Chapter 28. Landing in the blind.
Dan cooked dinner and we relaxed inside in his motorhome (which Daniel now calls: The Bus) all evening, which was nice. As the sun started to go down behind the hills he offered to let me use his experimental sun shower too. I saw he had the water pump problem fixed so he could leave the water pump switch on all the time now. I asked how the hose gets hot near sunset and he said this late in the day the water in the tank is warm from sitting in the sun too, but it's going to be a warmish shower, not steamy hot, maybe 90 degrees. Dan said two people can shower with almost the same amount of water as one when they take turns under the nozzle. He showers every other day and that's mostly all he uses tank water for, that and hand-washing dishes. He's got the water conserving thing down to exact times so he doesn't run out before the monthly refill. The tank water is mostly used for showering. He does his laundry in town at the coin-op, and he drinks RO water from the machine at the grocery store in three gallon plastic jugs at ten cents a liter. Dan told me when he gets stinky he uses baby wipes to clean those parts.
We took showers standing inside the ATC building even though there was no shower stall and the water splashed everywhere but most of it ended up down the drain because he barely opened the valve. But out here in the desert within an hour all the splashed water has evaporated. We dried off upstairs in the control tower and watched the stars come out and all the lights of Tangier in the distance to the north. Since Tangier is somewhat hilly we could see lights from the highest parts, but not the rest of it, nor could we see any city walls.
That control tower would be a great place to take a new girlfriend, someone you were trying to impress with your smarts and good taste. He told me how he planned on enclosing the four sides with sheets of plastic. There was a company he found that cut and sold custom sized clear plastic sheets of Lexan.
Dan showed me how the concrete roof, pillars, and window bases all had tracks for the old window frames, he could glue sheets of plastic in those to hold them in place, kind of wedge them in place then caulk the edges. I told him it might turn the tower into a sauna during the day and he said he was going to leave gaps for air and apply a light reflective plastic film too.
Eventually we got tired of sitting on concrete and went downstairs and back into the motorhome and went to bed, both of us slept in his bed in back.
Saturday morning I went home early because I had things to do too (laundry) and he said he'd call if he had anything important happen. But I called him after work on Monday and he said a couple more people saw the dust cloud and came by because that was the first activity at the old German Airbase in decades. Everyone in the area was curious and wanted to see what was going on. He told everyone the runway was private, land with prior permission only. He also thinks everyone nearby thinks he's an eccentric rich kid now, building a runway for an airplane he doesn't even own! And with his shiny French-made motorhome sitting there also screams wealth, so he's not going to convince too many people that he's poor. Daniel is wealthy but he lives as if he only has $20 left in his checking account. His inheritance was huge but he acts as if he needs his father's approval for anything he spends it on. Of course his father has been dead for almost three years. He said he had no idea his family was wealthy because they never lived that way when they were kids, now he's doing the exact same thing as his parents. I guess we all sort of become our parents eventually.
Dan described how he got buzzed by local crop dusters twice, one was an old bi-wing Stearman Model 75 replica, and he photographed it with his cell and later identified as a German made Stearman PT-13 replica crop duster. He said word has gotten out that the old German airstrip might re-open, the runway was re-paved but not marked so from the sky it looked like a street in a residential neighborhood before the houses were built. Dan said so far the big X has worked to keep pilots from landing, but he expects eventually they will ignore it and start landing anyway since these guys are used to landing anywhere that's flat. He said most of the little crop duster airplanes only need about 500 feet of flat-firm ground. Probably half of them could safely land on the flat open ground behind the hangars!
"You landed on a runway clearly marked with a 25 foot wide X?" He was ready say to anyone landing on his runway. I reminded him many of them would not speak Spanish and none would speak English, so don't spend too much time practicing your lines in the bathroom mirror!
And the local brush pilot might say he speaks Arabic, not English. In Arabic it means `X-marks the spot,' not runway closed. X means to them there is treasure buried there. But an X on the runway is on probably every pilot's licensure test around the world. He suspects there are several pilots in Morocco who started flying before they issued pilot's licenses and were sort of grandfathered-in.
We discussed landing the Citation on his runway and he took cell photos of the western runway approach as it looks now with all the brush gone. He also parked his truck on the runway at the west edge and took photos looking at the land and trees growing west of the air strip so I could see how low I could fly over the neighbor's land. He said nobody lives on the property west of him, it is just weeds, rocks, and lizards (some weeds now 15 feet tall). Once in a while he sees animals grazing on it.
