D. Fuel selector valve on BOTH.
E. Check door security; lock with key if children are to occupy any seats.
He gazed through the windshield, the sun glaring it in streaks. It all seemed too easy. He fought the terrifying feeling that he had forgotten or bungled a single fatal detail. He folded the manual open to page 1–4 and propped it up on the seat beside him.
STARTING THE ENGINE
1. Mixture — rich.
2. Carburetor heat — cold.
3. Primer — two to six strokes as required.
The mixture knob was at the right center of the console, a white plastic knob a bit bigger than a thimble. He turned the indicator to “Rich.” The carburetor heat control was its symmetric twin. The primer was on the lower left of the panel just above his left knee. He slipped two fingers behind it and pulled, half expecting it not to give. It did. He pumped it in and out twice more, priming the engine with fuel.
4. Throttle — Open 1/8″.
It was right where his diagram had placed it. He crept it out an eighth of an inch.
5. Master switch on.
6. Propeller area — Clear.
It had better be, he thought, not even looking up.
He swallowed. Outside the windshield the runway stretched silent under the sun, oblivious. He felt cold. He threaded the brother of the door key into the ignition — number 7 on the checklist — and turned it firmly, and the engine caught, coughing, terrifying him, the noise an explosion in a church, and gained power and volume with a steady surge. Events seemed to accelerate and he wanted to get off the runway and into the air as soon as possible, fearing last-minute police cars or security guards, remembering his sail collapsing in the storm so many months ago, unable completely to believe that he wasn’t overlooking something, some fundamental, foolish detail. Stay with the checklist, he told himself. Move fast. Don’t fool around. Shit or get off the pot.
TAXIING
When taxiing, it is important that speed and use of brakes be held to a minimum and that all controls be utilized (see Taxiing diagram, figure 2–4) to maintain directional control and balance.
The wind sock fluttered orange and fragile in the distance, indicating the wind direction and his next move, as outlined by figure 2–4: right-wing aileron slightly up, elevator neutral. He eased his toe off the brake, the arches of his feet still firm in the rudder stirrups, and opened the throttle. The plane began to roll.
He experienced at first that moment of sheer terror when he felt completely inadequate to the task of controlling the vibrating, deafening machine he was setting into motion, but it responded, he began to see, to the gentlest deflections of the flight controls. He wobbled steadily forward, jerking a bit from too much brake, learning by trial and error as he rumbled along how to guide the twelve-hundred-pound plane smoothly. He braked at the turn onto the access road that fed the runway.
The tower stood squat and imperturbable in the distance, an occasional bird crossing behind it. He switched on the receiver, lifted the microphone from its hook, closed his eyes, and pressed the button. He’d already be on the tower frequency.
“Tower, this is 9–0 Zulu,” he said. “Request clearance for taxi.”
He released the button and the cockpit filled with static; He waited and there was no answer. His ears were hot and his fingers slippery on the black plastic.
“Roger, Zulu,” crackled a voice. “Take off runway 24.”
He rehung the microphone and wiped his forehead. There was no alarm, no sudden activity, no yellow jeep. The sun beat down on the pavement. A Funny Bones wrapper, identifiable at forty feet, blew across the tarmac.
He turned left, following the painted yellow lines; the sun slipped behind him, and the shadows of his wings crossed the pavement before the plane like cool ripples. Runway 24 was the closest to him, the longest, and stretched to the south, which meant he’d take off over the marshes and Burma Road and be above the Sound in seconds. He rolled cautiously to the very end of the runway, the white “2” and “4” sweeping away from him majestically, and set the parking brake. His finger skimmed the checklist columns of the manual. He checked the flight controls, the fuel-selector valve, elevator trim, suction gauge, magnetos, and carburetor heat. He ran the engine up to 1700 rpm and past it, up to full throttle, or as near as he dared go—2100 rpm — and back down. He rechecked the locks on the doors. He buckled his seat belt. He was ready to go.
