Windsock

I have sat on this story for 16 years.
it's too embarrassing.
But now, with the confidence I've gained as a 1,500-hour, reasonably competent Bonanza pilot I'm finally willing to go public.
My wife and I had flown to Vermont's Warren-Sugarbush Airport on a sunny Friday afternoon in August.
Then a 2200 foot asphalt strip, the airport rose slightly to its midpoint and then fell off downhill.
Several weeks earlier, with barely 100 hours of flying time logged, I had pioneered a new flying technique;
smoother landings seemed to result if I just flew my rented Cessna 172 flat onto the runway.
Why bother with that tricky flare, which sometimes left you hanging two feet above the run-way when the airplane stopped flying?
My slick, new, high-speed technique would surely rewrite the training manuals.
And it worked just fine at my home base Teterboro Airport, with its runways more than a mile long.
As I flat-greased it on that after-noon, the one-man FBO said to him-self (he told me this later),
"I probably should talk to that jerk about the way he's landing"
But, being a true Vermonter, he kept quiet.
We unloaded and met the couple we were staying with for the weekend.
My pal Alan—who was an advertising executive working on the Eastern Airlines account—had never been up in a single-engine airplane.
"Hey, yeah let's do it" Alan said enthusiastically to my suggestion that we go up for an early-morning hop.
We finished our coffee, and at around seven a.m. we left our wives still snoozing in the sack and drove over to the quiet, dew-covered airfield.
It was absolutely deserted.
I showed Alan how a professional preflight is accomplished, and we climbed into the 172.
Unicom was, of course, unmanned, so I checked the windsock and decided to take off to the north.
A brisk 10-knot breeze was coming straight down the runway.
Takeoff was routine and I was proud of the skill I was so obviously demonstrating.
At about 500 feet agl we flew over toward the mountain and peered down at the condo we'd just left.
There were no wives sitting on the sundeck with coffee.
"Still in the sack, Alan" I said smugly.
After a few minutes of sight-seeing, we headed back for the field.
I called unicorn for an advisory but got no answer.
So I flew the pattern for the runway we had used 20 minutes ago.
My approach was high.
I was over the numbers about 20 feet off the deck, but at least the airspeed indicator was reading my usual 70 knots. It did, however, seem that the ground was moving by a bit rapidly.
Seconds went by.
One-third of the runway was gone and the wheels were still not on the ground.
I'd have no embarrassing go-arounds in the presence of my buddy, so I pushed forward on the yoke and forced the airplane down.
We whizzed over the runway's mid-point hump and started downhill.
I stomped hard on the brakes and could picture those incredibly tiny pads ("Don't forget to inspect these little brake pads," my instructor had always cautioned) struggling to stop my aluminum rocket.
Suddenly I was very aware of the 30-foot pines off the end of the runway.
A go-around was no longer possible.
Not to worry.
The right brake faded and the airplane veered off into the grass on the right.
We bounced along through some ruts, then hit a boggy section.
The wheels mired.
The airplane went up on its nose.
The prop stopped quicker than I've ever seen one stop.
And we were hanging from our seatbelts in an airplane balanced on its spinner.
It was dead quiet for five seconds—then with a funny, wheezing, metallic sound the Cessna fell back on its tail.
"Is that how you usually land?" Alan asked.
The FBO operator arrived in time to witness the whole mess.
The airplane had a bent prop, a blown nose wheel tire, a crinkled cowling and a squashed left wingtip.
Alan was unblemished, and I owned the reddest face in the northeastern U.S.
During our brief flight the wind had shifted 180 degrees.
After getting no answer on unicom, I had assumed that the active runway couldn't have changed.
I didn't even glance at the windsock.
And, of course, I had been high, fast and intent upon demonstrating my no-flare landing technique.
The Vermont FBO operator surveyed the damage—then looked me square in the eye.
"You're supposed to look at windsocks" he said.