I told him I need some kind of big visible marker at the edges of the runway and some kind of windsock too. He offered to hold road flares and his jeans down to his knees with some yarn tied around the rim. I laughed. Then he said he could tape two feet of toilet paper to his dick for a windsock. Again, I laughed at the visual. There were lots of vulgar things I wanted to say but I kept my mouth shut knowing our conversation would spiral downward into something like he had during high school after Dan got rejected by another large breasted girl. Especially the ones he thought would be an easy conquest, but weren't mesmerized by his excessive self-confidence and practiced charm.
Then we had a discussion about a temporary windsock and he said he would rig up something tomorrow. Real ones cost maybe twenty bucks online in the States. He can't get delivery to his airport but he can get delivery to one of the stores in town, they'll receive it and hold it for him to come pick it up. Shipping to Morocco can sometimes really increase the cost and take weeks to arrive.
That weekend we talked on the phone and he told me he purchased four gallons of white paint to mark the limits of the landing zone on the runway and I said I would attempt a landing. He made a crude windsock out of an old bright red pillow case, sort of like a kite tail tied to a post in the ground near the runway, he said he built a driveway ramp so I could roll from the runway up into the hangar. The hangar sat 120 feet from the runway near the east end, the ground was packed gravel and he said it felt very firm (even after a heavy rain). He said his truck and the skidloader tires don't sink at all. The Germans parked multiple JU-52 cargo planes out there for almost a decade. Those planes were in constant use for training new flight crew members so they were constantly driving across that land, just a few feet under the weeds its solid rock. They also used heavy cargo trucks and smaller vehicles like our Jeeps.
On Thursday Dan sent me an email that he was ready to park the jet in the hangar, he had five road flares, the homemade windsock was on the roof of the ATC building and the ground was ready for me to drive up into the hangar. We already got a pair of walkie talkies in case we needed to talk, but at 300mph we'll fly out of range quickly!
That Friday I closed the office at lunch time and took a taxi to Tetouan and told the tower it might not be back except to buy fuel, a new private airstrip opened. The airport people at the Pilot Services desk in the terminal said they heard it was the `biggest aviation news in northwest Morocco in 10 years.'
I did the pre-flight checks slowly and carefully with the physical sensation of anxiety and fear across my entire body. I could feel my heart pounding and my brain kept telling me this was a dangerous plan. Trying to land a twin engine jet on an unmarked stretch of pavement in the desert surrounded by cactus, trees, and ten foot tall weeds was a super bad idea. Actually, it was perfectly do-able, just not what I was used to. Aircraft carrier launched jets did it all day and at night without crashing. Problem was I was not a trained carrier pilot!
At Tetouan I got permission to taxi to the end of the runway. Since I might not be back I brought the covers with me folded carefully and held down in two passenger seats with their lap belts.
So I flew alone from Tetouan to the Danville Airport with about 65% of a load of fuel I'd probably use 10% making practice approaches trying to get low and slow enough.
The problem here is called Threshold. This is the distance between the physical end of the pavement and the start of the landing zone (where my wheels should impact the pavement). It's rather short on this runway because it was designed for (slower moving) propeller aircraft. My jet cannot slow down to 80mph to make a nice soft landing and touch down inside the LZ. I'll use flaps and throttle back and try to actually land going just over stall speed on the Citation. The wings are not designed for low speed flight. It's complicated, but it is do-able. It might be a lot like a carrier landing, which scares the crap out of me. I don't wish to crash and die today. At least I know if I do it will be a sudden lights out and my demise will be quick.
I took off heading east and U-turned to the right then flew west with the GPS above the instrument panel. I'm probably going to make a few practice runs before I actually try; his neighbors are going to remember today for years to come! And all I will be able to actually see is him standing near one corner of the runway holding road flares.
I was trying to remember if I warned Dan what to expect standing so close to a runway when a jet lands. There is a very well known airport on Saint Maarten in the Caribbean where the end of the runway is like 80 feet from Maho Beach so people stand on the beach while 747 aircraft fly over maybe 100 feet above their heads, they get blasted by the jets and it is incredibly loud too. BTW, you can see Maho Beach and those landings on youtube.
