But no, ahead of us I can see what we’ll be using, and my anxiety’s back in the pit of my stomach. Not that it’s an old beater of a plane. Not at all. It’s a brand spanking new McDonnell-Douglas Merlin, a small, slick cousin to the Federated-Boeing Commuter. It’s a tilt-wing with two long-bladed turboprops, apparently based on a nineteen-eighties’ design called the Osprey, a V/STOL that switches from horizontal flight to vertical by pivoting its wings, effectively turning props into helicopter-style rotors.