Next time you have some solitude, sit quietly and think back to that early part of your life when you began to wonder what itπd be like to fly. Now put aside the mixed emotions of how those dreams turned out–the predictability of the piloting routine, perhaps, the nights away from home, the sure push of thrust up and away from the runway as the wheels stow, the shrinking paycheck, "number 13 for takeoff," the tranquility of a healthy airplane carrying you through a clear silken sky far above the strife of life. Focus instead on remembering the fascination, the excitement and the anticipation that preceded the first time you shed the shackles of gravity, lifted off the surface of the earth and watched familiar scenery transformed by your admission to the third dimension.
I didn't leave the ground until 1970, when I was 15, but from the time I ran around the school yard with my arms outstretched and swept back like an English Electric Lightning's wings I was utterly captivated with the notion of flying and with all the fantastic machines that made it possible. The first time I ever watched the ground recede beneath outstretched wings was on an "air-experience flight" in a Royal Air Force DHC-1 Chipmunk as a cadet in the itchy blue wool uniform of my schoolπs Combined Cadet Force program. We flew over the school and looked down on my world from the preserve of clouds and peregrines, we did steeply banked turns and, if memory serves, we even did a loop and a barrel roll on the way back to RAF Manston (now Kent International Airport).
