Chapter 3

Kyle was bored. Really bored. Emma wasted no time in finding someone amongst the stable crew willing to teach her how to ride a horse, but horseback riding did not interest Kyle one bit. One afternoon he drove into town and then to the municipal airport.

"What do you have to do to learn how to fly a plane?" he asked the woman sitting at the desk in an office.

She turned over her shoulder and called into the next room, "Gary, there's a young man here that wants to learn how to fly."

"Send him in," was the response from the other office.

She didn't need to say anything; Kyle was already past her and near the doorway.

"Hi. I'm Kyle Jensen and I think I would like to learn how to fly a plane."

"Kyle, I am Gary Mercer, a Certified Flight Instructor, and I would be happy to teach you. How old are you? How are you going to pay for it?"

"I will be eighteen in a few weeks and I'll pay in cash, if that's okay. How much does it cost?"

"Depends on how quickly you learn, and how coordinated you are physically; between three and five grand for the basic license."

"Good. When can we start?

"Right now, if you have time."

"Let's go."

Gary took Kyle up for a half hour demonstration ride. Ten minutes into the flight, Kyle began asking about landing techniques. "Take offs seem pretty simple. How hard can they be to get the thing in the air? However, landings seem like they will require some technique and practice. Tell me again the process that we follow. I'd like to try some."

Gary shook his head and wondered about his newest student, but then called the control tower for permission to practice landings. Naturally, Gary kept all the important controls with his easy reach as he allowed Kyle to begin his first landing. As imagined, Kyle missed the correct runway alignment on his first pass, but he had performed all the processes correctly.

"I think I banked a little too aggressively," he said. Let me try it again."

Gary nodded and they flew in a large circle around the perimeter of the airport. Kyle put the plane on the centerline of the runway just passed the runway number and began to slow roll to a corner. Without saying anything, he took his foot off the brakes, increased the throttle and rolled down the rest of the runway, pulling up at the last minute and then climbing to five thousand feet as the tower had instructed. They flew out over the city so that Kyle could get a better appreciation for his new home and then headed west to fly over the new house.

Five minutes later, Gary called for permission to land and Kyle repeated his successful landing, taxiing to the office and hangar without comment.

"I have taught many people to fly but have only seen two people take to flying as quickly as you, Kyle. I'm impressed."

"Thanks."

"And they were a couple of men who happened to be athletes in college. Did you play any sports in high school?"

"Oh a little, but nothing to brag about," he replied, in the understatement of the year.

Gary had Kyle fill out the appropriate license applications and gave him a flight instruction manual and a log book. In turn, Kyle returned the completed application forms and asked Gary to fax them to an additional number after he had submitted them through his normal channels.

"I don't know what good that will do. These guys in the FAA are real stinkers when it comes to licensing and forms and dotting the i's and crossing the t's. We'll be lucky to see anything back in a week!"

Gary and Kyle laid out a schedule of lessons, in theory accelerated to meet Kyle's desires. Kyle originally asked for three hours of lessons every morning, but Gary thought that was a little too fast to grasp the complexities of changing weather, etc. They settled on three hours each Monday, Wednesday and Friday until Kyle could solo, and then he could fly two hours every day on his own.