One of my favorite books when I was a child was an old leather bound "aircraft identification" book. I don't know where the book came from, but it provided pages of small photographs of all varieties of aircraft. It must have been published in the 1950's. It did not have any of the modern, high speed aircraft of the 1960's.Flying was something that captured my imagination. I would have thought a Dry Farmer would have wanted to keep his feet firmly planted on the ground, but if so, I was an exception. Rubber-band powered model planes and paper planes frequently occupied much of my time. As I got older I enjoyed model rockets. Anytime I was near an airport or heard the noise of an overhead aircraft I stopped and strained...to get a better view, to watch in awe as the miracle of flight was proven to me yet again.
One year our state fair offered a 5 minute ride in a real helicopter; four people for $20. It was a lot of money in the late '60's but I could not get enough. I searched for fellow passengers to share the cost so I could ride again and again and again. I spent close to a hundred dollars buying rides on that helicopter...it was a fortune to me; but I could not get enough.
In the early 1990's I had a surprising opportunity. Walking each morning past the local airport I watched planes landing and taking off. Morning after morning I watched the planes and talked with my wife about my obsession with flying. I attended a local air show, where local pilots shared their love of flying and their planes. I rode in the open cockpit of an ultralight as the pilot skimmed hay bales in a nearby field...it was exhilarating. I had to find a way to learn to fly.
After discussing my consuming interest with my wife we agreed to invest the money, the time, and the risk for me to learn how to fly. I started my lessons at a nearby airport that offered inexpensive lessons at $50/hour for instructor, an old Cessna, and fuel. My first lesson was a bit of a terror. The new pilot was more interested in showing me how he could stall the plane. The complexity of flying and the difficulty in obtaining the necessary skills required to fly safely started to dawn on me. After my first flight, my instructor found another job and the plane owner almost got in a fist fight over where he was parking the plane. Now I was really discouraged.
But I had met and talked to a veteran pilot at the air show. When I told him of my negative first experience he was determined to make it right. He offered to take on my education and made a deal with the Cessna owner to use his plane. So my lessons started. At first I rode with my instructor and learned the instruments and the feel of the aircraft. After just a few hours I was able to taxi and takeoff with my instructor on board. A few more hours and I was landing. Takeoff was easy. But the joy I felt in the ultralight was replaced with a focus on technical issues: airspeed, stall speed, altitude, wind, and airport layouts (to name just a few).
After about 10 hours of flying I was ready to solo. I was excited and nervous. Alone in the plane I took off; once off the ground it was up to me...and only me, to land the plane. Of course you would not be reading this if I had not successfully landed the plane. It became easier with time and after about 15 hours of flying time I actually took and passed the official FAA paper-based pilot's test. So I was semi-official. Now I just had to complete my minimum flying hours and complete an actual in-flight test.
Flying was fun. My instructor told me I had a natural sense for flying. And while the plane was very old (it was manufactured in the 1950's) and the instrumentation a bit archaic, the actual flying was exhilarating.
I flew alone frequently (for practice) and was joined by my instructor occasionally. One evening we planned to practice night flying and we took off towards the end of the runway. Only on this night the plane took a little longer to reach airspeed and began its climb a bit more slowly. The instructor knew something was wrong and watched carefully as I balanced speed and my angle of climb. We both knew we were dangerously close to a nearby golf course's cottonwood trees. In fact, we just barely cleared the uppermost branches. Immediately my instructor had me circle the plane and land. I never flew again after that night. The plane had some mechanical problems, the owner was not willing to fix it, my instructor was not willing to risk himself or me flying it.
That was the end of my flying. I explored other flying instructors and their planes, but the cost was more than double what I had been paying...plus I was spooked. I was not sure I wanted to assume the risk which was much more apparent to me than it had been in the beginning.
I am still intrigued by flying, but now, more like my Dry Farmer nature, I am more interested in keeping my feet on the ground.
