Test Pilot's Daughter: Revenge

by Ward, Steve

  They roared again slapping hands on hips, bending in delight.

  “Wheeee! There’s a little left,” Jessica squealed, drinking right out of the bottle.

  The sun was about to set, and the girls fell silent. Holding their drinks high, all three hailed the setting sun, “All for one, and one for all. May the Three Amigos live forever.”

  It was a magical moment. The golden orb seemed to expand into a huge fireball right before their eyes. It had a spellbinding effect. They stared out over the water. The sky around Key West lit up like a beautiful painting. Wispy clouds reflected bright orange tones painted on a canvass of brilliant blue. A fresh sea-breeze carried the salty smell of the ocean, accented by the sweet smell of porch honeysuckle. Jessica was overwhelmed with a sense of wonder.

  From that time on, the Three Amigos proudly wore their golden escudos. Jessica developed an even stronger fascination for Spanish galleons and spent much of her free time researching archives. She built her own database, tracking the most highly valued wrecks that had not yet been discovered. She was surprised to learn that hurricanes had taken down hundreds of vessels over the centuries, and billions of dollars in treasure remained on the ocean floor.

  * * *

  All three girls decided to celebrate their adulthood by moving off to college far from home. The only problem was Heather’s SAT scores, and her choices were limited. After considering several locations on the east coast, they finally settled on Atlanta, Georgia. There was something about the hospitality of the deep South that seemed quite appealing, and Atlanta was known as the jewel in the southern crown.

  Jessica had several offers for a free ride to play basketball. She picked Georgia Tech because it offered Christina a full academic scholarship. Both were interested in more than academics; the male/female ratio at Georgia Tech was seven to three. It was rumored attractive girls were treated like goddesses on the Tech campus. Jessica majored in Marine Biology and Christina Aerospace Engineering. Heather’s dad was able to pull some strings, and she was accepted at the University of Georgia in Athens, a short drive outside of Atlanta. Heather wasn’t so sure of her future. She leaned more toward an M.R.S. In the end, she decided on Psychology.

  Georgia Tech, located in metropolitan Atlanta, was a grind, one of the toughest schools in the nation. The beautiful, old campus was jam-packed on six city blocks, surrounded by typical urban squalor. But UGA, with its sprawling campus in the college town of Athens, was much more typical of the old South. Huge magnolias adorned the greenery with stunning blooms. The entire school seemed covered in flowers year round, with dogwoods in the spring, begonias in summer and pansies in winter. Athens was well known as the home of numerous rock bands, famous for its concerts and active nightlife. Heather got to know some of the local groups and occasionally sang on weekend gigs. Christina and Jessica often ventured there after a hard week of classes to blow off steam.

  Their first two years in college were a blur. It was a time for celebrating new freedoms, partying and learning to live away from home. There were plenty of guys knocking on their doors: fraternity men, jocks, engineering nerds, rock singers and just plain “good ole boys.”

  Chapter Seven

  In her second year at Georgia Tech, Christina felt quite lucky to be approached by a graduate student, Tom Fields, to work in the Aerospace Engineering Lab. She spent every afternoon there and loved the research. One of her professors, Dr. Milo Hartford, received a $2 million grant from NASA to investigate new technologies in spacecraft docking. As far as NASA had come in precision guidance, no one had solved the problem of docking two space vehicles without the need for a pilot. The process of coupling two ships in space remained a strictly manual operation.

  During her freshman year, Christina had worked with a friend in the electrical engineering department on laser-guided weapons and laser range-finders for the military. As a result, she proposed to Dr. Hartford a novel approach to automated docking. She envisioned a hybrid technology that would incorporate scanning laser beams for target illumination, laser range finders to control the approach and digital video processing systems to guide the last few feet of closure to actual contact. Hartford loved the idea and funded her project. Christina called her invention DROID for “dead reckoning, optoelectronic, intelligent docking.”

  By their third year in college, Christina and her two friends had successfully navigated the transition from flighty coeds to young women in the pursuit of more serious ambitions. Seeking her destiny, Christina decided to take on an even testier challenge. It was no secret she wanted a career in aviation and longed to achieve her father’s dream. If she was to become an astronaut, it was high time she learned to fly. The Aerospace program at Tech offered flight curriculum, where students could work on a pilot’s license at a discount rate and receive college credit. The Ramblin’ Wreck Flight School operated out of Peachtree-Dekalb Airport, usually referred to by its FAA symbol, PDK. She was dead set on becoming a pilot.

  When Christina first met her flight instructor, John Furgeson, she was taken aback. This guy’s really old, she thought, more like ancient! For some reason he reminded her of the Master Jedi Knight, Yoda, in Star Wars. She was at least a head taller than the old man. His back was permanently stooped, and he walked with a cane. Instead of flying airplanes, he looked more like he should be playing shuffleboard in a nursing home. A shriveled five-feet-two-inches, his face was a road map of wrinkles, and dark bags under his eyes testified to a long and stressful life. More than half his head was bald, and the little hair he had was white and scraggly. Laughing inside, Christina thought, What a joke! Hope the old guy lives long enough for me to get my license.

