Slipping the Surly Bonds of Earth
I don’t know exactly how the idea came into my mind. I’d never stolen anything big before. I could blame it on my dad, I suppose. He introduced me to the joy of flight from a young age. He took me with him to work often during the summer months when I was free from school. In his role as an RCMP pilot, he would take me here and there all over western Canada. I watched and learned from the right seat in the cockpit. Perhaps a seed was planted there.
But it could also have been my Grade 11 English teacher. Ms. Schoen gave us an unusual English writing assignment. We had to write a paper describing how to do something. I decided to write about how to start a Twin Otter. Dad had the Twin Otter manuals on a shelf in our family room. Combined with my having watched him do it many times, it wasn’t difficult to distil the instructions of the manual into a lengthy, but boring, piece of prose. However, at the end of it, I knew exactly what to do if I ever found myself in the left-hand seat.
I guess that’s when the idea started brewing. Could I do it? If I could, why shouldn’t I? From that point forward, whenever I went flying with my dad, I was watching much more carefully everything he was doing. From punching in the alarm code at the hangar to wheeling the Twin Otter out with the tug to making the correct radio calls for taxi and take-off, I’d observed and mentally noted everything. Also, I pestered dad repeatedly to let me fly the aircraft and he often did. I never took off or landed, but I watched how he did it and I became confident I could do it too, especially after asking him some detailed questions about how it all works.
Dad went for a walk almost every day. I timed it and knew exactly how long he took on his habitual route. One day the winter before (1989-90), he slipped on his parka and winter boots and went off into the darkness. I went into my parents’ bedroom, grabbed my dad’s keys, and then quickly went over to Home Hardware to make a copy of the hangar key. I got back 15 minutes before he did and he was never the wiser. That was the first step.
Then it was just a matter of waiting for the right moment. It would have to be in the summer holidays. My parents and sisters were going camping for three weeks without me. I had to stay at home and continue working at McDonalds. This was my golden window. The way I figured it was that if my dad’s car was spotted at the hangar early enough in his vacation period, it might not look that unusual to anyone else, giving me more time.
There was usually no one at the hangar on late Saturday afternoons. But on this particular day in late July, I took a couple of drives past the hangar in my dad’s little red 1987 Pontiac Acadian. I just wanted to make sure there were going to be no surprises. Sure enough, as I expected, there was no one there. Dead quiet.
My heart was pounding in my chest as I parked the car at the side of hangar in the exact spot where dad always parked. With the copied key, I opened the door, entered the hangar, and immediately disarmed the alarm system. Looking around, Twin Otter C-FMPN was waiting there in all its Short Take-off and Landing majesty. This was it. I’d have to be quick, in case anyone from the RCMP happened to come by the hangar. It wasn’t likely, but it did happen that dad would get called out for an emergency on a Saturday evening.
I first did the easiest thing: opening the hangar door. I’d done that dozens of times for dad. Once the door was open, I started up the little tractor tug. Not so hard. Then I pushed the Twin Otter out onto the tarmac, placing it in the exact spot dad always did. I didn’t want to raise any suspicions if someone from the control tower at the Edmonton City Centre airport was watching. Everything had to look normal.
I unhooked the towbar from the nose-wheel of the Twin Otter, then drove the tug back into the hangar. I left it in exactly the spot that dad would always leave it. Then it was a simple matter of closing the hangar door again, re-arming the alarm, and walking out to the plane.
I climbed on board via the passenger door and then latched it shut, just like I’d done before countless times while flying with dad. But this time instead of sitting in the right hand seat, I enthroned myself on the captain’s left-hand seat. I clicked the lap belt and then the chest straps. I took a deep-breath. Then I rolled back the manual flight check-list rollers to the beginning of all the check-lists. I hadn’t done a walk-around, but there was no time.
I started running through all the check-lists just like I’d seen dad do and just as I’d often helped him by calling out the items. But now I was performing the items. Everything went exactly according to plan. Before long, all the avionics were up and running, and both PT6A-27 turboprops were started. This adventure was really about to get underway.
I had the radio tuned into the Edmonton City Centre ATIS – the Automatic Terminal Information Service. This gave vital information to pilots for their flight from or to the airport. I picked up Information Mike and that told me the active runway was 34. That was perfect, because that’s the direction I wanted to be heading anyway.
Now I had to do the best imitation of my dad’s voice I could muster to ask for taxi clearance from City Centre Ground: “City Centre Ground, Twin Otter Charlie Foxtrot Mike Papa November, VFR to Villeneuve, with Information Mike, request taxi.” I held my breath and then it came: “Mike Papa November, City Centre Ground, cleared taxi to 34 via taxiway Bravo. Contact Tower on 122.45 when ready.” “Taxi to 34 via Bravo, Mike Papa November, Tower on 122.45 when ready.” With that, I advanced the throttles with my right hand and slowly started towards the runway.
