“Kiwi, don’t loop him the first time up, will you?”
Kiwi grinned, self-consciously.
They trundled some distance out on the field and turned into the wind. Then, with the propeller just ticking over, Armbruster said:
“Now, Kiwi, I am going to teach you to fly very much as I taught your Dad long ago. No harm can come to you here in learning to fly. But I know you would like to be just such a pilot as your Dad is, and so I am going to teach you, as he was taught, how to overcome the dangers which follow stalling a plane in the air and what you must do if the engine stops suddenly.
“I’ll take the plane off the ground with my set of controls, and after we get well up in the air I’ll let you fly it straight with your stick and rudder for a while. You know how it feels to be up. You know how the rudder works—that it swings the plane from side to side. You know that the joystick in your hand moved sidewise keeps your wings balanced; moved forward sends you down; pulled backward pulls the nose of the plane up. Now take your feet off the rudder and let me see both hands outside until I tell you to take over control.”
Kiwi did as he was told.
Once in the air, Armbruster could not resist stunting the plane about over the heads of their audience. Kiwi was treated to an exhibition in flying such as he had never experienced before. The plane dived toward the group below, swished up in climbing turns, swung dizzily off on one wing and, as the wires whistled, pulled sharply around and recovered its poise. Kiwi had difficulty keeping his sense of balance or a clear idea of what the plane was doing.
After several minutes of such antics they flew straight and, wiggling the stick violently, Armbruster told Kiwi through the phones that he might fly it.
“First of all,” he said, “just keep the plane straight. Keep the nose on the horizon—pick some point on it and fly toward it.”
Kiwi felt elated that at last he was actually controlling a plane. He couldn’t resist pushing the rudder slightly with his foot to see what effect it would have. It startled him to find that the slightest pressure sent the nose of the plane skidding sidewise. He hurriedly tried to correct this with the other foot, and discovered that he was overdoing it and that they were see-sawing back and forth in a crazy fashion.