The Flight Worthiness Test

Filed by Jimmy — first grade, winter. PHASE 1, LAUNCH DAY POST 2.

In rural Indiana, a healthy snowfall often resulted in the most glorious of school holidays—a snow day! On one such occasion, I devised a new experiment.

First, understand that I had done my calculations. That winter, the hill had been a working laboratory, and I had studied it: the older kids snow skitching behind anything that moved, somebody riding on a detached car hood while being towed, and kids on their plastic sleds pointing themselves downhill and then bailing off into the snow before the turn at the bottom. That last part struck me as a design flaw, not a maneuver. A plastic sled has no rudder—bailing is its steering.

At this point, I should add that there was a valid reason for bailing before the turn. If you continued straight, you would end up in a frozen creek with rather steep banks. There was, however, a footbridge off to the right that traversed this complication.

I believed that I had one advantage over the plastic sledders. I had a rail sled with runners and a steering bar. It was a proper vehicle with actual controls. I reasoned, with the airtight confidence of a boy who had never yet been wrong, that bailing was for people without better options. I would not bail. I would ride it down, make the 45-degree turn at the bottom, and cross the footbridge like a gentleman. I had run the calculation in my head. The calculation was optimistic.

Once again, I positioned myself at the top of the hill, climbed aboard my chosen vehicle, and launched myself down the hill. The plan had exactly one weakness—the plan itself. Halfway through the turn, the data came in: I am not going to make it. So I made the only command decision available. I cut back hard and initiated an unscheduled flight worthiness test.

I picked my creek entry point, left the bank clean, and stuck the landing in the sense that the landing occurred. Both handles snapped off the sled, but the pilot walked away. The findings were conclusive: the sled was not flight worthy.

Then came the most important phase of the operation: I got the sled home and stashed it before anyone could conduct an inspection.

Lesson logged: (1) Decide your abort plan before launch, not in the middle of the turn. And (2), which took decades longer to unlearn: when you hide a broken sled, nobody can help you fix it.

More field reports declassified soon. —Jimmy