For the Danville Airport you cannot see the airstrip on gmaps but you can see the area. The highway marked N2 that runs from Tetouan to Tangier, about halfway across there is an area where the highway gets very curvy, there is a town named Ain Lahcen, the airstrip is south of that town, but you cannot see it online. That piece of land is about the only acreage in that area that is totally flat. I already set a point in my handheld GPS and programmed it in the autopilot as: Danville-A. The waypoint in the GPS is the exact center edge of the runway pavement. I let the unit sit on the asphalt for ten minutes to get a super accurate fix, it was going to be one of my most valuable instruments, that and his road flares. I was going to set the GPS on the dashboard against the windshield so I could see straight ahead and the GPS screen at the same time. Airspeed will also be critical so I don't stall the jet 180 feet above the ground.
I used the GPS to fly toward the airport then went past it to the west about six miles and did a u-turn then flew over it but not over the runway, I wanted to see the entire area from the air to look for danger spots. As I flew over at 280mph I saw Dan on the runway waving, I waved back but he probably couldn't see me. Everything looked fine so I went around again and flew directly over the runway without intending to land, I wanted to see the contour of the ground before and after the runway in case I needed to abort and go around.
Let me tell you, if I had to do that, fly low and abort a landing and go around it would mean full throttle and even at the far end of the runway it will be deafening to Daniel standing at the northwest corner of the pavement. He'd feel it too, and it won't be nice.
I flew over the property a third time at 500ft using my eyes now that I knew exactly how to locate the runway. Dan was standing there with the flares in his hand waiting for my signal. I flew over the property three times getting lower/slower each time, closer and closer to the right combination of speed and elevation to land safely. The last time I blinked the landing lights to tell him I was going to try next time, go ahead and light the flares!
The dry weight stall speed according to the Citation manual was 97mph. I had over half a tank so that increased stall speed. The computer on-board estimated stall speed was 128mph with the current fuel load and current air temperature. At stall speed there isn't enough air going over the wings to create enough lift to keep the plane in the air. Once any airplane reaches stall speed they all nose-dive down, the problem is if your plane is only 110 feet above the ground and it nose dives then you will crash, the plane will explode and you will set the desert on fire and it is something the locals will be talking about for decades. I am guessing 130mph will be my `Oh-Shit!' number, so I keep one eye on the GPS I have wedged between the top of the instrument panel and the windshield. When the computer in the aircraft senses approaching stall speed it alarms so there is that too, but since I've owned it that circuit has never been tested, I hope it works. It's kind of like testing the airbags in your car by driving it into a bridge wall on the interstate at 70mph.
This go-around I used full flaps and lowered the gear and came in super low. I could see trees out my right cockpit window that were above me in a jet aircraft! My heart was pounding and I had to go around with gear down and full flaps but I didn't hit full throttle.
On my fifth pass I used the seat adjustment to raise my seat a bit since this would be a totally visual approach. My heart was pounding and I had huge drops of sweat running down my sides. I was wracked with anxiety and felt sick to my stomach. As I made my final turn to line up with the runway I felt nauseated.
I approached low and slow and rocked my wings to signal Dan this was it, again. Then he actually lit a second road flare and held them straight out from his shoulders like he was Jesus with Flares. He was standing about ten feet from the very corner of the runway pavement. With one hand tightly on the wheel and the other on the throttles I lowered them (and kept glancing at my airspeed), my heart was pounding and it felt wrong attempting this without any markings on the runway! Dan stood like a statue near the corner of the runway which was EXTREMELY dangerous. I knew that if he didn't move the tip of my wing would pass about seven feet from his ear. I glanced down and saw 139mph!
I made my approach but I figured out I was still too high and went around again. I saw the flares really well that time and he was calling on the radio but I couldn't answer. I kept the Citation radio on Unicom so if any other aircraft were in the area I could hear them and talk over my headset and didn't need to take my hands off the wheel. It felt like the entire world was watching me as I was about to crash a two million dollar luxury jet.
I tried the same approach but maybe a bit lower but I was scared as shit. I think that was the slowest and lowest I ever flew any jet aircraft, I was afraid I'd strike something on the ground with my tires and suddenly I saw the his road flares were almost straight ahead instead of below me so I was lined up but still couldn't see the damn runway, I barely caught a glimpse of the center line dead ahead and when I saw it I noticed my GPS said 141mph. But for about four seconds I actually saw Dan directly ahead holding the flares. This time I pulled the throttles all the way back and it felt like the Citation became silent, and then I heard the main gear tires chirp and I felt tires on runway! I pulled up the piggyback lever and fully back on the throttle to activate full reverse thrust.
