Beginnings

As any decent story does, this one begins with once upon a time. It's a once upon a time so long ago that it almost hurts to remember that far back.


Several years before the time I'm talking about, as a boy, I had learned to fly line control airplanes. I built the things and flew them and even learned to design my own. I designed airplanes totally different to those available as a kit.


Once I even built a flying wing. Two of us tried to make a flying wing, mine flew but the other fellows did not.


His design was far lighter and looked more polished than mine. He used the traditional construction techniques we had both learned, covering his airplane in silk-span. I, on the other hand, had placed lead weights at the trailing edge of the wing and covered the whole thing with thin balsa. Adding lead weights was the only way I could move the balance point where I was sure it needed to be. My friend, on the other hand, rigidly adhered to the axiom light but strong. From that airplane, I learned that there are many variables other than light and strong which go into a good design.


As you can see, I had long been interested in flying. Several years later I finally took the step.


For years, I had threatened to go to learn to fly. The problem was that flying was expensive. I was just out of the Navy and was not interested in going back into the military to learn to fly. Instead, one sunny day I went to the airport.


I still remember walking up to the small two place airplane and climbing in the left-hand seat. My new instructor climbed in the right seat and started to tell me about the bird. I remember walking around the bird and as he used a card, covered in plastic, to tell me what to look for. I had heard about checklists, but I had believed that they were only used on large airplanes. That day I learned they were used on all airplanes because all pilots have flawed human memories.


In a car, you get in, turn the key, and the engine simply starts. In an airplane, it's not quite that simple. Starting the engine though is still easy compared to what was to come next.


Up to this time, I had been in airplanes less than a dozen times. My first memory of an airplane is when I was about three or four, and I was taken for a flight in a DC-3. The Gooney was a wondrous thing for a small boy. Next I got a ride in an Aero Commander. Then of course I flew as a passenger several times while I was in the Navy. But I had never been, in the business end, of one of the things until this day.


I still remember the surprise that I felt when I learned that, on the ground, we turned the bird with our feet. The control wheel had to be held in certain positions related to where the wind was coming from. Often this was in the direction away from where you wanted to turn. Taxi, fortunately, was quite easy to master, and, in the few minutes, it took to get, to the runway, my new instructor was sure that I could actually make the takeoff. (He was actually guiding the yoke telling me when to pull.)


I still remember that time. For the first time in my life, I looked out over the nose of an airplane at a real runway, and the sky was waiting for me to lift into it.


At that moment, I knew where my future lay. Those of you who have experienced that moment remember that the feeling is only topped by one which happens one or two weeks later. That moment when you release brakes on your small airplane and join the ranks of the birdmen, or bird women. The day when you lift alone into the sky for the first time.


Few moments in life match these two moments, the first when you first lift into the sky at the controls of an airplane and the second when you do the same thing, alone.