts, in a sense, with modifications and genetic exchange that rivals nature. Love and natural selection works towards adaptation. Mission capability and adaptability to diverse demands has lead to the survival of this species. Pilots fall in love with their charge. Many work on them through the long winter with tenderness and care only to fly them with unmerciful drive through the summer.
In the animal world, matting favors species identification and perceived advantages such as size, the beak, the color, or the song. The sexy scheme of things works towards the survival of the species, and so it is with the seaplane. What power unit, which STOL kit, are there adequate long-range fuel tanks? The pilot is mated to the plane; the selection trends towards mission capability.
That pilots fall in love with their planes speaks for itself; with the floatplane, it may be even more so. There may be a hate as well or ambivalence, a love hate relationship. The relationship, nonetheless, becomes symbiotic. In essence, the capabilities of plane and pilot blend to form a union, the performance of each dependent upon the capabilities and limitations of the other. In Alaska, part 135 requires 500 hours of the seaplane pilot, in the type of aircraft he or she is to fly. This licensed marriage of familiarity is unique to this kind of flying.
Sex is directed towards preservation of the species. It is the union by selection and the tool of survival. The seaplane is the trunk of the tree, the undifferentiated primordial DNA of a wilderness frontier. The appeal is irresistible. Passengers, sometimes awestruck, sometimes bound by fear, are all pulled by this primordial appeal. Nowhere is it more evident than standing up to the hip boots in crystal clear cold water with hands on the curved surface of the big Edo floats positioning the plane for passengers or for flight. With the floatplane, you take off from the water and land on the water, what higher order of good?
Transportation is a fundamental need for most all living things. Plants send pollen on the wind, wolves grow four swift legs and birds fly. Homosapiens, hominids walk or invent something better. The seaplane is not limited to man and his machine. Anne Morrow Lindbergh, North to the Orient, the Wright brother’s little sister, Amelia Earhart should have flown a seaplane. There seems no discrimination in the love of a seaplane. This love may be an issue of hormones; It seems clearly sexual. Women passengers were attracted to the floatplane in at least as great a number as were the men. It is not a macho thing, this attraction. I wonder if the attraction is not due to the undifferentiated nature of the seaplane as a means of transportation, as a boat or as a plane, its prowess for air and water.
Maybe some of the appeal stems from the romance and the marketing of the China Clipper. On April 16, 1935 at 3:45 p.m., Edwin Musick, Pan Am’s chief pilot, left Alameda for Honolulu. The four-engine clipper, an S-42, on its 2,440-mile survey flight carried 15,000 letters and opened what was to become a Pacific Island rout to China. The venture proved to have international consequences, spies, romance and war. When the Martin Clipper first carried passengers in October of 1***, it was technically advanced, years ahead of other long-range passenger or military aircraft. It had enormous appeal; the craft could land on coral lagoons throughout the Pacific where a landing field was not feasible. It was a threat to the Japanese military ambitions of the time.
My first encounter with a seaplane was with the S-38 Sykorskie in a Rita Heyworth movie. One look and I was hooked. The red hair didn’t hurt any either. I started flying as soon as I could. I was sixteen, but in Missouri or Kansas, there were no seaplanes. That is what I longed for, that smooth mahogany hull and the wings that could fly it. It was not until I pulled an engine change on 54C on the beach behind the Osprey nests and logs on Lake Coeur d' Alene that I begain to satisfy that longing.
I guess I might be inclined to confuse wet feet with sex, but the sexiest part of my floatplane experience was with relationship, with my wife Diane. By the time I practiced medicine for 30 years I was fried, and my wife was tired of my being tired. I sold my clinic, which opened opportunities for us. We sold our home. Diane moved to Spirit Lake in Idaho to write books and be on a lake and I moved to Alaska to fly floatplanes. This was not a separation but a quest. We were able to rent a home on the lake in Idaho and an apartment on the lake in Alaska. This was a tale of two cities. I was not certain if I would move back to Spirit Lake or if Diane would come to Alaska. On wheels, Diane was more or less afraid of flying but on floats, that did it. This was an aéronef that lived on the water, a seaplane; she was hooked. We went north and I could not ask for more.
For passengers, 54C tended to prefer girls. I don’t know what sex had to do with it, but 54C definitely preferred girls. They tended to be smaller and lighter and therefore more often than not we could carry three, thus filling all three passenger seats with room left over for enough fuel. 54C from the very start did a charter business that was brisk, appreciative and rewarding. Free of the contentiousness and worry of medical practice, this was fun. Natural selection was at work.
One winter I received a gratuitous gift from one of my female passengers. “Oh-oh,” Diane said.
“Nah,” Then came the love letter; It went on and on, but true --- excellent taste. I spent many hours composing a response, which both acknowledged the attraction of the seaplane and certified that I already had a lifetime union contract with my copilot. I would like to have told 54C, that’s 54 Charlie that he would henceforth have to answer his own love letters.