When you activate reverse thrust on a Citation two panels that form part of the outside case of the jet engines move back behind the jet and channel the jet thrust up and down with a forward tilt. The jet engines essentially become the world's most powerful leaf blowers and any dust, leaves, lizards, snakes, or small rocks on or near the runway instantly go bye-bye. It can also open cracks in the pavement and blow chunks of asphalt halfway to the next town. Perhaps you've flown in a jet during a rain storm and saw the reverse thrust blow the runway dry in an instant. Let's say it is a tremendously powerful wind. Each jet on the Citation is capable of around 7000lbs of thrust. Imagine that in your leaf blower!
Then came a tremendous roar as forward thrust rapidly slowed the Citation. My body was instantly pressed very hard into the seat restraints and the entire jet trembled and bounced. We slowed from 140mph to 60mph in about 300feet and hoped I wasn't blowing blacktop off the runway but I never heard anything hit the bottom of the plane. I pushed the throttle forward slightly to disengage reverse thrust and the ride suddenly became bouncy but quiet. I watched ahead as I rolled along about 50mph toward the east end of the runway. I wondered if I touched the LZ. And if I didn't decapitate Daniel he'd probably tell me, I'm sure he was watching closely. I hope he was standing far enough from the runway that he was clear of the wingtips.
I kept rolling with minimal throttle to the east end and slowed using the foot brake pedals to 5mph with and retracted the flaps and got my feet positioned on the pedals for stopping inside the hangar. I saw the light on the instrument panel lit indicating that nose wheel steering was enabled, so I wiggled the wheel slightly to test and sure enough I had ground steering! I glanced at the GPS and it said my speed was 8mph and dropping as I rolled down the runway and saw the hangar getting closer ahead on my right side. Then I saw the area where he cut down the weeds for me to roll off the runway and across the ground and up the small incline and into the east end of the hangar.
While I was doing that, 3200 feet behind me Dan was joyous and shouting in celebration as he ran to his truck, started the motor, shut off the radio and drove up onto the runway and chased after the Citation ahead of him on the runway. Dan pressed the gas pedal to the floor to catch up and I am sure he was just a full of anxiety as me, but he handles it better.
I applied brakes and turned to the right and felt a bump and then I was rolling across the ground toward the old hangar and up the bump inside and stomped the brakes and reached for the little knob to turn off the jets and checked for any fault indicators but the display was all green, so I shut down the master power, released my seatbelts, and quickly got up from the pilot's seat and paused to take a few deep breaths and try to relax my body. Standing in the tiny cockpit I started to feel like crap, I was seeing stars and I felt nauseated like my brain just used up every gram of sugar in my body. I opened the cockpit door and walked over to the cabin door and paused to listen, the Citation was mostly silent, as it should be. No alarms, no smoke, the floor looked level, everything at a glance looked like it did back in Tetouan. The jet covers sat on the front two seats still under their seatbelts like nothing happened.
I raised the long lever arm to unlock the cabin door and swung it out and carefully jumped down onto the concrete floor of the hangar and walked about twenty feet feeling like I was about to faint and crap my pants, and dropped to my hands and knees and puked (repeatedly) on the hangar floor. Dan drove up in his truck and watched me from a safe distance until I was done barfing. My head was pounding and my entire body was suddenly drenched with sweat and everything looked shiny. I even felt dizzy and super weak and nearly fainted as I barfed over and over but almost nothing came up. Eventually it stopped and I straightened up to my knees (feeling better but still very sweaty) and looked outside and saw Dan leaned against his truck with his arms folded across his chest with a huge smile on his face, maybe 60 feet away (he cannot tolerate seeing other people puking or he'll get sick too). He raised one hand and showed me a road flare that was out but still smoking. I laughed.
I stood up and wiped my mouth and glanced at him with a smile and we both laughed again, Dan raised both arms like a football referee after a touchdown and shouted with joy as I stood by a nasty yellow puddle on the hangar floor. But the Citation was in its new home in a real World War-2 German aircraft hangar! The bankers in France would never find it in here! I honestly thought that at this point Dan would be searching through the wreckage of the Citation for my corpse, but there I was in the hangar with a puddle of puke on the floor and a dreadful taste in my mouth. We both laughed a little more as he slowly walked toward me. I think both of us had no idea what to say at first. We both just witnessed a miracle precision landing of a luxury jet on a tiny runway in the desert!
