FOILS AND FIBRILLATIONS OF A CAREER BACK SEATER
“Thus every poet, in his kind, is bit by those who come behind.”
No idea what I did to deserve such a fate, but it fell my lot to spend the Eighties and then some in the breezy back seats of a motley fleet of Schweizer 2-33s… doing… whatever seemed necessary at the moment. Here are a few reasons why I won’t be forgetting those days any time soon. There are many more, trust me.
It’s a strange place back there, a minimalist torture chamber with a view — where you’re obliged to punish yourself while also performing triage on the victim up front. Like any respectable aircraft, the ’33 is ergonomically awkward and tight in places, but it also wastes a ton of cockpit volume that no two normally proportioned occupants would ever need. Such as straight overhead for example. Embarrassed to admit this, but it took nearly a whole decade to notice the back cushion isn’t much use anyway, so put it under you and sit on both cushions to reclaim some of that empty space up there, while making more leg room to boot. If you’re lucky to have the fat Schweizer cushions, it can feel like a baby's highchair; be sure to snug that lap belt so you don’t fall off.
When accelerating prior to launch, rainwater on the huge bulbous canopy sweeps up and back, to fall as a brief but stimulating shower right in your lap, or face, typically at about the point of liftoff. If it’s been really pouring lately, that’s also when the forward occupant might get a robust dash of rusty gunk from the two-foot-long air vent tube, hopefully not tinctured with resident mouse pee. Then after landing, water still trapped behind you in the trailing edges (further cooled by your adventures aloft) surges forward at the very end to cascade down your back as you flump to a stop. Call it cross training for your character.
There is no aft instrument panel in 2-33s, and sitting behind big folks, or those with frizzy hair, you can’t see up front without craning your neck. This was back when I still kinda relied on a vario, despite what I was telling myself, so I learned to read it reflected backwards in the lower bulge of that same enormous canopy. Caveat: only works when the sun angle’s right, which is always less than half of any circle, and hardly at all on cloudy days. Meaning most days. More than once I asked an XL passenger who also had big frizzy hair to honor me by wearing my hat for the remainder of the flight. Some tourists will believe anything.
To hold your feet off the pedals and let a student fly, you must contort yourself into a catcher’s squat with heels up under your thighs. If the student’s any good, you’re obliged to stay in that position until they provide some excuse to move your legs again. One time - and no fool should need to try this more than once - I got bored and worked my feet down through those openings beside the aft pedals, so my legs were hanging straight into a coffin size space below the floorboards. This left no quick access to rudder control, revealing more about my judgment than any supposed trust in that particular front-seater. And worse, having committed the sin, it was impossible to get my feet back up without kicking my shoes off, letting them flop onto the elevator pushrod where I could never reach them in flight…
Not much good to say about the rickety back door into this cubby hole, either, except you don’t honestly need it unless it’s cold out, and it’s easy enough to repair every week or so if you leave it on. But I did find something inspiring in that big clunky window on the port side. Open its hinged plexi rectangle, weather permitting, and you can fly with one elbow out like an old-time train engineer. It was my personal custom, when gliding by hikers in a certain abandoned fire tower, to lay that window flat against the fuselage and squeeze my entire torso out, waving and yelling, “Hey you down there! Come on up!” Or if we were right at their level and feeling frisky, might wait until our closest point and wail, “HELP!”
Like I say, there’s plenty more where that came from, but this might be all you can stand for now, so here’s where I’ll try to stop.
Your turn.