Learn To Listen

"Listening" in Bronze

I realize that buying a house or an airplane are major events in one’s life, but I have just one more story to share. I want you to know how much Jesus cares from the time you get up in the morning until you tell Him goodnight. By the way, He’s there throughout the night too. I can’t tell you how many times He woke me in the middle of the early morning hours with someone on my mind for whom I would pray, just to find out the next day that the prayers were answered. I think I could write a book just on these kind of stories, but my hope is that you’ll start writing your own.

Anyway, I have been flying for over forty-eight years now and have accumulated thousands of hours in that logbook. I would also like to tell you that I’m the best pilot out there, because that’s what we all think; but I assure you there is no such thing as that “perfect” flight. In fact, I could write another book about all the times God “saved” my life. After saying this, I always like to ask, “You want to go flying with me?” Well, I’m going to take you on this ride…

Now before I tell this story (to my pilot colleagues out there who better understand) I’ll warn you that your skin will curl. You see, at this time I was a VFR helicopter pilot. VFR means, Visual Flight Rules, which means I could not fly into or through weather, into the clouds. I had to be able to see the ground and horizon in order to maintain control of the helicopter. By the way, most pilots will tell you helicopters can’t fly. That’s when I smile and say, “You’re right, they can’t, it’s the pilot who flies.” They are very unstable, but that’s what makes them so maneuverable and fun to fly. You can’t land an airplane on a boat dock, and that’s where I was going.

You can’t land an airplane on a boat dock!

It was in the fall of 1986 on a cool morning. I was to fly my boss from Bethel, Pennsylvania to Yonkers, New York just above Manhattan on the Hudson River. The weather report was an eight-hundred-foot overcast sky with ten miles of visibility in light rain and drizzle, a typical day in New York City this time of year. It was an uneventful flight into NYC, we passed the face of the Statue Liberty and continued up the Hudson. We followed a known helicopter route and were scheduled to arrive at our boat dock at 10 am. Once there, the ride for my passenger was not on time. So, with no place to go for overhead cover to stay dry, we sat in the helicopter with it running for forty minutes. I told my boss that I would be at White Plains Airport, handed him a business card, and told him to call me when he was ready for pickup at the same dock.

Now folks, when you’re sitting on a dock, next to a two-hundred-foot cliff wall which banked the Hudson, looking up through the drizzle to a solid grey sky, you just have no clue how high the clouds are. There was no radio reception on the dock either, so I took off with the latest knowledge I had: an eight-hundred-foot ceiling. While on the climb out, I was having a little fun building up my speed next to that wall. I know you have seen something like this in the movies. When I turned my head to look forward, I saw that I was approaching wires that were drooping out of the sky right into my flight path. So, near the top of the wall at one hundred knots, I pull the nose up and banked right, towards White Plains keeping my eyes on those wires to maintain separation. As soon as I rolled wings level, about seventy-five feet above the ground, I hit another type of wall. We call it, zero/zero weather. That’s a sky zero feet high, with zero miles visibility. To better describe this, imagine taking white paint and covering every square inch of your windows, my whole world, in an instant, became thirty inches away. My first instinct was to start the timer and turn left back to the river where the ground temperature would yield clear skies, but those wires! So instead, I started to decelerate to a stop, remember helicopters can hover.

Now, it would take another book to explain how difficult it is to hover blind. You see, due to what we call “rotor-wash” the airspeed indicator stops working at about eighteen knots, so there would be no way to know if I were stationary. I wouldn’t know if I were drifting left, right, forwards, or backwards. So just let me say, to hover in these conditions would be nearly impossible, but hover I did. The stress of trying to maintain control, deciding where to go or what to do, caused the palm of my hands to sweat so badly that I had to let go of the controls repeatedly to dry them on my pant leg. I knew I was in a bad situation!

I tried to abort the flight by starting a very slow descent until I could see something. To my surprise, leaves from a tree started wiping my chin-bubble on the left side, I was seated in the right side. I quickly realized that in addition to a very thick fog, the water and dew on the outside of the windows added to my problem. I climbed back up out of the tree just high enough to clear the skids, and started a slow movement forward in search of a landing spot. I don’t really know how to describe the severity of the situation for you to know what was going through my mind, but I have never experienced the palm of my hands to sweat like they did.

I knew I was in a bad situation!

During this slow drift forward, objects that were visible would disappear. Things would come and go in my view. I came upon a chimney, for which I climbed to clear. I descended into a backyard of a home hoping to land, when a swing set appeared into view and prohibited the attempt. This kind of flying, which was a walking speed, went on for what felt like an eternity, all the while I just stared out that chin-bubble. I made a radio call to White Plains approach control saying, “White Plains Approach, this is helicopter 111RL approximately twenty miles west, I am inadvertent IMC, and request vectors to the airport.” They came back with, “111RL, White Plains airport is closed to all traffic, we are zero/zero weather, the airport is closed.” This is not what I wanted to hear. My second call was, “You don’t understand, I am a VFR pilot in weather and need your help.” Their response, “111RL, you don’t understand, the airport is closed to all airborne and even ground traffic. Again, we are closed to ALL traffic.” You need to understand, that everything that was happening at this point was beyond any of the rules written in the Federal Aviation Administration regulations for airport operations, and they had to play by the rules. I was flying a VFR helicopter in less than VFR conditions; but the FAA rules for helicopters states: “You must fly a helicopter so as to avoid objects and personal property.” Fortunately I didn’t break that rule...yet!