He walked in the hangar as I turned around to carefully inspect the jet for damage, then I got down on my hands and knees and crawled under the plane and checked the tires closely with my hands, they were rather hot but looked fine. I physically rubbed my hands around all six tires.
Dan squatted low so he could watch what I was doing and told me it was a great landing. I told him it was super hard with no runway markings, "You cannot see that fucking runway, the flares made it possible." I asked if I touched my wheels inside the box and Dan said I overshot by about 10 feet but it was a soft landing. I told him I think I was in reverse before the nose gear touched down. He laughed loudly at me, because that's a rookie mistake. When full of anxiety lots of new pilots use too much reverse thrust when they slam the handle back after pulling up the piggyback lever.
"If there was ever a landing when I needed a third hand, a sweatband, and a diaper that was it!" We laughed again and Dan stood and offered me his hand as I crawled out from beneath the jet and got to my feet and brushed off my knees and hands.
"Did I damage the runway?" I asked expecting him to get a serious tone, but he smiled and said he drove the entire length and never saw any, but all the dead leaves are gone. That made me laugh.
Then I stopped and assumed Dan was as anxious as me but better at hiding it. So I paused and gave him a suspicious glance and asked, "How fast did you go to get here?"
Dan looked surprised that I knew him well enough to ask, he smiled and said, "85!" and we both loudly laughed. That made me feel better knowing he was as scared as me.
"Man, that was so cool having a jet fly by only ten feet away, and holy fuck was that loud! I watched closely and was ready to dive onto the rocks if it came toward me but you were exactly centered on the runway, so the wing tip missed me by 15 feet! You came in super low, I bet there was maybe 60 feet between you and the fence! That was super close!" Then Dan paused and pointed at me and stood erect like a Japanese soldier at attention, and bowed out of respect and stood up with a huge smile. He looked like he might explode with happiness. I think what he described was an aircraft carrier landing done with a luxury jet! I went back inside the Citation to get my water to rinse my mouth and spit outside on the ground. Then I asked if he had something I could use to sweep up my puke. Dan said "Leave it, the lizards'll eat it."
We casually walked twice around the Citation visually inspecting the fuselage and discussing every moment of the approach and landing, he tried to re-assure me while I tried to calm my pounding heart. My shirt was drenched with sweat so I took it off and spread it out on the wing.
Dan asked, "I forget, you ever go bowling?"
"Uh yah, maybe 15 years ago, why?"
"When you get your ball and you are ready to roll it down the alley you stand up, look at the pins, relax and focus then swing the ball back as you begin your approach, right? If you do it right the ball barely hits the alley and rolls fast down the lane, with me? There is no big thud when the ball lands on the alley. You know what I `m saying?"
"Yah, it's the sound of the ball landing on the wood, if you do it right you barely hear the ball hit."
"Well your landing was like that, you came in very low so by the time your wheels passed over the edge of the runway they were only like six feet above the asphalt, you probably never felt the touch down, did you?"
"Hell, it all happened so fast I got no idea, I suppose it was kind of gentle, but the suspension on the main gear is designed to soften the touchdown anyway."
It surprised me when he asked, "Does the Citation measure the impact with the runway?" and I said I thought it did, so he gestured toward the cockpit. He offered to help me pull out the stairs then we climbed back inside and switched on master power to check the numbers.
He switched the avionics on while I squeezed into the pilot's seat, he stood between the seats and leaned over to read the display. I said I didn't recall what the code was to read peak pressure on the struts, so Dan reached down and pulled out the Citation manual.
In the index in back he finally found the page number then flipped to page 256 and slid his finger down the list and looked for the code: Strut compression maximum, or how hard the struts were compressed when the main gear hit the runway, the display showed a value of 12psi, but showed a standard range would be between 30-67. Dan said, "Wow, that's low. I didn't know that was possible." I stared at the book briefly and started to feel proud of my landing.
Are we done here?' he asked, and I said yes for now.' He shut off the plane as I got out of the seat, suddenly we were standing very close in the cockpit and Dan grabbed me and hugged me and whispered, "Good job, I'm proud of you brother." I got emotional and had to close my eyes, so I gestured to leave the plane so we both climbed down to the floor of the hangar and walked toward his truck. Along the way he reached up and patted my back again. I turned to glance at him but his eyes were focused on something outside.