  She was required to take a few hours of ground-school covering basic rules and regulations before getting into an airplane. With great anticipation, the day finally arrived for her first flight, and she was beside herself with joy.

  “Let’s start with some basic blocking and tackling,” Furgeson barked like a football coach. “There’s only one difference between flying an airplane and driving a car, or even riding a bike. You have to coordinate the movements of your hands and feet in all three. Flying is really quite easy, but it takes a little more coordination because it’s three dimensional.”

  Christina sat down at a simulator to get a feel for the controls, and Furgeson went on, “Flying is no big deal if you just relax and get to know your airplane. The yoke or stick is like the steering wheel of your car, but it’s actually three controls in one. It operates your ailerons that roll your wings left and right and your elevator that points the nose up and down. Pull back and you go up, push forward and you go down. See how easy it is? The yoke is also like a second throttle; when you push forward, your airspeed increases, and when you pull back it decreases. You control your airspeed with both the throttle and yoke. This is an extremely important concept to master, because airspeed is everything in flying. If you have enough airspeed you can do almost anything: loops, barrel rolls, steep turns or buzz your buddy’s house. Too much airspeed and the wings come off, too little and you fall out of the sky.”

  She was getting impatient, “So what do we do with these foot pedals?”

  “I’m getting to that,” Furgeson complained. “Those rudder pedals also have three functions. On the ground, you use them to taxi the airplane. If you push the right pedal, the nose wheel turns right, left pedal, left. On the ground you guide the plane with your feet. Think of it as putting your feet up on the steering wheel of your car. In the air, the very same pedals control the rudder which points your nose left and right, allowing you to make ‘coordinated turns.’ Perfectly coordinated turns require the proper use of aileron, rudder and elevator.”

  “So what do you mean coordinated turns?” she asked.

  “Very simple,” Furgeson smiled. “Coordinated turns keep your butt planted directly in the center of the seat, like going around a race track that’s been properly banked. In a typical left turn, you’d use the yoke to roll the wings
left, apply a little back pressure to hold up the nose and push the left rudder to “center the ball.” That’d give you a perfect left turn. By properly coordinating the ailerons, rudder and elevator, the pilot controls the bank of the highway. Get it? The common term, ‘flying by the seat of your pants’ refers to the feeling in your ass when you coordinate the controls.”

  “Got it,” Christina chuckled. “So what’s the third function? You said the rudder pedals have three functions.”

  “Patience, girl, I’m getting there. My, my, always in a hurry. If you push on the top of the pedals you apply the brakes on the landing gear; right pedal, right brake, left pedal, left brake. When you want to slow down on the ground, reach your feet up and push the top of both pedals at the same time.”

  “Brakes. Got that. Can we go fly now?”

  “Okay!” Furgeson chortled. “If you think that lecture was long, wait till you hear my infamous speech, ‘The Movement of Weather Systems and Thunderstorms.’ It goes on for hours.”

  “Gee, can’t wait.” Christina rolled her eyes.

  After what seemed like an eternity, Christina walked with her instructor out on the tarmac. PDK was bustling with activity, a virtual beehive of new sights and sounds. It seemed like there were instructors, students and pilots everywhere. Planes of all types were taxiing, taking off and landing. As they walked, a Leer Jet made a perfect squeaker on the runway close by. Christina had to stop and watch. Holy shit! Nice landing. Beautiful.

  They walked out to a little Cessna 150. It was tied down with three thick ropes, and she marveled at its beauty. Painted orange and black checkerboard and sparkling clean, the little plane sparkled. Love the look, Christina thought. An ideal aircraft for beginners, the Cessna 150 was stable and forgiving of mistakes common to new students.

  Uncommon for a trainer, this particular plane, November Two Eight Eight Three Sierra, had a moving map GPS mounted in the panel for navigation. Modified for a large number of commercial applications, the technology was a God-send for general aviation. GPS receivers, cheap enough to mount in any private aircraft, tracked several geo-synchronous satellites and computed the exact location of the receiver. Advanced software and symbolic displays allowed the pilot to enter the three-digit code of any airport in the world and fly to it. Christina was fascinated by the GPS and wanted to learn all about it.

  After a long and drawn out lecture on preflight inspections, Furgeson finally let her climb into the left seat for her first flight. When he entered the cockpit, she was shocked. The visual appearance of the old man magically transformed from Barney Fife to John Wayne. He seemed to undergo some sort of metamorphous from a ‘little old man in a hat’ one would see weaving his car all over the road, to a fiercely determined fighter pilot and war hero. John Furgeson didn’t just sit in an airplane, he wore it like a minister wears his Sunday suit. Weird, she thought, he actually looks like part of the machine. Hs eyes lit up like an excited schoolboy.

  Another lecture covering every instrument on the panel was more than she could endure. She didn’t want to hear about the altimeter, the airspeed indicator, the artificial horizon, the turn and bank indicator, the vertical speed indicator or the directional gyro. She just wanted to get that baby in the air.

  “Can we go now, or are we just gonna sit here?” she shouted in frustration.

