Article: 4912 of rec.aviation.misc Newsgroups: rec.aviation.misc Path: newshost.ncd.com!ncd.com!olivea!spool.mu.edu!howland.reston.ans.net!europa.eng.gtefsd.com!uunet!psinntp!bony1!richieb From: richieb@bony1.bony.com (Richard Bielak) Subject: Zero Three Bravo - book review (long) Message-ID: Organization: We don't need no stinkin' Organization! Date: Thu, 23 Sep 1993 12:32:22 GMT Lines: 155 I wrote the following book review for our EAA Chapter's news letter. I'm posting it here in hope that others will like to read it. Criticism and comments are welcome. TITLE: Zero Three Bravo AUTHOR: Mariana Gosnell PUBLISHER: Knopf In "Zero Three Bravo" Marianna Gosnell writes about flying a Luscombe Silvaire from the East coast to the West and back. Surprisingly, she does not say when she flew, except that it was one summer "not so very long ago." The first hint that her flight was earlier than expected is that she started from the Spring Valley airport, forty miles north of New York City. But, checking the current New York chart, all I could find forty miles north of New York City was the town of Spring Valley. Ms. Gosnell gives us another clue while visiting Plains, Georgia. She stops at the small airport where Jimmy Carter began his campaign in 1976 and she meets the Cessna 172 which carried the future president to early campaign stops. About two thirds through the book, and half way through her trip, the author witnesses the prize winning flight of the Gossamer Condor, a human powered aircraft designed by Paul MacCready. This finally gives us the date of Ms. Gosnell's journey - the Gossamer Condor won the Kramer prize in 1977. "Zero Three Bravo" is not only a travel book, but also a memoir. It is a log of flying around the U.S.A., from New York down the coast to Florida, then across the southwest to California, then returning east across the Rockies and the Great Plains. The narrative moves between descriptions of the earth as seen from the small airplane and stories about the people at the small airports and towns. Mixed in are the author's recollections of how she learned to fly in Africa, how she came to possess a Luscombe and other stories about her own life. Throughout, "Zero Three Bravo" manages to avoid the trap that much of travel writing falls into - too many adjectives. I know of two other books that cover ground similar to "Zero Three Bravo". In Richard Bach's "Biplane", the author flies a 1929 Parks Biplane from the East to the West coast. "Biplane" is a lyrical and romantic tale of a pilot and an old airplane travelling across the continent in the fashion of the first barnstormers. In contrast, in "Cannibal Queen" Stephen Coonts creates an uneven mixture of biplane flying, Holiday Inns, small airports and Disney World, while writing about visiting forty eight contiguous states during a summer vacation. "Zero Three Bravo" falls somewhere between these two books. It is a story of a pilot and her airplane, but the preoccupation with flying is not obsessive, and there remains room for other people. It is also a trip diary, but it is more evocative and it includes some unusual places. Instead of the Disney World hotel Mariana Gosnell sleeps under the wing at the Navajo Trading post in Oljato, Arizona. But perhaps, what sets this book apart from others, is how Ms. Gosnell treats women pilots. "I don't know if generalizations can be made about female pilots, although people make them. Those who say things to your face may say that women have a more delicate, or sensitive, touch which helps. (...) Then there's the old one about women being better at detail (cross-stiching and all that), and that flying well certainly involves attention to detail. In my own experience the one area where I believe that as a female I came less prepared to fly a plane than an average male, aside from not having all those years of automatic exposure to machinery that boys got when I was growing up, is in planning and thinking ahead while aloft. If I was up flying with my friend Ron, for instance, through some breathtakingly lovely sky and countryside, I'd be much more likely than he to be grooving on the whole scene, paying attention to the current moment and place, while he'd be figuring out the compass heading for a 45-degree entry into the expected pattern at an airport we were planning to land at 50 miles away." I am not sure that the gestalt versus the engineering approach to flying can be entirely explained by sex differences. Just as there are men who are big picture thinkers and are not sticklers for details, there are women who thrive in a thicket of technicalities. Perhaps men, conditioned to appear in control, are less likely to admit that they enjoy the view from an airplane, and are more apt to brag about particularly good landing or impeccable navigation. Throughout the book, Ms. Gosnell describes other women pilots she meets. One, nick-named "Carrot Top", is not only a pilot, but also an A&P mechanic, who travels around the country finding work restoring antique airplanes to airworthy condition. In Paris, Texas, the author visits Flying Tigers Airport, where any pilot can get instructions in military airplanes, mostly World War II trainers and fighters and an occasional jet. While hanging around this airport, our author gets to see a woman solo in a T-33 military jet - the first civilian woman to solo the "Shooting Star." While passing though Georgia, Ms. Gosnell meets Laura, a pilot who was the second woman in her county to obtain a license. The author spends a few days with Laura and her family - husband Jim, who has a degree in Russian literature but designs pig environments for a living, and three children, the oldest one fifteen. Laura took up flying after her husband tried it and gave up. She even got her own airplane, a Cessna 150. But flying did not make Laura happy. She had been married at nineteen and had lived a sheltered life. Piloting was not something that southern women did, it wasn't ladylike. Women played bridge, did needlework, cooked, decorated and never worked. The freedom of flying and seeing "...that there was another world..." forever disturbed the balance of Laura's existence. No longer content with house, husband and children, but not confident and strong enough to leave, Laura remained mixed up and unhappy. One of Ms. Gosnell's more embarrassing flying adventures occured at the Wall airport near the Black Hills in South Dakota. When she landed a number of the locals were amazed to see a woman Luscombe pilot, especially since Luscombe's have a spirited reputation. When leaving Wall, the author decided to try a different take-off technique to reduce the cross-wind angle; instead of pointing the airplane straight down the runway, she started at one corner and aimed at the opposite far corner of the runway. Distressingly, the result was not as expected - the airplane reached the opposite edge much too soon, nearly hit a runway light and bounced few times in the grass next to the asphalt, before finally taking to the air. The pilot was upset: "First female in a taildragger at Wall Airport, ha! Two witnesses: Monty and the Bonanza pilot. As I climbed away a terrible sadness washed over me, a staggering sense of loss. I began to weep. I would never get on top of this thing called flying; what I loved to do most I could not do; trying and caring hardly mattered at all." All pilots have felt like this at one time or another, certainly I have. You can have umpteen hours in all kinds of airplanes, but a gust of wind can humble you. No one ever gets "on top of this thing called flying", there is always more to learn. Towards the end of the book the author talks about her dreams of flying. As any pilot, she has dreamt about landing in strange places, or taking off under power lines. But her favorite dream is: "(...) one where I was in my Luscombe high over the plains of East Africa, able to see a great many miles in every direction, and the shadows of clouds were making giant blotches on the ground, like Andy Warhol blossoms, and standing on the blotches as well as in sunny places between them were elephants - hundreds of elephants. My sister was in the passenger seat, looking out with me over this wide world, sharing it with me. It seemed to me then that in this dream were all the elements it took to make a person truly happy." Perhaps, one of the reasons I enjoyed reading this book is that it is written by someone who loves flying. If flying makes you happy, I think you will like this book. ...richie -- * Richie Bielak (212)-815-3072 | * * Internet: richieb@bony.com | "The best way to predict the future * * Bang {uupsi,uunet}!bony1!richieb | is to invent it." * * - Strictly my opinions - | - Alan C. Kay - *