We both heard noise and turned to see a strange vehicle on his driveway. The hangar building sits up kind of high so from the front edge of the floor looking out over the runway you can see the entire airport and most of the surrounding properties to the west, north, and east. I suspected this was one of his neighbors because I just flew a twin engine jet very low over the neighborhood about seven times! I hoped it wasn't some dude who was super drunk and mad and only spoke Arabic.
An old man in a Djellaba driving a old brown pick-up truck stopped and walked across the tarmac to the hangar (Dan raised his hand and waved twice) and we walked up to meet him half way but he spoke no English or Spanish and we didn't speak any Arabic so we tried using hand gestures, then Dan tried using his cell to translate but 5G barely worked, maybe the guy had a strange accent or something else was wrong. He pointed to a nearby property, so we assumed he was from the immediate neighborhood and we shook hands but the old guy seemed very pleasant. I think that was a `welcome to the neighborhood.'
The guy gestured at the sky and made the sound of a loud jet passing overhead again and again, so I pointed at the Citation in the hangar and he smiled and laughed and pointed at it too. The guy barely had any teeth left but he was pleasant and seemed happy about something. He kind of rubbed his finger tips together, the gesture for `expensive!' and we both laughed and nodded yes, then he pointed at me and Dan, as if to ask who owned the jet. I pointed at it then patted my chest and the old guy smiled and nodded yes and quickly bowed his head in respect. I made a gesture like I was steering and pointed at the jet to tell him I was the pilot. Luckily he did not pull a weapon.
Dan introduced himself by first name only. Then it was my turn, then it was the old guy's turn but in all honesty in Arabic I could not understand or repeat much of anything he said. It all sounded like gibberish to me. I could have repeated back wolves howling better than most of what he said, his lack of teeth didn't help make him easier to understand
I noticed that when I was learning Spanish long ago, it didn't take very long until I got the point where I was hearing individual words even if I didn't understand what was being said. But in local-guy Arabic I could not tell when one word ended and the next one started, they all kind of slurred together. And they make weird sounds that to me sounded like he was clearing his throat but were actually word sounds.
I walked over to the tail of the Citation and gestured to the man to follow me inside and see what it looks like, so with a smile he cautiously walked in the hangar and all three of us went inside and sat in the narrow leather seats and the man had a smile like he never stood inside any airplane before. He looked like he had never sat in such a nice leather seat before. The old guy was slender so he fit perfectly in the passenger seats. Dan gestured to the cabin door and they left while I did the shut down checklist on the Citation. I wished I'd had a can of Sprite and a cup of ice to offer our new friend.
Dan and his neighbor walked over to the new runway. I heard Dan try to tell him by writing with a stick in the sand that the runway was 1463 meters long and 13cm thick. Dan wrote his name in Latin characters DAN and the old guy tried in Arabic but it was unreadable but Dan heard him say his name several times, it was something like BinSoliman (BIN Soul EE Mahn). He was 62 and retired. They shook hands about three times and Dan tried to invite him to stay for dinner but it didn't seem like the guy understood. It was very nice to see the extent Dan went to greet and treat his new friend with great respect. That was another cultural thing, Dan introduces himself with his first name, but these Arabic guys introduce themselves with their last name. I think that is because it has some meaning other than just their name. With your last name you are introducing not only yourself but your family too, it's almost a tribal thing to some Arabs. Your name says who your family is and where they come from. Only your mom calls you by your first name anyway!
After the man left we got in Dan's truck and drove slowly to the west end of the runway and discussed markings again. He agreed he would paint a large white triangle for me, the width of the runway and extending out 30 feet from the end of the pavement. Normally the end of a runway is marked with long white bars that are a code for how wide the pavement is, but our 30 foot runway was extremely non-standard so I wanted a highly visible white triangle. I told him I really could not see the runway threshold on final approach so I was landing by the flares. I said the only thing that might be better is to light the flares and set one at each corner of the runway pavement, like in little holders in the ground.
"When I got really close I could barely see the center line, and I used a mountain peak off to the east for alignment." He told me to stop talking about it or I wouldn't be able to sleep tonight. We both laughed and he slapped my shoulder.
