I took my first flying lesson today. Amazing. I’ve wanted to fly a plane ever since I found a copy of The Joy of Flying in a pile of used books. I was probably in the 5th or 6th grade, and I can remember sitting in a chair in the living room of our trailer on Rockville Road, moving imaginary controls and trying to feel their effects in my mind, the wing biting into the air and lifting me off the ground, above the commonplace.
I rode my bicycle to the airport down in Greenwood. It’s about nine and a half miles straight down Emerson Av. I walked into the office, and asked the man behind the desk if I could take a lesson.
Half an hour later, a guy named Larry came out and asked if I was his new student. Student? That sounds a lot like school to me! (Oh how little I knew!)
We walked out to the plane, a red Cessna 150 with N23505 painted on the side. We walked around the airplane, and he started explaining the various parts and controls to me. He said we were “pre-flighting” the plane. We got in, and I was immediately struck by how small it was inside. I didn’t know you could sit that close to someone else without being related to or in love with them. I seem to be all elbows as I try and move around the cockpit, such as it is, and touch the various dials and switches he shows me.
Finally he pulled out a little card he called the “checklist” and we went through it step-by-step until we got to the point where I had to pull the little handle to start the engine. The starter ground, and then the plane shuddered as the engine caught. It seemed awfully loud to me. Larry moved the plane out of the parking spot and then showed me how to steer it with my feet as we swerved down the taxiway towards the end of the runway. It’s an odd feeling to try and steer something with your feet, and it’s especially ungainly and awkward since the pedals seem to be connected to the nosewheel by something akin to rubber bands.
At the end of the runway, finally, Larry “ran up” the engine and said we could fly, and had me put just my fingertips on the wheel to feel his movements as we took off. He pushed in the throttle, and we sped down the runway, and before I could take it all in, I felt him move the wheel back and the ground dropped away at an angle.
Look Mom! I’m Flying! Well, I wasn’t, actually, but I was sitting in front of the controls of an airplane in flight. We climbed away from the airport, and Larry started to explain how the airplane was naturally stable in flight and to prove it, he let go of the controls. Nothing happened. Interesting. He then had me take the wheel, and immediately, the airplane started going places it wan’t supposed to, or so I thought. I’ve never felt anything that sensitive to my touch in my life. After a few minutes, it seemed I could fly in more or less of a straight line without turning us over, and he introduced me to the compass and turns by asking me to point the nose at “that water tower over there”. I did, and he immediately said something about backpressure and altitude. I looked and after a couple of feats of mental gymnastics, I got the idea that if you don’t hold the nose up in a turn, you lose altitude, and I had apparently lost a couple of hundred feet.
After a bit more practice, he asked where I thought we were. I looked around, and realized that I had absolutely no idea. I couldn’t see anything I recognized, and began to understand that there was a lot more to this flying business than I thought. Larry let me off the hook by pointing out a strip in the distance. “That’s the Shelbyville airport. Let’s land over there to take a break for a minute.” He pulled out the throttle an inch or so, and the engine quieted down, and I had sort of a “Whoa!!!!” moment when the nose of the airplane dropped as we began our descent. I must have gasped or looked green or something, because Larry looked at me a little closer and said “Do you want to go back?” “No, I just didn’t expect that right then.”
I watched with interest as he took over the controls, and watched the runway loom in the windshield as he landed with a little bump. We taxied back to the end of the runway, and he had me steer it down the runway as we took off, my feet desperately trying to keep the plane somewhere in the vicinity of the middle third of the this (much wider) runway. Again, the ground tilted, we lifted above the cornfields, and I got to practice keeping the wings level and making small turns as we flew back to the Skyway airport. Once again, he landed, and I went inside and paid. I purchased a logbook, and it now has one line filled out:
6/27/70 SKYWAY SHB CE-150 23505 CONT 100 1.o FAM FLIGHT, BASIC CTL, TURNS STR-LEV and a real live signature.
Oh, now I need to go tell my Mom what I did this afternoon. She doesn’t know.