Flying, Part 1

My adventures with aviation unfolded in two phases in two different decades. The first began in 1954, when Bucher learned about the Belize Flying Club from Ford Young, one of its founders. A small group of pilots and would-be pilots bought an old Luscombe and talked Ian Fadden into being the club’s instructor. Ian was a much-decorated RAF pilot who flew York bombers over Germany and later taught young RAF pilots. He was a handsome, stocky man, calm, steady, and meticulous.

Bucher decided that we both should learn to fly. I wasn’t at all sure my life needed this extra dimension, and was even less convinced when I realized that the Luscombe’s engine was started by the arduous and dangerous old-fashioned method of spinning the prop by hand. Nevertheless, deciding that whither-thou-goest included whatever-thou-doest, I joined Bucher in applying for a British Honduras Student Pilot’s license. A few days later we both were presented with handsome, blue, passport-size, hard-cover books declaring that we were free to invade the ether.

 

Bucher adored flying and transferred his skills at sea lore into air competence with little trouble. For him, learning to operate in a new element was a simple matter of translation. Navigating was easy and automatic.

As for his wife, from the beginning it was obvious that earth was my element and that it was going to take superhuman force to separate me from it. In the first place, at 5 feet 2 inches, I needed seven pillows, behind and underneath, to put me in position to peer over the high dashboard and through the windshield to see the ground for taxing, taking off, and landing. In the second place, I was paralyzed with fear at having to swing the propeller to start the engine. In the third place, we flew off a rough grass strip that was no more eager to let go of the plane’s two main wheels than I was to rush up into the air.

 

Bucher soloed after only a few hours of instruction and worked hard to accumulate hours and proficiency. He got his U.S. Private Pilot’s License when we were in the States for Christmas of 1954.

I muddled through, untouched by the magic of the skies. After babying me for the first couple of sessions, Ian insisted on my swinging the prop. The Luscombe met my tentative ministrations with stubborn resistance. I flew and flew and flew and neither Ian nor I expected ever to be parted from our dual occupancy of the cockpit. Suddenly on the afternoon of April 19th, 1955, when I made one of my more successful landings, Ian opened his door and jumped to the grass, shouting above the roar of the engine, “You’re on your own.”

I could not think of anything to do, other than to dissolve in highly unsuitable hysterics. Instead, I reached over, locked the co-pilot’s door, turned the plane around, waddled it to the far end of the strip, and took off on my first solo flight. When I landed, long before my mind grasped the reality of my having flown successfully, Ian took my log book and, with a flourish of impressive script, signed in my solo in red ink.

I did not touch the controls of a plane again until faced with an aircraft of our own nearly ten years later.