Love of Flying

Article by Gabe Rudavicious
Pictures by Andrew Kellogg
 

“Come on kid,” the old man said, “I’ll take you up in an airplane. I’m renting a Cub today and you can go up with me.” He knew how much the boy loved airplanes and to a ten year old these words were like a dream come true. All the daydreams, while he was bored in class, the fantasies of flight that were images in the kid’s mind, the swooping down from the clouds to just above the treetops - they will now become real.

The boy had once built a little model of a Cub using sticks and tissue paper, then he mounted on it the little engine that he received on his last birthday. He took the plane out to a large field and started the little engine. The plane flew well, and it flew, and flew, and then flew away - he had filled it with too much fuel.

The old man admonished he kid, “You should have patience and listen to experience so that you do not make all the mistakes yourself.” The old man also built little airplanes that flew, but he also had a pilot’s license. He had to save up to rent the Cub occasionally and it was not cheap just to get one hour of flying, and he was living on his pension money.

He told the kid to climb into the front seat of the Cub because the pilot always flies from the rear seat. The old man called out “Clear!” as the helper started the engine by flipping the propeller with his hands, just like the little engine. Then he said “It’s a warm day, we will leave the window open and the door folded down - we will get a better view.”

As the plane ran down the runway and lifted off, the kid was taking it all in, although he did not see what the pilot was doing, he watched the dual controls move as the old man manipulated the ones at the rear seat.

They didn’t fly very high, just about even with the tops of the factory chimneys as they passed them and were flying over the bay. It was a spectacular view - the many fishing boats on the smooth water and the sky was very blue as it extended out to the horizon. Then the airport appeared and the runway was coming at them very fast and then they touched it very gently.

This started the boy’s dream, a dream that had to be fulfilled.

Sixty years passed. The kid was now an old man.

He was now in the back seat of a Cub, just like the one before, when he was a kid. The examiner had grilled him for two hours about the rules and regulations a pilot had to know. Then he said, “OK, lets go - show me what you can do.”

Being nervous, under pressure, made it harder, but the liftoff was gentle and smooth, and now it was just follow the flight plan that the old man had submitted to the examiner.

After a short time, the examiner said, “You have to divert, I have to meet someone at Sandwich, so go straight there.” This should not have been a surprise, as examiners always do this kind of thing, but even though the old man had flown to Sandwich before, he did not know where it was from their present location. Panic - he could not find it on the chart that was strapped onto the board on his knee. Lost - not ten minutes into the flight and the old man was lost. Panic, frantic searching of the chart, Sandwich was nowhere to be found. The old man was thankful that the examiner was sitting in front and could not see his face, his bulging eyes as he gazed at the chart. The old man made a decision - no matter, he knew that Sandwich was to the North, and whether it was East or west of there, it was a matter of chance - maybe he could spot it. And he did see the town, on his left, and then the runway - they were in a perfect position to make the approach to land.

The examiner said, “Slip it in.” This was a difficult maneuver requiring good coordination and judgment of speed and altitude. The old man executed it perfectly and touched down on the runway very gently. The examiner then said, “Don’t stop it, take off and go back.”

It was not a mater of just heading straight back as there were maneuvers that the examiner required to be completed, and then he was satisfied. The home runway appeared eventually and the examiner said, “Make the landing very short, as close to the turnoff for the hangar as you can do it.”

The old man tried, the examiner said, “Not short enough, try it again.”

This time the old man forced the plane to touch the ground as he thought that he was going to overshoot, and the plane came back into the air with a tremendous bounce, and this could mean disaster. The old man cried out, “Damn, how could I do that, I can’t believe it.” The examiner said nothing. The old man knew that there was only one thing he could do and that was to power it out of the bounce to make the plane touch down without it continuing to keep bouncing, usually higher and higher. It worked, the plane settled on the ground and there was just enough distance to apply the brakes hard and make the turn off. The old man was sure - the bounce meant failure!

They climbed out of the plane and walked back to the hangar. The old man said, “That was very bad.”

The examiner said, “You passed,” then he added, “You, are a safe pilot.”

When he filled in his approval into the old man’s log book, he handed the book back to the old man who looked at what he wrote. It said, “Check ride completed. Good job!”