One of the more enjoyable flights was with three sorority alumnae of several years who were enjoying a reunion in Alaska. I flew them to see bears at Brooks Camp. They were a riot from the moment they stepped aboard. While at the fishing area on lower Brooks River a hapless fisherman ran a big salmon hook through his ear. He had not removed the barb so he was in a quandary as how to remove it. Chi Omega to the rescue, one girl pored methiolate over the hook while the other two held his hands. They announced that their pilot was a doctor and would fix him right up, so he had nothing to worry about. He was so titillated that he felt only laughter as I clipped the hook in two with the Leatherman and jerked it free, more pilot than doctor.
What proof do we have? The physicist Lord Kelvin in 1883 said, “When you can measure what you are speaking about and express it in numbers, you know something about it, but when you cannot measure it, when you cannot express it in numbers, your knowledge is of a meager and unsatisfactory kind. It may be the beginning of knowledge, but you have scarcely, in your thoughts, advanced to the stage of science, what ever the matter may be.” So, can we say anything scientific about sex and the seaplane? Well, maybe. The National Transportation Safety Board, NTSB, keeps extensive statistics on aviation accidents and fatalities. If survival plays some role in differentiation, if attrition, accidents, and abandonment (junking) play a role in the purging of deleterious traits, then the rebuilding, the procreation, of surviving desirable and relatively more successful old aircraft and the pilot mechanics that resurrect them, may indeed be engaged in a measurable mitotic activity. The successful mating of man or woman and machine may indeed affect the evolution and preservation of the species.
If the advertising and promotion of our floatplanes and their meager territories constitutes the mating song of the finch, then the selection of operations and equipment based on real or perceived advantages, strengths, features and color may be analogous to the selection of the finch by the size of its beak, its color, its size and its song. Some of these stories relate pressures of one sort or another, selection pressures and survival pressures. In this respect, we are talking about sex.
In medical school there was a study, designed to identify traits of the students who would go on to become effective doctors as opposed to those who drop out or trend to the fringe. Extensive personality profiling questions were required upon entry, upon graduation and ten years later. Surprisingly, the responses suggested that sexuality not dedication was the determining element for success. In teaching survival earlier on it was evident that success had to do with mental attitude and desire more than with skill. My conjecture is that the attitude of survival and propagation of the species underlies all three areas of endeavor, medicine, survival and frontier aviation. The seaplane has many features that suggest obvious survival value and adaptive value. As a means of transportation, it’s just plain sexy.
In the animal world, matting favors species identification and perceived advantages such as size, the beak, the color, or the song. The sexy scheme of things works towards the survival of the species, and so it is with the seaplane. What power unit, which STOL kit, are there adequate long-range fuel tanks? The pilot is mated to the plane; the selection trends towards mission capability.
That pilots fall in love with their planes speaks for itself; with the floatplane, it may be even more so. There may be a hate as well or ambivalence, a love hate relationship. The relationship, nonetheless, becomes symbiotic. In essence, the capabilities of plane and pilot blend to form a union, the performance of each dependent upon the capabilities and limitations of the other. In Alaska, part 135 requires 500 hours of the seaplane pilot, in the type of aircraft he or she is to fly. This licensed marriage of familiarity is unique to this kind of flying.
Sex is directed towards preservation of the species. It is the union by selection and the tool of survival. The seaplane is the trunk of the tree, the undifferentiated primordial DNA of a wilderness frontier. The appeal is irresistible. Passengers, sometimes awestruck, sometimes bound by fear, are all pulled by this primordial appeal. Nowhere is it more evident than standing up to the hip boots in crystal clear cold water with hands on the curved surface of the big Edo floats positioning the plane for passengers or for flight. With the floatplane, you take off from the water and land on the water, what higher order of good?
Transportation is a fundamental need for most all living things. Plants send pollen on the wind, wolves grow four swift legs and birds fly. Homosapiens, hominids walk or invent something better. The seaplane is not limited to man and his machine. Anne Morrow Lindbergh, North to the Orient, the Wright brother’s little sister, Amelia Earhart should have flown a seaplane. There seems no discrimination in the love of a seaplane. This love may be an issue of hormones; It seems clearly sexual. Women passengers were attracted to the floatplane in at least as great a number as were the men. It is not a macho thing, this attraction. I wonder if the attraction is not due to the undifferentiated nature of the seaplane as a means of transportation, as a boat or as a plane, its prowess for air and water.
Maybe some of the appeal stems from the romance and the marketing of the China Clipper. On April 16, 1935 at 3:45 p.m., Edwin Musick, Pan Am’s chief pilot, left Alameda for Honolulu. The four-engine clipper, an S-42, on its 2,440-mile survey flight carried 15,000 letters and opened what was to become a Pacific Island rout to China. The venture proved to have international consequences, spies, romance and war. When the Martin Clipper first carried passengers in October of 1***, it was technically advanced, years ahead of other long-range passenger or military aircraft. It had enormous appeal; the craft could land on coral lagoons throughout the Pacific where a landing field was not feasible. It was a threat to the Japanese military ambitions of the time.
