CAVES IN THE CLOUDS / HILARY BRACE

I almost called this post "Hilary Brace: Aviation Artist," but I don't think she thinks of herself that way. Brace claims that she's just drawing imaginary landscapes. Maybe, but what I'm seeing here (below) are cloud caves of the sort that my Dad said pilots used to see. 

My Dad said that he'd seen them, and I see no reason to disbelieve him. Flying as a passenger in commercial airlines I've seen bits and pieces of cloud caves, though they weren't as clear and romantic as Hillary makes them. Commercial jets travel too fast for cave exploration.

Nowadays it's against the law to fly through clouds if they can be avoided. All the traffic makes it too dangerous. My Dad didn't have to worry about that when he was young. There were no cloud laws then. He even flew in open-cockpit biplanes (which were old-fashioned even in his time). Imagine what he must have seen!

My Dad's long gone now. I wish I'd thought to ask him what the caves were like.

I'm guessing that they didn't last long...no more than ten minutes maybe.  After that they'd close up (above), trapping the poor pilot inside. Of course he could fly through the walls to escape.

I wonder what it would have been like to fly through the caves in a thunderstorm. It must have been cold and windy and wet. Maybe there were hailstones. Maybe flashes of lightning illuminated the walls.

Here's (below) a link to a great video of a sputtering lightning flash. Imagine being inside a darkish cloud cave when a bolt like this one appeared.

http://apod.nasa.gov/apod/ap120723.html

Caves like this (above) remind me of Jules Verne's story, "Robur the Conqueror." I wonder if he imagined his character's giant airship hiding in caverns like this one.

Remember those old film clips that showed barnstormers standing on the wings of planes? I assume they were braced somehow. Imagine what it must have been like to be one of those guys flying through the corridors of a cave in the sky!

  

BOY, DO I LOVE BIPLANES!

My dad was a private pilot and his airplane of choice was the biplane (above). No wonder, it's a plane for people who like to fly.  It flies low and slow, lands on grass, is cheap to buy and easy to repair, and glides so well that you need a lot of determination to crash it.

The biggest selling point though, is the open cockpit. This is the way a man should fly, with the wind in his face. You buzz your friends' houses and wave hello to the girls.

After that you rev up and head for the clouds (above) where you fly through caves of cotton candy, without a care in the world. Well, I'm exaggerating. What I described is the way things used to be. Nowadays you can get in a lot of trouble for flying through clouds.

Biplane pilots of old treated their planes with love, like they were members of the family.  Pilots were always doing stunts (above) and playing pranks on one another.

They were a lot easier to fly than modern airplanes. Early pilots learned to fly them without ever going to school.  For a while you didn't even need a license.

That's the control panel above. Not many more gauges than you find in the average car.

I understand why we have laws and regulations governing flying today. Planes are noisy and you don't want them crashing in your living room.  Even so, a lot of regulations could be taken off the books without doing much harm that I can see.

I'd love to see small, inexpensive biplanes make a comeback, especially if something could be done to dampen the pesky engine noise. Turn them loose over thinly populated areas, with common sense limits so they don't interfere with commercial aviation. Let them fly through clouds and over people's heads. Let a few accidents happen, they're inevitable. Let's legalize fun!

BTW:  Pappy sent me a link to a promotion for the new Icon A5 sports plane (below). Geez, if I ever become a millionaire....