The Haught Corner
Are you superstitious?
In sports, we see evidence of it all the time:
- A pitcher who won't touch the foul line.
- A hockey player who tucks in his sweater just so, then taps the goalie on the pads for luck.
- A basketball team that always switches from white shoes to black for the playoffs.
- Almost all teams avoid issuing the number 13 unless a player requests it.
But are you superstitious about your flying? Are you certain that disaster will follow if you don't do everything just so?
I thought so. Me, too. Let me find something that I believe works for me, and I will latch onto it like an alligator.
A few years back my wife got me a pair of those ultra-lightweight nylon workout pants to wear on the flying field. When I won the first event I flew in while wearing them, I just knew I had something.
Silly, you say? Not! I have had such success wearing this "lucky" pair of pants that I now try to "pick my spots" as to the proper day to wear them.
I even tried washing the pants between days of a contest to get more "luck" out of them; it doesn't work that way. One day per contest, please. No matter, though; I bought several other pairs of black pants to fly in.
In fact, I now have a mandatory contest "uniform":
- Oakland Cloud Dusters T-shirt
- Black pants
- Black midcut Converse shoes
I have tried to tempt fate by wearing, say, blue pants, and I never get away with it.
There's one Cloud Dusters shirt that I've had particular success with, so I usually try to pair that one up with my "lucky" pants for maximum effect. And once the flying season is over, these pants and shirts are stored until the following spring—why waste the magic?
Silly, you say? No way that something like clothes can "make" the flier! I checked around a little to be sure I wasn't the only crazy one out there.
Other fliers' rituals
- I flew with Georgia Tech graduate Mike Fedor for many years, and Mike wouldn't be caught on the field without a shirt bearing his alma mater's logo. Some 25 years after he graduated, he's still honoring this ritual. And yes, he has certain favorite/lucky shirts that he saves for extra-important contests.
- Another OFB (Old Flying Buddy), Mike Ransom, felt it was a must to decorate his models in orange-and-black trim—the colors of his college, Oklahoma State University.
- Gary Hover related how his racing team once had some very expensive team shirts made. They looked great, but had a terrible showing the first time they wore them. "We almost burned them right there," said Gary. Gary alluded to a number of routines he has in contest preparation that help to ease his mind between flights, but he considered them more a caution than a superstition. He did admit, though, that if he flew well on the first day of a contest, the hat he wore that day would surely be on his head for Day Two.
- Some guys are wholly practical; they don't buy into the idea of extraneous things affecting their flying. "I don't have any lucky socks, or anything like that," said Bob Underwood, "and I don't believe in luck, either." But Bob did relate that one should never use the expression "just one more flight." An alarming percentage of the time, "just one more flight" would be all the model had left in it. In Bob's area (St. Louis), guys would intentionally say, "just two more flights," and leave after flying one.
One day Bob didn't buy into all this important stuff. While he was flying a sport model, another flier kiddingly said to him, "just one more flight!" After they had a good laugh, the model crashed, and the guy who opened his mouth was distraught—certain that what he'd said had caused the accident.
My routines and beliefs
I'm not really superstitious; I don't cringe at the sight of a black cat, and I've deliberately walked under ladders to see what would happen (nothing did, of course).
There are certain things you just don't mess with, however. If I'm driving to a contest and I pass an Arby's restaurant that's open for breakfast, I must have a couple of their croissants to start the day. (When I'm on the West Coast, it's Jack in the Box Breakfast Jack sandwiches.) These are non-negotiable parts of the contest morning routine.
Whenever possible, I try to arrange the timing of my contest registration so I can get contestant number 14 (the number I always wore playing ball). When I CD my contest, I pull that number out of the stack of flight cards so no one else can have it.
I hear you laughing out there: "They'll be coming after you with a net pretty soon." I know full well that flying ability is what really counts, not what breakfast or what you're wearing. The rest of this is just some psychological prop that gives a built-in excuse for poor performance.
Or is it? If you think something will have an effect on you, doesn't that mean that it probably will? Of course it will, if you allow it to become a distraction.
One year some wise guy stole #14 from our team's uniforms and just wouldn't give it up. I had to wear #10, and it was my worst season ever. I'm sure it was coincidence...
And I bought a pair of blue flying pants, just like the aforementioned black ones. Wore them to a couple of contests, and proceeded to lose/tear up models and fly poorly. I finally had to banish the pants to the closet before I ran out of models.
Send your stories
How about you? Tell us your routines, superstitions, and tales of the supernatural. I'll bet many of you who are snickering at my silliness have a few little quirks or funny habits that make my stuff pale in comparison. I'll collect the best and strangest items and issue a report in the future—say, on Friday the 13th.
Jim Haught Managing Editor
Transcribed from original scans by AI. Minor OCR errors may remain.
