A little while ago, I published five little poems here, drawn from the text of a Cessna Manual of Flight. Yesterday, I put them together into a little chapbook called “Lift and Drag,” which you can read or download or remix for free. Find them here:
If you enjoy them, you can read more about them on my long-form blog, where you can also donate if you like. Thanks for your time.
When I was young, my dad could fly. He flew out of fear, I think, getting a hold of his terror by the control stick and bending it to his will. I remember going up in a little Cessna cockpit, and I remember the pilot handing off control to my father, but I can’t recall when this was or if it was real. I remember the my hands on the fake fabric of stiff seats, but maybe I’m just remembering what I thought it was like to see my dad fly.
The book is real. His notes sketched into margins, equal signs and question marks. But what I take out of this book isn’t what the technical writers put into it. I don’t think like a pilot thinks. When I see that there are two main kinds of drag, I assume we’re speaking metaphorically.
So Manual of Flight is a symbolic book to me. An educational work, a foreign text, for sure, but as much about personal momentum as airspeed, and more about drag than drag. The only way I know how to communicate that is to change the context of the words until they’re weird for you, too. I hope.
Parasite Drag
Reduced pressure equals increased lift.
Parasite drag increases with airspeed.
Work your empennage.
Work your elevators.
Positive static is stability tending
toward your original equilibrium.
Negative static? The ball’s displaced
and moving farther from equilibrium.
You yaw in the direction of the lowered aileron.
Call it adverse yaw. Call it.
To measure your true course, center
over an intersection.
The course line crosses the azimuth in
the direction of flight.
Increase your airspeed and the parasite
drag increases, too.
Acknowledge affirmative correction.
Go ahead. How do you hear me?
I say again: negative, out, over.
Read back.
Roger. Say again. Speak slower.
Stand by.
That is correct: verify.
Check with originator.
© 2009 Will Hindmarch
From a series of found poems drawn from my father’s copy of Cessna’s Manual of Flight.
Pencilled next to that title,
“Most Favorable Winds,”
is a check mark.
The wind side of the computer
determines the altitude which results
in the highest groundspeed, as they say.
This is accomplished
by comparing the winds
aloft with the course.
The wind forecasts each altitude
on the rotating azimuth
like a groundspeed/true heading problem.
The true heading problem — the difference
is that more than one wind is plotted
and each wind dot is identified.
The plotter portion of the sliding grid is used
to measure true course. You can think
of it as a device that measures directions.
The following instructions explain
how to determine your true course.
© 2009 Will Hindmarch
From a series of found poems drawn from my father’s copy of Cessna’s Manual of Flight.
Once you establish the bank, relax.
The pressure on the ailerons and rudder
pedals? Neutralize them.
Not all of the lift is available
to overcome weight.
You’ll tend to descend.
It’s a shallow spiral.
Roll out
before the desired heading
or you’ll overshoot.
—
© 2009 Will Hindmarch.
This is the second found poem in a series from my dad’s old copy of Cessna’s Manual of Flight.
Raise your nose to maintain
altitude during your turn,
it increases your angle
of attack.
This increases drag.
This decreases airspeed.
Steeper turns you must add,
power to overcome,
the drag.
Or you’re faced with the choice:
lose altitude or airspeed after you
roll out, of your turn,
reset power
for cruise
so you can fly
hands off.
© 2009 Will Hindmarch
(So I found this Cessna pilot’s guide, called Manual of Flight, in with my father’s books, years ago. The thing is full of found-poetry fodder. One of the best reactions I’ve ever gotten to a poem came from an early version of this one, which I’ve just rewritten after losing the original years ago. All this week, I’m composing found poems from this Manual of Flight.)
