A Gift of Wings

A few minutes later came the chirk-chirk of wheels touching concrete, the sigh of engines fading back from approach power. Then silence. Then the sound of engines again rumbling around at idle, louder and louder till they gasped suddenly and coasted their propellers around to a stop just fifty feet from where I stood by the Skymaster. The quiet little noises, then, of flight’s end: chock scrapes, door sounds, and the talk of pilot to copilot.

That was the second thing.

When the Beech pilots had left, I put the right seat of the Skymaster to full recline, stretching out on it as best I could. Suit coat for a blanket, padded headrest for a pillow. It wasn’t comfortable at all … not a tenth as pleasant as unrolling one’s sleeping bag under the wing of a Champ and looking up at the stars.

This airplane was different. It was sheet metal instead of cloth and dope, radios and omni and ADF and DME and marker beacon and EGT and autopilot and trim and flaps and prop control and mixture instead of nothing. But the stars were the same stars.

By sunup, I was convinced that the Cessna Super Skymaster, although it is a great twin-engine plane that can never kill a pilot with the terrible yaw of engine loss in the weather at full gross, is a lousy sleeping bag. For $71,000, I thought thay should at least make the airplane a little easier to spend the night in. Then, too, I found that you don’t want to hang your good shirts on the aft propeller, because you’ll get exhaust powder all over them. The front prop is okay, but the man with a $71,000 airplane will certainly hav

e a larger wardrobe than can be hung on one propeller.

That was the third thing.

At dawn we were airborne, the Cessna and I, and before noon we were landing in California. An abysmally poor sleeping bag, but not a bad machine for going places.

Machine? I thought, and saw again the shark-fin silhouette at Albuquerque, the Beech pilots brought alive, the $71,000 sleeping bag. They are all alike, if you look at them at just the right times. Old or new, rag or tin, no airplane’s a machine. And what they are instead is a lot of what makes flying kind of fun.

Death in the afternoon—a story of soaring

He didn’t say anything till the afternoon of that first day. Then, as we lowered ourselves into the team sailplane, strapped ourselves tightly about with webs of parachute and shoulder harness and seat belt, tested the flight controls and spoilers and towline release, he said, “It’s like getting ready to be born. A baby feels this way, strapping into its new body.”

I warn you. He’s wont to say things like that.

“This is no body,” I said, firm but not harsh. “See? Manufacturer’s data plate, right here. Schweizer 1-26, single-seat sailplane. And all these others on the runway are 1-26 sailplanes, too, and this is Harris Hill and this is competition and we’re out to win and don’t you forget that, OK? Let’s stick with the business at hand, if you don’t mind.”

He didn’t answer. Just tugged against the straps, tightened them down, moved the flight controls light and quick, the way a pianist moved his fingers, quickly, in the last moment before the concert begins.

A Super Cub towplane taxied out in front of us, and a couple hundred feet of nylon stretched to join us for the launch. We were ready for takeoff.

“Helpless. Nothing as helpless as a sailplane on the ground.”

“Yeah,” I said. “You ready?”

“Let’s go.”

I fanned the rudder to signal the tow pilot. The Cub crept ahead, the line snaked out, tightened, our awkward beautiful Schweizer eased forward. The towplane pressed full throttle and we were on our way … in seconds we had aileron control, then rudder, and at last, elevators. I touched the stick back and the glider lifted clear of the runway, just a few feet clear, to make the takeoff easier for the Cub. We were flying, with the hard rush of wind about us, with the controls alive in our hand.

“We’re born,” he said calmly. “This is what it means to be born.”

He took the controls without asking, flying clumsy at first with those great long wings, porpoising a bit behind the towplane till he got used to flying high-tow formation again. He did a fair job of it—not excellent, but not too bad. He was an average pilot, I’d say. Average low-time pilot.

Harris Hill fell away behind us. The Cub turned to follow the ridge, climbing, and though we felt some lift and perhaps could have released a minute after takeoff, we stayed meekly on tow, considering it wise to use the extra help while we had it.

“You ever noticed,” he said, “how much being on tow is like growing up, like a kid growing up? While you get used to the feel of living, the towplane-mother is out ahead of you, protecting you from sinking air, getting you up to altitude. Soaring’s a lot like living, don’t you think?”

I sighed. He talked this way, and he ignored the fine little tricks of competition. We could turn the towplane toward our course by tugging left on the tail of the Cub, with the towrope. We could keep him from climbing too fast by tugging up on it. Tricks like that can give you a free ride another few hundred yards on course, and that can make a difference, in a meet. But he ignored everything I knew, he went on about what he knew.

“A kid can take it easy, not much pressure, not many decisions, taking his tow into the air of life. Doesn’t have to worry about sink, or about finding lift for himself. Being on tow is what you call security.”

“If you’d turn a little left …” I said.

“But as long as he’s on tow, he’s not free, there’s that to consider.”

I was restless to get a word in. I wanted to urge him to nudge the towplane to give us that extra push in the right direction, it’s not cheating. Any pilot can do it.

“I’d just as soon be free,” he said.

Before I could stop him, he pulled the towline release—VAM!—and we were loose in the sky. The high-speed noises of tow fell off to the gentle hush of a glider at cruise.