"Hot mike" is the preferred way. We simply pull up two buttons, which makes our boom mikes "hot," or continually open to interphone conversations without our having to press the talk switch. The pilots very rarely use the hot mike because it picks up noises such as breathing on the mikes and the hissing of the slipstream. And the casual conversations between the engineers, who always use it, distract from the task of listening to the radios.
A favorite ploy of mine is to pull up the hot mike "listen" button so that I can eavesdrop on the engineers. Mostly I hear them talking at length about some little problem or curiosity with which the jet has presented them. Sometimes a senior engineer will be lecturing to a newer guy on the finer points of the trade. But occasionally I catch a little gossip.
And they have their own little capers to keep their conversations private. The extra engineer may stand up for a stretch and take a quick gander at the pilots' interphone panels to make sure the hot mike buttons are down. Others, such as the one we call Catfish, are more cunning. While I was once eavesdropping on him, he paused and tested me by asking me when we expected to land. The question was posed on hot mike rather than on interphone. I knew it was a trick because I had my hot mike volume turned lower than the interphone volume. When I ignored the question, he assumed he had privacy and proceeded to discuss some particular shortcomings of another pilot, who happened to be a friend of mine. I listened for a while, then interrupted and chastised him for gossiping and defended my buddy.
But tonight I'm on hot mike with Findley. I hold up my end of the perpetual one-sided conversation by nodding once in a while, grunting now and then, and occasionally posing a question or comment. I depend greatly on Findley's knowledge of the Starlifter's internal workings. He's the jet's doctor, its trainer, its groomer. He's its occasional healer and wizard. He rebukes the jet when it falters and praises it when it performs to his expectations. His is a labor of love, but like most flight engineers, he would never admit it.
The Starlizzard has a complicated nervous system, over which Findley meticulously watches. He sees that ample power from our four engine-driven generatorsenough to light the town of Gunnison near his farmis satisfying the demand of our lights and electronic packages.
He monitors its cardiovascular system as well. The jet has three hearts that pump the blood of hydraulic fluid through hundreds of feet of tangled metal arteries at a pressure of 3,000 pounds per square inch. This pressure drives actuators that provide the raw power to move our flight control surfaces against a wind force of several hurricanes.
He closely watches the jet's respiratory system, which features extremely hot, high-pressured air piped from the compressor stage of the engines and fed through ducts to the air conditioning and pressurization systems.
He's also the jet's nutritionist. The four gluttonous engines drink the putrid fluid stored in our tanks at the rate of a gallon every two seconds. Periodically I hear the clicking sound of Findley orchestrating his clusters of cross-feed valves and boost pump switches twenty-seven of themto ensure that the ten wing tanks drain symmetrically and in a specific sequence. I haven't the slightest idea how to do this and depend on him totally. The fuel is heavy; there is seventy tons of it, and the flow sequence is necessary to preserve the wing's balance and structural integrity.
These planes have far exceeded the manufacturer's recommended useful lifespan. Cracks in the shoulders of the wings began to show up several years ago and caused severe restrictions to be placed on some jets. Attempts were made to mend the cracks, but new wings were out of the question. The government had decided not to pay for the storage of the jigs and tooling after production ceased, so the manufacturer just threw them away. Later, we would scoff at General Johnson's response to a congressional committee convened to review the lessons of Desert Storm. When asked about the wing cracks, he replied, "Yes, sir, we took a few chances."
Imagine that. We we took a few chances. Pardon me, but how many times did you go downrange in a C-141, General? No, sir. It is Findley and I who take the chances; we and the others of the Cracked Wing Roulette Society.
The watchful Findley continues his prattle: "We tried catfish farming one year but. ."
We are over Newfoundland. It was here that Lindbergh watched the night settle in over the island's uplands: "Each crevice fills with shades of gray, as though twilight had sent its scouts ahead to keep contact with a beaten sun. The empire of the night is expanding over earth and sea."
I watch the lights sparkle into life along the seacoast and listen to Moncton Center as they issue a routine traffic advisory to a British Airways jet concerning us.
"Speedbird two niner eight, Moncton, you have traffic your one o'clock, ten miles, opposite direction at flight level three three zero, a C-141."
"Roger, Moncton, Speedbird has the traffic in sight. Is he going to the Gulf?"
Moncton Center knows our destination tonight is Germany, but they have no way of knowing our ultimate destination. I hesitate for a second, trying to remember if our itinerary is classified. I don't know. I press the transmit button.
"Roger, sir, we'll end up there eventually."
"Then God be with you."
I appreciate his good wishes but hope we won't need the Lord as badly as he insinuated.
It has been three hours since we departed McGuire for Germany, but we are still over land. I've done this before when passengers have come up asking if that was Ireland down there. I get a kick out of telling them that we haven't even started across the Atlantic yet. Many people simply don't realize that the direct route to northern Europe from the United States is northeastward, up through Canada, which stretches for hundreds of miles toward Europe.
Now it's time for our familiar battle over our clearance with Gander Oceanic Control. Up ahead, as we leave Newfoundland, Gander will funnel us into one of the five tracks leading across to Europe. The tracks, known as the North Atlantic Track System, or NATS, parallel each other sixty miles apart and are redefined each day to take advantage of the high-altitude winds and pressure patterns. The eastbound tracks, labeled "V" through "Z," are active at night and expire at dawn. Then westbound tracks "A" through "E" are activated. Aircraft are fed into the NATS at certain intervals and altitudes. Because air traffic control radar cannot currently reach out more than a couple of hundred miles across the ocean, planes must be separated by lengthy intervals. They must also report their positions by high-frequency, or HF, long-range radio every ten degrees of longitude.
I suspect that Gander doesn't look forward to seeing us coming. We are sixty miles per hour slower than most commercial air traffic, and so the control center must leave a wide gap behind us before allowing one of the faster jets in, or else we will be overrun. This requirement of course makes traffic control harder.
Thus the controllers like to get us out of the way by assigning us an altitude too high for our heavy weight or too low for proper engine efficiency, which would eat into our reserve fuel. Neither is acceptable. The clearance delivery frequency can sometimes sound like haggling over a used car. They make an offer. We refuse. They counter. We compromise. In a while we have an altitude and route that suits us. But others of our kind have had to turn back or divert elsewhere for extra fuel because the clearance was unacceptable.
Tonight Gander has cleared us into track Whiskey at our present altitude of 33,000 feet. But we have agreed to climb to 35,000 feet at forty degrees west longitude, by which time, Findley tells me, we will have burned off enough fuel weight to climb. This will keep Gander happy by allowing faster traffic behind us to overtake and pass underneath us.