Biplane

The harsh rasp of metal against metal and gear against gear, the labored grind of a small electric motor turning a great mass of enginemetal and propeller steel. Not the sound of an automobile engine starter. A starter for the engine of an airplane. Then, as if a hidden switch was pressed, the engine is running, shattering stillness with multibursts of gasoline and fire. How can he think in all this noise? How can he know what to do next? The propeller has been a blur for seconds, a disc that shimmers in the early sun. A mystic, flashing disc, rippling early light and bidding us follow. It leads us, rubber wheels rolling, along a wide grass road, in front of other airplanes parked and tied, dead and quiet. The road leads to the end of a wide level fairway.

He holds the brakes and pushes a lever that makes the noise unbearable. Is there something wrong with the airplane? Is this flying? We are strapped into our seats, compressed into this little cabin, assailed by a hundred decibels running. Perhaps I would rather not fly. Luscombe is a strange word and it means small airplane. Small and loud and built of metal. Is this the dream of flight?

The sound dies away for a moment. He leans toward me, and I toward him, to hear his words.

“Looks good. You ready?”

I nod. I am ready. We might as well get it over with. He had said it would be fun, and had said the words with the strange soft tone he used, belying his smile, when he truly meant his words. For that meaning I had come, had left a comfortable bed at five in the morning to tramp through wet grass and cold wind. Let’s get it over with and trouble me no more with your flying.

The lever is again forward, the noise again unbearable, but this time the brakes are loosed, and the little airplane, the Luscombe, surges ahead. It carries us along, down the fairway.

Into the sky.

It really happened. We were rolling, following the magic spinning brightflashing blade, and suddenly we were rolling no more.

A million planes I had seen flying. A million planes, and was unimpressed. Now it was I, and that green dwindling beneath the wheels, that was the ground. Separating me from the green grass and quiet ground? Air. Thin, unseen, blowable, breathable air. Air is nothing. And between us and the ground: a thousand feet of nothing.

The noise? A little hum.

There! The sun! Housetops aglint, and chimney smoke rising!

The metal? Wonderful metal.

Look! The horizon! I can see beyond the horizon! I can see to the end of the world!

We fly! By God, we fly!

My friend watches me and he is smiling.

* * *

The wind stirs the flap of my sleeping bag and the sun is already above the horizon. It is 6:15 and time to get up and get moving. The wind is not just cool; the wind is cold. Cold! And I thought spring in the South was a languid time of liquid warm from dawn to dawn. Into the chilled flight suit and pull on the frozen boots and the icy leather jacket. The airport is flat and closed about me and the runway lights are still on. Breakfast at the next stop, then, and time now to get the engine started and warming. One must always let the old engines warm themselves well before flight. They need ten minutes running on the ground to get the cold out of their oil and life into their controls.

Despite the cold, engine start is a beautiful time of day. The routine: pull the propeller through five times, fuel valve on, mixture rich, seven shots of priming fuel, pull the prop through two more times, magneto switch on, pump the throttle, crank the inertia starter, run back to the cockpit, engage the starter and swallow exhaust and engine thunder unfiltered and loud and frozen sharp, shattering again the silence of a little airport.

How many times have I started an airplane engine, even in the few years that I have been flying? In how many airplanes? So many different ways, so many different sounds, but beneath them all the same river; they are symbols of one meaning.

“Clear!”

Pull the starter knob to send the propeller into a faltering blurred arc. Press the primer knob. And from the exhaust stacks a cloud of blue and a storm of sound. Inspect the cloud under a microscope and you would find tiny drops of oil unburned. Inspect the sound on an oscilloscope and trace a quickchanging world of harsh pointed lines under the reference grid. In neither instrument can the essence of engine start be caught. That essence is unseen, in the thought of the one who controls the bank of switches that bid an engine to life. Get the prop turning, check the oil pressure, let the engine warm up. About 900 rpm for a minute or two. Forward on the throttle until the wheels begin to roll. Taxi to the waiting runway.

How many times in the history of flight has the routine been followed? From the earliest days, when engine start was the signal for ground crew to throw themselves on the stabilizer, holding a brakeless airplane until the wave of the pilot’s hand. Through the days in the sun of war when engine start was the crashing roaring climax to “Run One . . . mesh One . . .” and the steepfalling whine of the inertia starter. To the days when now and then along the line of the crew’s checklist there is the softest of purring rumbles, and the only visible sign of an engine alive is the quick-rising needle of the tailpipe temperature gage, and the first ripples of heat drifting back from smooth-cowled turbines;

But for every one, for every single one, engine start is journey start. If you would seek some of the romance of flight, watch when the engines first begin to turn. Pick any place in aviation history, in any kind of airplane, and there is a shard or a massive block of romance, of glory and glamour. The pilot, in the cockpit, readies himself and his airplane. In scores of languages, in a hundred different terms, there comes the moment when one word or one sign means: Go.

“CLEAR!”

“CONTACT! “.

“. . . mesh One.”

“. . . OK. Start One.”

“Clear left.”

“Lightoff.”

A green flare in the sky.