A good copilot is a good copilot, no matter what the aircraft. I fancied myself a good copilot back when I was a first officer on various airliners. I considered myself better than the average bear when it came to flight engineering, as well. Being a good copilot is harder, in my estimation, than being a good captain. And if you could manage to be an outstanding flight engineer, then God bless you; you were tragically warped, but you were an asset to your airline.I was in the right seat of a northbound Cessna Skyhawk and was trying to resurrect my skills at being a subordinate pilot instead of occupying the king's seat on the left side of the bird. We were departing the Lakeland, Fla., area of operations for our return trip up north to the land of permafrost and crowded toll roads with potholes -- Chicago.My friend, Ozzie, was based in ORD with a little airline we'll simply refer to here as "United." A 737 driver, par excellence, Ozzie was a copilot on the FLUFF, or the "Football" as it is sometimes called. This led to what Bob Dylan would call a "simple twist of fate." Imagine me, an egotistical, slightly overweight and graying senior captain, metaphorically "pulling gear" for a snot-nosed, fortyish, FLUFF first officer.In this case, Ozzie was in command by virtue of aircraft ownership and flying skill, not seniority.This particular 172 was outfitted with the very latest of 1970s avionics and automation. We sported a Cessna Navpac II suite of radios, complete with the beige-colored, twin nav-coms, an encoded transponder and a digital ADF. That old ARC-manufactured ADF, by the way, in my never-to-be-humble opinion, is the best ADF I've ever come across or operated. It is very easy to tune and the sound quality, while not up to the Bose level, is damn close.Today, I was making the best possible use of the ADF and had it tuned to 1230, WONN Lakeland. It softly played old big-band music in the background (and at roughly a 150 degree relative bearing) as we climbed at a blistering 700 feet per minute to our VFR cruising altitude.
This is a companion discussion topic for the original entry at https://www.avweb.com/features/ceo-of-the-cockpit-82-the-sky-probably-isnt-really-falling