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Ultra-Light
Fright Flight
By Mariah Burton Nelson
1/
’M TOO YOUNG to die,” said Larry
I Fox, another Weekend writer. “You
go.”
That’s how
it came about that
I flew in a
flimsy, open-cockpit aircraft not with nor-
mal trepidation, but with death on my mind.
Before liftoff
I talked with Bruce Peters,
owner of Washington Sky Sports, a compa-
ny specializing in tiny, dragonfly-shaped air-
craft
called Spectrum
Ultralights.
Peters
has 12 years of piloting experience, he as-
sured me. Even
if the engine goes out, the
plane can safely glide down. It can land in a
cornfield. “You’re in for a treat,” he prom-
ised.
The day of liftoff we drove to a short run-
way
behind
a
southern
Maryland
trailer
park.
I wore my aviator shades and my clos-
est approximation of a flight jacket; Bruce
wore normal
clothes.
After
Bruce’s
pre :
flight inspection,
I did my own. Much to my
,
horror,
I saw plane parts fastened with bun-
gee
cords,
zippers and duct
tape. (“Non-
essential parts,” Bruce explained.) Made of
Dacron, the wings were sewn in the zig-zag
stitch I used to use in home ec. Maybe
it’s
me, but I find it difficult to trust an airplane
constructed on a Singer.
To
make
matters
worse,
Peters,
a
dimple-cheeked man with the springy step
of a Muppet, is only 25 years old — whiph,
since
that’s younger
than
I am,
is
very
young. Turns out his 12 years of experience
began on a hang glider at age 13. For the
past six years he’s been performing loops,
stalls, and wingovers in Stearman biplanes
in Bealton’s Flying Circus. My fate was
in
the hands of a kid who gets his jollies flying
upside down.
“Today
is a good day to die for
all the
BY LARRY MORRIS
Bruce Peters in an open-cockpit ultra-iigtit plane.
longer
in my
reckless
teens
or
roaring
plate:
twenties,
I have noticed that the more in-
even sic
tensely
I love
life, the less romantic
I feel
the trai
about an early death.
and hur
Yet
I can’t play
it safe just because cau-
age —
tious colleagues and homemade
airplanes
physics
petrify me. “I don’t need to fly because fly-
Befoi
ing doesn’t frighten me;
I need
—
to
fly even though
it frightens
DAYLIFE
mo ” umtoc
Hiintfi A rl/nrman in
(
®
® ™
me,” writes Diane Ackerman in
On Extended Wings, the saga of
plate: Vader
1)
carefully and
confidently,
even slowing to the required 5 mph through
the trailer park. He spoke with knowledge
and humility — a rare combination at any
age —
about
weather
patterns
and
the
physics of flight.
Before I knew
it
I was strapped into the
dragonfly, head protected by a
I pC
helmet
(“If we crash, should
I
"
try to land on my head?”), con-
trol stick between my knees. In
11C1
JLljillg «_OOV/HO.
mzi mol nnnr'infl
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x v^cii wui agv
•
First we hopped,
baby-bird
style.
Taxi
down the runway, nose up, wheels off the
ground, wheeee
.
.
. and set her down. “Do
that again,” 1 said, a child tossed in the air.
On the second hop,
I was grinning
like a
toothpaste commercial. On
the
third, we
abandoned the earth altogether.
I can’t speak for Orville Wright, but
I’d
bet that the first time he soared — not that
12-second,
120-foot skip but his
first real
flight — he felt, along with elation, another
primal feeling: terror. After all, many of his
predecessors died in the attempt. Flying is
not
natural, despite the ubiquity
of flying
dreams; anyone
with
sense should
be,
at
very least, nervous. Flying in an ultralight is
like heading toward the heavens on a lounge
chair. You’re not even in the plane — there
is no “in.” You’re seated, legs outstretched;
lean to the right or left and a seatbelt is the
only thing keeping you from your first and
last skydive.
But
it was, indeed, a treat. Cruising di-
rectly into the wind at 3,000 feet, I felt sus-
pended, motionless, like an Amelia Earhardt
actress with a fake earth below. We peered
at the shimmering Potomac,
its yardstick
bridges. Monopoly neighborhoods.
I looked
for cornfields, just in case, and spotted
in-
stead our own shadow,
surprisingly beau-
tiful as
it bumped over trees and houses.
My stomach plunked into place as
if, after
abandoning it on a hundred youthful Ferris
wheel rides,
I finally caught up with it.
Bruce showed me how to turn the plane
and how to keep
it level. After a while he
put his hands on my shoulders. “Congrat-
ulations,” he
said. “You’ve been flying the
plane for a full minute.”
“Don’t you dare have a heart attack,”
I
answered.
The truth is, I like to be scared, though I
prefer
having
been
scared.
So when we
touched down, returning to the conspicu-
ously flat two-dimensional world,
I was
all
cne nanus oi a too wno gets ms jomes uymg
^as to
keeping one’s passion for life
shield; behind me was Bruce, now elevated
for
an
, sond aav to die for
all the
lntact - one
’s curiosity at full stretch, when
to the status of savior. “You’ve got controls
Thanks
when
it came to the possibility of my ex-
it was as good a day to die as any.
control stick in my right hand, the throttle
*U0<ki
rh-inmnn life for ona lirhnma
thrill
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.
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for
another
risk
Thanks, Larry.
taken
and
survived.
m
lGraN SKY SPORTS offers introductory
for $29.95 and promises solo proficiency for
$1,200, which includes an unlimited number of lessons.
Ultralights are sold for $4,90Q to $15,000. Contact
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nia«a>dan