"How high was I above the fence?" I asked about the property fence on his west property line. Dan paused for a moment as if he was mentally replaying the image in his head and he said, "Maybe 60 feet." I shook my head because of how dangerous it all was. We stood at the very edge of the asphalt looking into the large area of desert he hand-cleared and just barely off in the distance I could see one rung of barbed wire cattle fence, then pictured the airplane tires 60 feet above that and I started to feel anxiety again. I was lucky to be alive.
The wingspan of the Citation is wider than the runway and the three foot gravel shoulders too. With the tires exactly centered the wing tips go almost three feet beyond the width of the runway, so there is very little room for error landing a jet on this tiny runway.
"If I could have come in at 80mph none of this would be a problem. This runway was clearly designed before jet engines were invented!" I repeated. Dan laughed and said it was narrower than the runway on the USS Lexington in World War 2! So I added, "Yah, but our runway is over five times longer than a 1940s aircraft carrier."
Dan shook his head and mumbled, "It's hard to imagine what all they did back then."
Dan put his hand on my shoulder (which is rare for him to do) and told me I should be proud of what I did today, it was like a perfect aircraft carrier landing in a passenger jet, only an awesome pilot could do that stunt, you should be proud!" He shook my hand and I got teary eyed briefly because of his sincerity and I could tell he really meant it.
We walked down to that end of the runway to discuss more markings and Dan asked why I couldn't land the Citation at 80mph? I told him, "Because that's well below the stall speed of the aircraft, I'd nose dive into the desert." I realized after his two years in the slammer he's forgotten a lot of what he learned in flight school. So I reminded him, "It's okay to stall an airplane if you're thousands of feet in the air but during the final feet of a landing you'll nose dive into the ground. Even those huge Boeing passenger jets are designed to recover from a stall without the pilot doing anything, same with probably any airplane made after 1930, but you need to be high enough in the air when it happens. And it helps to do it on an empty stomach because it's not a comfortable ride. It feels a little like a sudden drop on a roller coaster and everything in your stomach suddenly jumps up into your chest."
We got to the area where I wanted markings and had our chat and agreed on what would get painted first and second.
After our runway marking discussion we went back to the hangar to put the covers on the jet and we walked around outside and found four rocks to use as wheel chocks. I grabbed my shirt which was nearly dry. After the Citation was closed and covered we went to his motorhome and hung out without any AC running but he had a big fan which was good enough because it wasn't super hot outside today, maybe 86 degrees F. I stretched out on the sofa like a corpse, closed my eyes and tried to relax because I still felt like my heart was pounding a little. I could smell my own arm pits.
Dan offered to let me take a shower but I reminded him I had nothing clean to change into, then he told me he swiped one pair of my shorts so I could wear those and he'd hang my sweaty smelly stuff on the clothesline and they might smell better when I took a taxi ride home, he told me I had to spend the night. I laughed and agreed. I think that was the first time he ordered me to sleep over.
He stood up as if he was going to go get the shorts and gestured toward the hangar and said, "You mean you own the most expensive party vehicle (a private jet) in the world and you don't carry a change of clothes and some condoms on board?" I chuckled and told him `No, it never crossed my mind.' He shook his head side to side and muttered, "Fucking autistic nerd, I swear! Buy him books, send him to school and he chews the covers off the books." He turned and went back into his lair while I stayed on the sofa and chuckled at his comment. He usually only called me names like that when he was truly proud of me, which nearly made me emotional. It means a helluva lot when Dan complimented me. He would have told me he loved me except his alleged hetero code prevents him from saying it to any male except his father and grandfather.
So we agreed I would use the RV shower with hot water heated by the on-board 10 gallon electric water heater, he turned it on then got my shorts. Fifteen minutes later while I was taking my super fast eight-minute shower he hung my stinky clothes on his clothes line; I think he sprayed them with Lysol. And when I was done I discovered he forgot to set out a towel and I had no idea where they were so I squeegeed myself by hand and stood in his bedroom naked and waited for him. Dan laughed at my predicament and got me a small towel, I dried my hair and stood there naked while we talked. I finally sat my naked twink body on the sofa and covered my dick with the towel while Dan rambled on about our choices for dinner.
I thought to myself: `I'd like to eat a burger and fries, six cold beers and a couple hours with your dick for dessert, please.' He never asked what I wanted. Then I interrupted him and asked for the shorts he stole from me and he tossed them on the sofa, so I finally had clothes on. I wanted to tell him I was still trembling inside and needed a couple hours with his pacifier to calm down but I thought he'd react badly so I kept it to myself.
