New Menace From Above
New Menace From Above Yesterday, a new aerial menace was unleashed above the Los Angeles basin--I took my first flying lesson. This was a birthday gift--a Three Hour Tour; 1 hr of ground and 2 hrs in the air. We were going up in the single-engine Cessna 172 high-wing 4-seater, N107AF. And that's what came back. I am not making this up--Mary Pat rode along and saw the white knuckles of Dover herself. My flight instructor was a genial steely-nerved nice-guy named Lewis. First I got a clue at the dials I was going to be making friends with. Then we went over basic aeronautical theory, Bernoulli Effect and so forth. That effect sometimes requires a bag, but not today. It was clear and calm. Then we went outside and did the entire methodical preflight; wagging the ailerons and rudder, optically testing the fuel for clarity [he declined my offer to hold a zippo up to it], checked the tires, removed the cotter pin from the yoke, and so forth. Oh yeah, also disconnected the tie-downs from