50 first-timers

By CHESTER PETERSON Jr.

…47, 48, 49…and now, finally, the milestone number 50! 

Yes, it’s taken a few decades. But, today, at last, I helped my 50th person temporarily “cast loose the surly bonds of Earth” by giving them their first ride in an aircraft. 

I’ve been recording such initial flight ventures in my logbooks since the first one, then my youngest child, Erik, who is now a private pilot.

This time my rider was a cute petite 10-year-old girl shyly answering to Malina, who most happily made the milestone ride. 

A pillow and the right front seat forward to the max helped her see over the instrument panel. Her mother and a friend rode in the back seats.

As always, I carefully explained the need for the preflight check — you can’t pull over to the shoulder of the road in an airplane — and the name and function of each instrument and control.

She was all smiles from then on. My usual plan is to fly to a nearby destination and not simply fly aimlessly about. So, we departed Salina, Kansas, for Manhattan, Kansas. 

After trimming my middle-aged Mooney at cruise, I asked Malina to also grasp the wheel, then demonstrated a shallow bank to the right and then back to the left. This is what I do with all youngsters on their first ride, then let them fly.

I took my hands off the wheel and said, “Your airplane. Try a bank to the right.” She did. Hmm, no altitude loss. Ditto to the left. “Head that away, Malina.” Darned if she didn’t, consistently maintaining altitude and heading almost flawlessly.

After landing, the KMHK tower operator gave us a tour of the control tower’s work room.

The winds on our return had reached an unforecast 18 gusting to 31 knots, but the bumpiness down low didn’t seem to perturb Malina a bit. I think she’s hooked on flying now. I hope so.

Several of these maiden voyages stand out in my memory. I gave a good many Civil Air Patrol cadets orientation rides. One young man required a thick pillow, too, as he handled the controls.

It was perfection aviating.

“I thought you said you hadn’t ever flown before,” I asked him. “You’re flying like a pro.”

His answer?

“No, sir, I haven’t, but I do have 1,000 hours flying Microsoft Flight Simulator.”

Another time my first-timers were much older. The middle-aged husband and wife appeared especially nervous. Later, a mutual friend told me they saw me looking all over the airplane before we flew, and so thought something was wrong with it. That was a good lesson to explain everything — don’t assume.

I especially remember another “first-timer.”

When I began flying with the Civil Air Patrol, my squadron had a Cessna 150 we called — with good reason — the “Widowmaker.” A former pipeline patrol aircraft, it had 7,000-plus extremely hard low-level hours on the tach.

At a practice CAP Search and Rescue mission at the Salina airport, I earned my Mission Pilot qualification from the Wing Commander in the morning. 

That afternoon I flew the plane again with a young man training to be a scanner. He’d never flown before. He was slightly apprehensive, yet eager.

At gross weight our takeoff on Runway 35 seemed fairly long, but that was normal with the C-150’s tired engine. When I tried to climb out of ground effect, well, it wouldn’t. I used best rate of climb airspeed, then best angle of climb, then two or three other airspeeds. The rate of climb indicator sometimes showed a hesitant increase and sometimes showed a decrease.

I turned to the trainee and announced, “Joe, I don’t want to alarm you, but we seem to have a minor engine problem. We’re going to return to the airport.” Yeah, minor.

I was finally able to cajole her up to 200 or 300 feet above the ground after maybe three miles, barely enough that I dared bank really shallowly to the right for 180°. I called tower, said we had a slight problem, and that we’d enter an immediate right downwind to 35. 

As we entered the downwind I applied the usual carburetor heat — and the engine noise, not to mention the tachometer — plunged down almost to nothing.

The river of time slowed to a trickle. Every checkride the checkpilot pulls the power and says, “OK, you’ve lost the engine. What you gonna do now?” 

Only this time I was going to have the opportunity to deadstick her in for real. I was actually grinning. We touched down gently and we were able to roll out onto a taxiway.

It was later explained that at the recent annual inspection the mechanic had not only installed the wrong fuel line filter, but also put it in backward. As we took off, the filter started moving and restricting fuel flow. When I pulled the carb heat knob it got sucked in almost entirely.

And, no, regrettably no one ever saw that trainee again.

However, I hope and truly believe that my providing “first-timers” with flights has resulted in a good many wins. Don’t you agree that such a flight at an early age instills a desire for more aviation in later years? 

For instance, I remember a CAP cadet “first-timer” who later graduated from Naval flight school to fly FA-18 fighters.

The moral of all this: As a practicing pilot, do your part to get ‘em started, and started early, to help shape tomorrow’s aviation.