Now for you pilots out there with increasing doubts, although this aircraft was not certified or equipped for instrument flying, it did have an attitude indicator, a VOR with a Loran navigation system, and a radar altimeter, all of which allowed me to maintain control and positional awareness. The main problem here is that I was not certified. This experience has taught me a lot, and now I would do things differently. We all know that hindsight is twenty-twenty. So back to this moment.

In my last attempt to contact approach control, I call back, “White Plains Approach, this is helicopter 111RL, Mayday, Mayday, Mayday"...then repeated my request for vectors. The difference here is that I just declared an emergency and released all controllers from the rules of the game. So, they gave a transponder code for me to plug in, which would allow them to identify me on their radar, and started giving me headings to fly to the airport. I was flying so low and slow that controllers would say, “You are intermittent on our radar, we will give you a heading steer when we can see you.” I was watching my radar altimeter for terrain avoidance go between fifty and one hundred fifty feet. I never saw the airspeed indicator come alive, so I was less than eighteen knots. This made for a long time searching out that chin-bubble avoiding those obstacles. I was becoming exhausted, went into total IMC (seeing nothing) for some time when I heard a voice in my head say, “Jon, stop.” At this point the back of my neck was stiff from staring out that chin-bubble, so I stopped, and while hovering, lifted my head up and back as to stretch out my neck. With eyes open, as I was lowering my head back down, I saw white metal rivets, two by two from the top of my windscreen to the bottom, right in front of my face which appeared to be about three feet away. I looked up to my rotor blades, unable to see their tips, and wondered why I didn’t hit whatever it was that I saw. Training instinct takes over as we are taught to navigate an obstacle to the left. As the pilot sits on the right, this would give the best view to maneuver around the obstacle. As I started to go left, that same voice said, “No Jon, go right,” I immediately went right. Even though I knew the helicopter would be closer to that object, I obeyed the voice without a second thought, and then marched on. There is so much more I could describe in what followed, but won’t.

After a traumatizing forty-five minutes that covered only ten miles, the controllers did a superb job talking me down to a three-foot hover over the numbers of the runway. It was great to hear them say, “Cleared to land and stay put, we will send a ground truck out to lead you to parking.” For the first time, after landing on those numbers I felt safe until I started seeing yellow flasher rushing toward me. Even though all my lights were on, that truck driver slammed on his breaks. With all four wheels smoking he ended up stopping within twelve inches of my helicopter. I guess he didn’t get the briefing on that zero/zero weather; yes, it was that thick! After securing the helicopter, I walked into the terminal which was crowded with pilots, their eyes wide open in wonderment. I had a big smile on my face and just walked by them saying, “You guys need to learn how to fly helicopters.”

Folks, I spent three days in a hotel in Yonkers, New York in this weather. On the morning of the third day, which was a Sunday, a cold front moved through and the skies were as clear as could be, I mean crystal clear and very uncommon for NYC. So when I was ready to take off and fly home, I asked for a clearance to fly out on the reverse course that I was vectored on that horrible day. I wanted to know what those rivets were.

My first amazement was to realize how congested the area was. I mean houses on top of houses with half of them having tall shortwave radio antennas, and wires everywhere...wires, I never thought of wires! Then I saw it, I flew up onto an all-white colored water tank, on very high legs. The top of the tank perfectly flat, which was different than all the others tanks that were in the same area. I knew this was “the tank” because just to what would have been the left side coming the other way, were two very tall commercial radio towers with guide wires supporting them, crisscrossing the tank legs to the ground. I immediately was reminded and thought, “No Jon, go right!” While flying around that tank, I realized that I had to have been at exactly the right height to not get tangled in the wires below, and high enough for my rotor blades to clear the top of the tank. I realized too, that I would have been killed had I gone left around that tank. When seeing all of this, I started praising God for new life, and when I thought “new life”, I remembered Christ spent three days in tomb like I did in a hotel to give me life eternal. I spent the rest of the flight home singing praises the whole way.

So, who was that voice I heard in my head? I’ve shared this story with many, and many say it was just coincidence. You know, it wasn’t that long ago, that when I would hear my mom say, “Jesus told me…” I would react much the same way. I would be critical of her and say, “God doesn’t speak in a voice, you can’t hear Him.” She would smile and softly say, “Son, you just need to learn to listen.”

“Son, you just need to learn to listen.”

Do you need to learn to listen? Can you hear when the Spirit calls? The Bible says that no man can come to Christ unless the Spirit calls him. Please, oh please friend, learn to listen!

Folks, Jesus calls us “Friend”, because His love knows no limits. He also said that there is no greater friend than one who would lay down his life for another. He has done this too on a cross called Calvary. I pray that what I have shared with you will clear your eyes, soften your hearts, and open your ears to hear His call. Challenge a friend with these stories, start a conversation to seek the truth, because that’s the only thing that really matters. Know too, that Jesus said, “I am truth” (John 14:6).