From The Editor

Life is a series of lessons, and we often attend them without really realizing it. Sometimes it takes years to understand what the lesson was trying to teach us. For example, I didn't realize it at the time, but I experienced a life lesson in early 1982 while working the business beat at the Columbia Missourian, a daily newspaper.

When I was out pounding my beat at the two malls and downtown business district, I usually stopped at Cotton Woods Memorial, a small, nontower airport just north of town. During one late-summer visit I saw a strange, spindly craft float skyward like a rainbow-hued feather in an updraft - a feather that screamed like a runaway chain saw.

Intrigued, I searched for the craft's home and learned that a local businessman had become an ultralight dealer. The craft was a Quicksilver, he explained. Drawing out my notebook quicker than a wild west gunslinger, I drilled him with questions. This certainly was more interesting to write about than the new merchandise arrangement at J.C. Penney's.

During my interrogation I mentioned that I was a pilot, and the dealer said I should take his demo craft for a spin around the patch. It didn't look like anything I'd ever flown to date (a Cessna 172, a Piper Cherokee 140, and a Piper Colt), but I was young and eager to get back in the sky again. Besides, I was a private pilot - I could legally fly any craft that had one engine and weighed less than 12,500 pounds.

The first Quicksilvers were weight-shift machines. The pilot sat in a sling seat suspended from the aluminum-tubing truss that separated the wings from the wheels, and grasped a rigid horizontal bar that functioned as the primary flight control device. My preflight briefing was just that - brief. To control the craft all I had to do was imagine myself as the center of gravity. To climb I had to push against the bar to move myself backwards; I had to pull the bar to move myself forward to lower the nose and descend. Pushing the bar to the side made my body move the opposite direction, which would make the craft turn. Simple and easy, the man said.

With the overconfidence of the ignorant who are unaware an important lesson is taking place, I agreed.

Fortunately, this lesson didn't reach its potentially catastrophic conclusion. If I remember correctly, a wimpy 28-horsepower Xenoah engine powered this Quicksilver, and I weighed more than the whole aircraft. With the engine screaming at maximum power, I made about half a dozen passes down the runway. The nosewheel climbed to the heady altitude of about six inches. On one pass, I think a puff of wind lifted the main wheels off the pavement, but I'm not certain. I was looking at the horizon, not the wheels, and the bump I felt could have been a rock. I didn't fly the Quicksilver, I fast-taxied it.

The dealer apologized for the lack of power, and I apologized for my abundance of bulk. He promised to call when he received the new model with the bigger engine, and I promised to return for a flight around the patch. Fortunately, he never called, and I changed beats and didn't have time to visit the airport as frequently as I once had. But I've always been fascinated by ultralights - and thought, "They can't be that hard to fly."

I say fortunately because at Sun 'n Fun 1998 I finally learned what this lesson was trying to teach me. There I met Scott Toland, who earned his recreational pilot certificate in a trike, an ultralight that, like the Quicksilver of long ago, is controlled by shifting your weight. Scott took me for a ride around the Sun 'n Fun patch, and once he got us to pattern altitude, he let me fly.

It was exhilarating! With the spectacular view and with the wind on my face (at least the part the helmet didn't cover), I felt closer to experiencing pure flight. Grasping the bar you push and pull to shift the weight of the trike and its occupants. I felt the machine's pulse as the air flowed over the fabric. It was alive - and so was I.

Flying the trike was not difficult, but to an airplane pilot used to stick and rudder, it was not intuitive. I had to think about what I had to do, and even though we were cruising at around 40 mph, I was behind the aircraft. Realizing I was out of my experience envelope, I returned the controls to Scott on final approach. As I followed him through on the bar, I realized the lesson my first attempt at ultralight flight had been trying to teach me. Of all the machines that fly, no two are created equal, and the ability to fly one type doesn't mean you have the ability to fly another.

In 1998 I realized that had I gotten airborne on that late summer day in 1982, the chances were better than good that I would not have fared well. This thought sobered me, and I had to assure Scott my mood was not the result of our flight. On the contrary, more than ever I'm enthralled by ultralights and the elemental flight they make possible. And I will fly them - after I learn how from a qualified instructor.