Dan decided to take a chuck roast he bought to make beef-vegetable soup and sliced it in half then started the grille to cook it as steaks, and he put canned peas in a small pan and set that on the grille outside too, so we moved our party outside to his new picnic table. I swatted about ten flies that landed on the table and suddenly they all seemed to disappear. I think the charcoal smoke bothered the little guy, or maybe they saw a snake that we missed.
While he was grilling dinner I opened his can of redwood stain and did the top of the picnic table, and the ends of the boards. If you're a friend of Dan and you are staining wood for him he insists you use steel wool and not a paint brush, so I put on rubber gloves and stained the entire top (and sides) of the table boards. And since he was still busy I also did one bench and all four sides. The table he built had two attached bench seats but no back rests. Luckily, he bought the kit that was super strong so it didn't wobble side to side much. He said it took him three days to build. I told him he should have stained the boards before he put them together. I asked if I could take it back apart and stain them properly but he ignored my request. Like me, Dan mostly screwed and bolted the table together, it contained no nails. Both of us were kind of anti-nail in favor of screws and a nice cordless drill.
While both of us were busy working on stuff one of the open-cockpit bi-wing planes he told me about flew over again, rather low and slow, maybe 500 feet at most and the pilot waved. It's hard to know if he saw us wave back, Dan said he expected to start getting aviation people drive over soon because the driveway was wide open, but unmarked. He said finding his driveway might be tricky, but the landmark that made the place easier to locate was the very large old green hangar. You could see it miles away in certain directions. The roof of the old control tower was sort of the same color as the desert so it was harder to spot from the highway, but now it was bright white. Dan told me the hangar used to have a desert scene painted on the roof with a cow and a hay cart too. I didn't recall looking at it when I flew over because my eyes were on the approaches.
Dan removed the food and added a few more coals to the fire then turned the steaks and stirred the peas and added another chunk of butter. Dan said `...a few more minutes on the steaks, I might take a shower after dinner.' We had to eat inside because of the fresh wood stain I applied. When he flipped the steaks he said they were medium rare and knows that's how I like mine. Dan learned to judge wellness of thick steaks over charcoal by feel and look, not by temperature.
We carried the food inside and ate on the sofa and had a nice meal while talking about airplanes and all the stuff he had to do over the next month, his schedule was packed full. He also said he was looking for used doors and windows for the ATC building, and he was waiting for a call about his Lexan sheets for the control tower windows.
After dinner we went back outside and walked in the control tower building and went upstairs and looked out over the Tangier area for almost an hour then he suddenly announced the sun would be set soon he had to get his shower now while he still had light inside. So he left the control tower, but I stayed upstairs and enjoyed the view. Too bad I can't see my apartment complex from up here. Dan shouted something so I went downstairs and he wanted me to hand him the shampoo bottle, which I thought was bullshit because he could just have easily stepped over and picked it up off the floor himself. I think he wanted me to open the cap and squeeze shampoo onto his palm for him.
While he was shampooing his hair he shut off the water so I poured more on my hand and shampooed his crotch and he got hard immediately but pretended he never noticed me hand washing his dick and balls. His dick certainly noticed, Dan got hard quickly.
He turned the water back on and rinsed himself and shut if off again so I tossed him the towel and stood there and watched him slowly dry off everything but the bottom of his feet. We ended up back inside the motorhome, but he left his towel and mine on a clothesline he rigged up inside the ATC building. On the walk back to the Bus I wondered what he would have done if I had set up a lawn chair and sat and watched him shower. My guess is he would have enjoyed showing off his lean young body. I've seen every square inch of his body hundreds of times.
I followed Dan into the bedroom and he got another pair of shorts from the drawer but I ripped them out of his hand and shoved him backwards on his bed, his feet still on the floor. Then I blew him and he came for me and I silently spit it in the toilet while he got us beers from the refrigerator.
We sat in the living room while we sipped our beers and he told me about all the airplanes he's seen fly low over the airport. He had a mental image of each one. There are a lot of very old planes in use here in Morocco. I think part of the reason for it is this country does not have many huge property owners like in the USA; here there are thousands of small family owned farms that have been in the same family for generations.
We went to bed and talked in the dark for nearly an hour and fell asleep.
Contact the author: borischenaz at mailfence