What Does it Mean to “Wind the Clock”
A pilot’s technique for handling stressful situations.
Deciding to ask my self-proclaimed “golden armed fighter pilot” father to teach me how to fly probably wasn’t my easiest choice. I was a young woman who thought flying was second nature, and he was an instructor determined to change my mind.
Dad’s unconventional style also introduced me to my internal instructor. She had always been there, but I never depended on her as much as I did the day I soloed an airplane. I lifted off the runway alone, with no instructor telling me what to do. I was scared because everything I thought I learned vanished. The plane’s weight changed with dad’s absence, so everything felt different. A slight panic set in, and I realized it was totally up to me to get back on the ground. Quite literally a life and death moment. Then a little voice in my head said, “you got this.”
Time felt as if it had stopped, and everything fell silent as my internal instructor reminded me I had a choice. I could either choose the chaos of fear or the strength within calm. Almost forcing myself, I sorted out my emotions and picked where I focused. As a result, the engine’s sound started to fill my tiny cockpit, flight instruments almost pointed to where they needed to be, and I instinctively knew what to do to complete my solo flight successfully. I was only twenty-four years old.
An experienced pilot would refer to my moment of intense focus as “winding the clock.” I’ve always known the phrase but didn’t fully understand the meaning until that day. The term comes from an old military flight training technique in which pilots train for emergencies in simulated cockpits with fake switches and dials. The trainee received a reminder to wind the fake dashboard clock to channel any nervous energy with every incorrect emergency response. It is a phrase that represents that moment in time between stimulus and response.
A few years before, Dad and I were flying back home to Mojave from Los Angeles in his tandem two-seater, homebuilt called a Long EZ. We were over the San Gabriel Mountains when the noise from the engine stopped. The only sound remaining was the air as it slowed traveling over the wings. We were starting to lose attitude.
My thoughts immediately shifted from eating dinner to how Dad will get us over these mountains. I tried to look around for a place to land but saw nothing but miles of choppy mountain tops. From the back of our tandem seating arrangement, I couldn’t see Dad’s face. All I could do was wait to hear instructions.
Pilots are taught in emergencies to maintain aircraft control, analyze the situation, and take appropriate action. Flying a small airplane isn’t for the faint of heart. It is a test of a pilot’s personality and perceived limits. Typically pilots pride themselves on being confident with an excellent ability to stay calm during times of stress. However, in an actual in-air emergency, the pilots who are too cocky solve the wrong problems. A jump to a solution too quickly can cause a pilot to overlook obvious warning signs, doing things like landing on a snow-covered runway assuming the runway lights were left off.
When everything seemed to stop, I sat frozen, waiting to hear dad’s voice over my headset. But, he sat silently in front of me in total “wind the clock” mode, assessing the situation and solving the correct problem. It turned out to be a trapped fuel line. The solution, not a mountain top bumpy emergency landing, just a quick wing dip to release the fuel, and we were headed home for dinner.
I’ve flown over those mountains many times since then and try to take that opportunity to remind myself to remember the important moments between stimulus and response. In times of stress the time to wind the clock allows me to solve the right problems and avoid landing on any snow-covered runways.
