Walt wrote:
Great story, Dan.

I've never let a "newbie" handle the controls on takeoff -I'm too
paranoid--, but last summer I took a friend's 15-year-old son on a
flight. We took off out of Gallatin Field near Bozeman, MT and flew
west to the Missouri confluence near Three Forks. Once at altitude I
handed the controls over to him. He did great.



In my younger days, I had a job in a survey party, and spent three
summers in helicopters and bush planes. I never got to take the
controls... except one time.

I was in a Beaver floatplane with a pilot I had never met before, and
we spent the day moving gas drums to various small lakes. The Beaver
has a yoke attached to a central pedestal, and on the last leg of the
last flight the pilot mumbled something about doing his flight reports,
flipped the yoke over to my side, opened his clipboard and put his head
down. Well, I could handle this. I carefully steered straight and
level. There were some showers in front of us, and I turned right a bit
every so often to avoid them, but otherwise I thought I was on course.

After about 20 minutes, the pilot finished his work, looked up and
said "Where are we?" I had forgotten about the navigation part. This
area of Northern Alberta was nothing but tiny lakes, and navigation
consisted of moving your thumb along the map when passing over each
lake. I not only had not kept track, I was about 90 degrees off course
after avoiding the rain. Fortunately we did find ourselves and had
enough fuel to get back.

I never had another offer like that.

John Halpenny