Arriving at the hold position, I stopped the Twin Otter. I ran through the last check-list items for take-off, then switched the radio frequency to the Tower. “City Centre Tower, Mike Papa November is ready for take-off at 34.” Without any hesitation from the controller, I got my clearance and read it back. I eased on to the runway and stopped just for a second. This was it. Do or die. I slowly pushed the throttles all the way forward and the plane started accelerating. I kept it on the centre line with little rudder adjustments. I waited for 75 knots and then gently pulled back on the yoke. I was doing my first solo flight in the Twin Otter!
I climbed up to about 3200’ above sea level and then pulled back on the throttles to give a slowish cruising speed of about 110 knots. After about five minutes, Edmonton City Centre Tower transferred me over to Villeneuve tower, the smaller airport to the northwest. At least they tried to transfer me over. I acknowledged the frequency change, but didn’t follow through on it. I had no intention of doing so. For the next part of my plan, I needed radio silence.
Long before this adventure, I’d done my research about radar coverage around Edmonton. If I was to get away with what I was doing, I’d have to eventually evade radar surveillance. It turned out that at about 100 km from the Edmonton radar, an aircraft flying at less than 1000’ above the ground would not be visible. I was heading out beyond 100 km, and to play it safe, I was going to fly closer to 500’ above the ground, using the radar altimeter to help me. At the end I’d have to get a little higher than that, but for most of the cruise portion, I would be low-level. That’s one of the reasons why I was flying at 110 knots. That gave plenty of wiggle-room for navigation.
It was a lovely summer evening, probably around 6:30 or so. There’d be plenty of sunlight for a few hours yet and the weather was, as they say, CAVOK. Not a cloud in the sky. Perfect flying weather. I was loving it, but also focussed on navigating.
I was using the roads to navigate to where I was going. I’d planned this out ahead of time too. I knew there was a small rural farming community about 130 km northwest of Edmonton. There were some beautiful flat fields out there. I took a drive out there two weeks prior and found a spot. It was sort of isolated from all the other fields. It was long enough for landing a Twin Otter, but it was also lying fallow and so the ground was hard. There hadn’t been any rain recently and so the spot was custom made for the Twin Otter. Dad often landed on rough fields exactly like this – I remember doing it with him at places like Fort Assumption/Chateh, Calling Lake, and Janvier. It was just a matter of flying there, literally under the radar.
After 40 minutes of following the roads, I spotted the hamlet of Neerlandia. Then it was just a matter of aiming two miles west and a half mile north. A little dairy farm stood there. Behind that dairy farm about a mile to the west was my chosen landing field. I circled around it once just to make sure nothing had changed. There were no animals and no people around either. From the look of the trees, the wind was dead calm. I set up for a circuit starting off at 1000’ above the ground.
On the downwind, I checked again to make sure there were no obstructions. Just before turning on to the base leg of the circuit, I pulled the throttles back, and started lowering the flaps. Coming around to the base leg, I descended to 500’. I looked to the left and everything looked normal, just like when I’d learned to fly in gliders. Then it was time to turn final. As I came on to the final, I lowered the final bit of flaps and aimed for an approach speed of 65 knots. I was right on the money. As I came in about 5’ off the ground, I pulled the power right back and almost right afterwards flared the aircraft. It settled gently on the rough ground. I pulled the throttles back into reverse and gently stepped on the brakes through the rudder pedals. The Twin Otter slowed down to a crawl and took the props out of reverse thrust. I was down and alive. I had proven to myself that I could do it.
However, I had just stolen a valuable piece of Government of Canada property. That wasn’t going to go over well. Soon the search would be on, if it wasn’t already. It was 7:30 PM. In the best case scenario, the RCMP wouldn’t notice the Twin Otter missing until Monday. Regardless, I wasn’t about to give myself up that easily.
One of the reasons I picked this field was that it had a great area to park the Twin Otter. Where I was going to park it, no one would be able to see it from any road. I hustled it over there as quickly as I dared and then shut it down. I even put the gust locks on the controls, put the covers over the pitot tubes, and secured the propellers so they wouldn’t windmill.
I had a plan for escaping. I’d scoped out this farm ahead of time. I knew two things about it. One was that they had no dog, or if they did, at night he was prowling around somewhere other than the farm. The other thing I knew was that the keys were in the ignition of all the vehicles. There was a little brown car, a Dodge Omni. I knew that if I could put this Omni in neutral, I could easily push it out onto the road, start it and get away without anyone knowing.
I left the Twin Otter and went off into the nearby forest. I was going to camp out there for a few hours before heisting the car. It was a really warm evening and the mosquitoes were strangely absent. I made myself a soft mattress with pine boughs and moss. I laid down and, even with all the adrenaline, I managed to fall asleep.
A while later I woke up and told my wife Rose all about it.
Oh! I have slipped the surly bonds of Earth
And danced the skies on laughter-silvered wings;
Sunward I’ve climbed, and joined the tumbling mirth
of sun-split clouds,—and done a hundred things
You have not dreamed of—wheeled and soared and swung
High in the sunlit silence. Hov’ring there,
I’ve chased the shouting wind along, and flung
My eager craft through footless halls of air….
–John Gillespie Magee Jr.