  Furgeson did a double-take and said, “Sure, let’s go.”

  He showed her how to crank the engine and taxi out to the “run up” area. He went through the standard procedure for preflight checks by bringing the engine up to 2,000 rpm with the brakes locked, so that every gauge and control could be tested under stress.

  “If your car dies on the road,” Furgeson lectured, “you might be inconvenienced, but if your airplane dies in the air, you might be dead. Believe it or not, a great many accidents result from idiots running out of gas. Pilot error, no excuse for that. Others crash because the pilot didn’t use the very minimum of precautions. I read one NTSB report where a guy took off with the tow bar still attached to his front wheel. Not a good idea. Most accidents can be avoided with just a little patience, discipline and common sense.”

  Obviously missing the point, Christina was completely out of patience. She looked at him and yelled, “Okay, I get it, for Christ’s sake! Can we fly this goddam thing sometime today?”

  “I see patience isn’t your strong suit. Well then, tell you what. Let’s go.”

  The adrenaline was pumping when she pushed the throttle full forward, and the Cessna surged ahead. It accelerated, jumped off the runway, and they were in the air, climbing to the north. Flying to the practice area over Lake Lanier, she was amazed how quickly she became comfortable with the basic concepts of maneuvering an airplane. Piece-o-cake, she thought. Furgeson put her through several exercises covering coordinated turns and airspeed control.

  After about forty-five minutes, he said, “This dog-shit is boring. How’d you like to try some crop dusting?”

  “Sure, if you say so.” She couldn’t believe it. Crop dusting?

  “Back the throttle to 1,500 and trim the nose forward for a descending airspeed of sixty-five knots. Just let her drift down to that field,” he pointed to a cotton field with tall trees at both ends. About two-hundred feet above the ground, Furgeson took the controls. “My airplane. Here’s what you can do when you have plenty of airspeed.” He added cruise power, and the little engine roared. Making a steep turn just over the treetops, he dove straight down. Leveling his landing gear not six inches above the cotton plants, he accelerated to a hundred miles an hour.

  Christina gasped. Yikes! The tall trees on the far end of the field closed rapidly. She winced, certain there would be a collision. Furgeson waited to the last second, pulled straight up over the obstacle and rolled into an arching left turn so steep, Christina found herself looking straight at the ground.

  “Jesus Christ!” she screamed, stomach in her throat. How can the old buzzard take it?

  Furgeson rolled out of the turn and lined up on the next several rows. Approaching the treetops he yelled, “Okay girl, your airplane, let’s see what ya got.”

  She didn’t have time to think of the risks. She grabbed the yoke firmly and pushed it forward. Nosing toward those cotton plants, she leveled a few feet off the deck. It took all her strength to hold the yoke forward and keep the nose from climbing on its own. She held the little plane level across the field and accelerated. Coming up quickly on the trees on the far side, she hauled back and rolled into a steep turn. The feeling was so exhilarating she could hardly contain herself.

  “Yaaaahoooo! Holy crap, we’re still alive! Can’t believe I did that!” She turned to Furgeson and said, “How’d you know I wouldn’t crash?”

  “Ground effect,” he said with a confident smile. “At that speed you couldn’t crash if you wanted to.”

  “Oh?” She wondered if it was true.

  Furgeson took the controls.

  “I think that’s enough for your first lesson,” he said. “I’d say we’re off to a damn good start. Not bad, girl. Not bad at all.”

  “Great!” she said. Adrenaline boiled.

  Flying was the real ticket for Christina. She quickly discovered something most pilots know. Even the simplest flight was never mundane. The absolute concentration required to safely captain an airplane, provided a wonderful escape from everyday problems. Even though it had been ten years since her mother died, the agonizing mental anguish still haunted her dreams. The only true relief from the silent torture was found in the cockpit of that Cessna 150. When she was in the left seat, everything else disappeared. It was a soothing tonic, the ultimate anti-depressant. To her flying was everything.

  * * *

  During the next couple of weeks, they stuck with the Cessna 150, but at her request Furgeson took Christina up in a Citborea for some aerobatics. Such training wasn’t required for the private ticket, but she wanted “the whole nine yards.” He tested her courage with loops, spins, inverted fligh
t and barrel rolls, coaching her through the controls. It all seemed as natural as driving her dad’s old pickup. The fact that she didn’t get sick in aerobatic maneuvers was testament to a genetic ability to handle Gs.

  Christina became more and more comfortable with her flight instructor. Their relationship grew to be something beyond the typical teacher-student liaison. She respected his flying ability and judgment, and they quickly became friends. She spent most of her time learning how to land the airplane, the most difficult and necessary maneuver in a novice’s training. With only a few hours of instruction, she was putting down some decent landings, but she always expected he was somehow helping on the controls.

  “By God, I think you’re ready,” said Furgeson.

  “Ready for what?” she replied.

  “Your big moment. Time to solo.”

  “But I’ve only got a little over four hours in my book. Is that legal?”

  “My call. Most people need ten or more, but frankly, you’re as ready as anyone I’ve ever instructed.”