For more that two years Tom Hardy and I have had an ongoing conversation about his exploits in a glider. Tom at 84 is an ageless adventurer. He's Columbus' version of Sir Edmund Hillary.
After each of our conversations, Tom would say he wanted to take me up sometime.
"Sure, I'd like that," I'd reply, thinking that chances were it would never happen.
And then Tom phoned the other night. How about Thursday at noon, he asked. "Check your schedule when you get to the office in the morning," he said. "Call me on my cell phone; I'll be on a tractor all day."
The day was wide open for me. Maybe the weather will turn bad; I wouldn't be upset if it did. Chatting about drifting through the skies in a motor less aircraft was harmless and pleasant enough; actually doing it, would be something altogether different. Tom suggested I not eat anything before our flight.
Thursday was sunny, and the sky was filled with puffy cumulus clouds. Maybe a thunderstorm would roll in by lunch. I took a pair of jeans with me to work in case it didn't.
The weather held, and by noon we were in the hangar at MSU's Raspet Flight Lab, which houses the two-seater Polish-made glider (a Swidnk PW6 for you soaring aficionados) that we would fly.
"You will be in the front seat so you can absorb the impact when we crash," Tom explained.
Seeking further comfort, I asked how we know where we will end up.
"You just pray," Tom replied.
Thirty minutes later we're sitting at the end of the runway at Starkville's Bryan Field, semi-reclining and strapped in our cocoon-like capsule with wings. We're attached to what looks to be a crop duster by 100 feet of not very thick yellow rope. Tom Hannigan, an MSU aerospace engineering professor is flying the crop duster.
Hannigan seems nonchalant, as though he were about to take a riding lawn mower for a spin around the yard. Instead he's about to drag us into the heavens up to two to three thousand feet where, at the moment of his choosing, Hardy will pull a yellow knob and release us.
Tom gives the word and we're moving down the runway. Almost immediately we're airborne, higher than the plane. It feels like we're water skiing in the air. We're up to 500 feet, 1,000 - spread below us to the east is the Mississippi State campus - 1,500 feet. At 2,500 feet Hardy cuts us loose. Why now, I ask. He motions to a lone buzzard at 8 o'clock. It takes a few minutes of looking and further direction from Hardy before I find the bird.
Hardy explains that the bird is riding a thermal, an upward draft of hot air. "We're going to do the same thing that buzzard is doing," Hardy explains. "Only he can do it better."
"This guy's amazing," I think to myself. I decide to relax and enjoy the view.
Tom Hardy's first encounter with airplanes came when he was 3 or 4 years old. A barnstormer flying a World War I biplane - known as a Jenny - landed in a pasture near his home in the prairie.
Hardy's mother, Bess, anted up $5 for a ride.
"I have a distinct recollection of seeing my mother climb into that plane and disappear into the distance," Hardy said. "I thought I'd never see her again."
Hardy was a Marine fighter pilot during World War II. He's continued flying since, using a small single-engine plane in his real estate and land management business. In 1973 his cousin Bob Hardy introduced him to soaring, and he's been at it since.
"The attraction for me is to go somewhere using nature's forces," Hardy said. "Finding and using air to go somewhere and go at the maximum possible speed."
Over Mayhew I look down and see the EMCC campus, the old Mayhew Junction and even the newly opened gentleman's club on Highway 45 Alternate. We're at 1,500 feet as we turn and head for home. Do we have enough altitude to make it back, I ask. Hardy assures me we do.
Later, after we've landed back at Bryan Field, he tells me, "There were a 100 fields between Mayhew and home we could have landed in."
Glad he saved that experience for another day.
To find out more about the MSU Soaring Club, call Tom Hannigan at 312-6673 or e-mail gliderclub@ae.msstate.edu
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Tom Hardy (left) with old friend Dick Johnson (right) at Bryan Field, March 2003. |
Tom over Starkville
in his one of his gliders. |