The sportster was an Ace two-place biplane with stubby wings, painted silver, and a crimson fuselage. Andy had ordered up dual controls the week before and had promised to give Bert flying instructions whenever they had a spare hour during the spring.
“Let your feet and hands rest lightly on the controls,” Andy told his friend, “and whatever you do, don’t hang onto them. If you do I may have to clout you over the head with a wrench.”
They slipped into their parachute harnesses for Andy was a safe and sane flyer who believed in taking commonsense precautions. Bert climbed into the forward cockpit and Andy slipped into the rear seat.
The motor was warm but he tested it thoroughly before waving to the mechanics to pull the blocks. The sun was a great red disk of flame when they skipped down the meadow and raced into the air.
Bert, who had learned his radio knowledge at a department of commerce station, had never had the opportunity to do much flying until he joined the National Airways radio force and was assigned to Bellevue to take charge of the installation of the equipment on the Goliath. He had arrived the previous fall and during the winter had become Andy’s closest friend. They were almost inseparable and Andy, realizing Bert’s ambition to become a flyer, had promised to give his friend instructions.
Bert studied each move of the controls and its effect on the maneuvers of the plane. At Andy’s suggestion he had read up on the principles of aeronautics and understood the reason for the shifts in the stick and the rudder bar.
At three thousand feet Andy leveled off and waggled the stick, indicating that Bert was to take control. The chunky little radio operator felt his heart go into his throat, but he took a firm grip on the stick and moved it cautiously backward. The nose came up slowly. He moved it ahead. The nose went down ever so slightly. He could fly; he was flying!
He turned around and shouted at Andy in his excitement. The next moment his head was snapped back against his seat. He gasped and jerked around to look at the controls. To his surprise the nose of the plane was in a steep dive and he felt the pit of his stomach start to turn a flip flop.
He knew the thing to do was to pull back on the stick and he did so enthusiastically. The nose came up, the ground disappeared and he found himself staring toward a bank of fleecy clouds that rolled along lazily. His safety belt snapped tight and to his astonishment the ground whirled into view again.
Andy was signaling for the stick and Bert gladly turned over the controls. Andy throttled down and grinned at the radio operator.