My first encounter with a seaplane was with the S-38 Sykorskie in a Rita Heyworth movie. One look and I was hooked. The red hair didn’t hurt any either. I started flying as soon as I could. I was sixteen, but in Missouri or Kansas, there were no seaplanes. That is what I longed for, that smooth mahogany hull and the wings that could fly it. It was not until I pulled an engine change on 54C on the beach behind the Osprey nests and logs on Lake Coeur d' Alene that I begain to satisfy that longing.
I guess I might be inclined to confuse wet feet with sex, but the sexiest part of my floatplane experience was with relationship, with my wife Diane. By the time I practiced medicine for 30 years I was fried, and my wife was tired of my being tired. I sold my clinic, which opened opportunities for us. We sold our home. Diane moved to Spirit Lake in Idaho to write books and be on a lake and I moved to Alaska to fly floatplanes. This was not a separation but a quest. We were able to rent a home on the lake in Idaho and an apartment on the lake in Alaska. This was a tale of two cities. I was not certain if I would move back to Spirit Lake or if Diane would come to Alaska. On wheels, Diane was more or less afraid of flying but on floats, that did it. This was an aéronef that lived on the water, a seaplane; she was hooked. We went north and I could not ask for more.
For passengers, 54C tended to prefer girls. I don’t know what sex had to do with it, but 54C definitely preferred girls. They tended to be smaller and lighter and therefore more often than not we could carry three, thus filling all three passenger seats with room left over for enough fuel. 54C from the very start did a charter business that was brisk, appreciative and rewarding. Free of the contentiousness and worry of medical practice, this was fun. Natural selection was at work.
One winter I received a gratuitous gift from one of my female passengers. “Oh-oh,” Diane said.
“Nah,” Then came the love letter; It went on and on, but true --- excellent taste. I spent many hours composing a response, which both acknowledged the attraction of the seaplane and certified that I already had a lifetime union contract with my copilot. I would like to have told 54C, that’s 54 Charlie that he would henceforth have to answer his own love letters.
One of the more enjoyable flights was with three sorority alumnae of several years who were enjoying a reunion in Alaska. I flew them to see bears at Brooks Camp. They were a riot from the moment they stepped aboard. While at the fishing area on lower Brooks River a hapless fisherman ran a big salmon hook through his ear. He had not removed the barb so he was in a quandary as how to remove it. Chi Omega to the rescue, one girl pored methiolate over the hook while the other two held his hands. They announced that their pilot was a doctor and would fix him right up, so he had nothing to worry about. He was so titillated that he felt only laughter as I clipped the hook in two with the Leatherman and jerked it free, more pilot than doctor.
What proof do we have? The physicist Lord Kelvin in 1883 said, “When you can measure what you are speaking about and express it in numbers, you know something about it, but when you cannot measure it, when you cannot express it in numbers, your knowledge is of a meager and unsatisfactory kind. It may be the beginning of knowledge, but you have scarcely, in your thoughts, advanced to the stage of science, what ever the matter may be.” So, can we say anything scientific about sex and the seaplane? Well, maybe. The National Transportation Safety Board, NTSB, keeps extensive statistics on aviation accidents and fatalities. If survival plays some role in differentiation, if attrition, accidents, and abandonment (junking) play a role in the purging of deleterious traits, then the rebuilding, the procreation, of surviving desirable and relatively more successful old aircraft and the pilot mechanics that resurrect them, may indeed be engaged in a measurable mitotic activity. The successful mating of man or woman and machine may indeed affect the evolution and preservation of the species.
If the advertising and promotion of our floatplanes and their meager territories constitutes the mating song of the finch, then the selection of operations and equipment based on real or perceived advantages, strengths, features and color may be analogous to the selection of the finch by the size of its beak, its color, its size and its song. Some of these stories relate pressures of one sort or another, selection pressures and survival pressures. In this respect, we are talking about sex.
In medical school there was a study, designed to identify traits of the students who would go on to become effective doctors as opposed to those who drop out or trend to the fringe. Extensive personality profiling questions were required upon entry, upon graduation and ten years later. Surprisingly, the responses suggested that sexuality not dedication was the determining element for success. In teaching survival earlier on it was evident that success had to do with mental attitude and desire more than with skill. My conjecture is that the attitude of survival and propagation of the species underlies all three areas of endeavor, medicine, survival and frontier aviation. The seaplane has many features that suggest obvious survival value and adaptive value. As a means of transportation, it’s just plain sexy.
copyright hughesair 2004
posted by Clancy Hughes | 9/08/2004 01:41:00 PM
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