“Tower, this is 9–0 Zulu asking takeoff clearance,” he said, the microphone brushing his lips. His gums felt dry.
Roger Zulu, 24 cleared for takeoff.” The answer was prompt, listless: just another day at the airport.
He released the parking brake and edged onto the runway, pivoting to his right before braking to a halt with the tarmac vast and endless before him, rushing straight-edged off to a single point over his cowling. He nudged the wing-flap switch until the indicator read 10 degrees up. His feet firm on the brakes, he opened the throttle fully.
The takeoff is a simple procedure: lining the aircraft into the wind, the pilot gives full throttle and releases the wheel brakes. As the aircraft accelerates, airflow over the wings begins to generate lift. When the lift nearly equals the weight, the pilot eases back the control column.
With his toe off the brake, yet hovering near, he felt the surge and rush of the Cessna down the tarmac even as the flat repetition of images in his peripheral vision seemed to indicate little or no movement, and he remembered to keep the nose of the plane on the horizon as it bumped and shook over the cowling, and he stayed straight on, keeping the centerline centered in front of him, the pavement blurring by, and he felt the wings trying to leave the ground and he was up, prematurely, having waited too long on the control column, and he bounced, hard, frightening himself, but continued to sweep forward and this time pulled the control surface back smoothly and firmly, having the impression from the corner of his eye of the tower and parking lot to his right as colored streaks, and the plane swept off the ground, the left wing dipping a bit with runway to spare, the marshes appearing below, when he dared to look to his left, as yellow and soft as a wheat field with the black shadow of the plane speeding across them. He whooped and cheered, pounding the dashboard, his laughter mixing with the noise of the engine.
He flashed low across the wetlands, the clouds above and land below recalling to him a fleeting memory of the thermocline corridor at the beach, and he continued to climb as he passed over the strip of sand and road that was Long Beach, noting a running child, the dot of a beach ball, a cyclist at rest with one foot on the ground. Then the beach was behind him and the Sound ahead, blue and choppy. The triangular rainbow of a catamaran sail slipped by. And ever more to his left, away from him, was Port Jefferson, his first navigational objective.
In flight the pilot will also want to turn. This is not accomplished by merely turning the rudder as is the case with a ship, but by a combination of aileron, rudder, and elevator movement and an adjustment of engine power.
Trying to remember everything at once and apprehensive, he turned the flight controls, pulling them back slightly as he did and easing out the throttle. The horizon reeled slowly in front of him, the twin stacks of the heavy industry in Port Jefferson harbor centering themselves over his cowling, and he applied opposite rudder and leveled out, elated. He was flying, two thousand feet off the ground without the benefit of a lesson.
Small boats appeared and disappeared below, flecked across the dark water. He allowed himself only the briefest glimpses, concentrating on the altimeter. In minutes he seemed to be coming up on the harbor at Port Jefferson, a small spit of land rising from his left to a steep bluff. Hundreds of boats were sheltered in its lee like orderly flotsam. There was a long knife edge of breakwater and then the darker blue of the channel and a freighter of some sort, maroon and black with its rust visible even from his height. He passed over the town as it climbed the hills from the harbor as if in an attempt to meet him, and he began to have the vague impression of trees and roads below, his eyes fixed on the compass and altimeter. The engine roared reassuringly and he made constant minute adjustments, concentrating. The cockpit hung pendulum-like beneath the great wings and the sun swept in the canopy and glittered on the fuselage. Ahead of him, rising like a sheer wall to an awesome height, was a snow-white anvil-shaped cloud filling his field of vision as he hurtled into it, having kept his eyes too long on the instruments. The sun disappeared and he was in a world of gray, all sensation of movement gone and the engine racketing abstractly in the half gloom. He fought panic and kept his eyes on the altimeter as it dipped and rose, thinking, Maybe it will stop, it’s got to stop somewhere, and as it continued his fear mounted and he was no longer sure of his compass headings. He had to try something else and he had to trust his memory and ability.