“No, you didn’t.”
“Then how did I get to go into the field?”
“Because I signed you off anyway.”
“You did? But why?”
“Because I had a feeling you could learn that stuff if we just got you out there and showed it to you,” Brad said. “I’m kind of a visual learner too. Take flying: I can muddle through the classroom stuff and squeak by on the exams, but I really don’t learn anything about flying until I get behind the controls. Then all the classroom stuff makes sense. If you didn’t pick it up in the field, I’d go to the squadron commander and explain what I did. But you did it.”
Ralph nodded and was silent for a few moments, then asked, “So if you’re a visual learner like me, sir — why do you want to go to a traditional college?”
Brad opened his mouth to reply… then realized he didn’t have an answer. But thankfully just then Jon Masters came up to the table. “Hey, there’s the birthday boy!” he greeted him loudly. Brad stood and held out a hand. Jon shook it, then spun Brad around and spanked him eighteen times, plus a last hard one for good luck. “I’m not too old, and you’re not yet so big, that I can’t give you a proper birthday greeting!”
“Thanks, Uncle Jon,” Brad said. “Uncle Jon, this is Cadet Markham. Ralph, meet Dr. Jon Masters.”
“The one that led the search and treated the survivor of that plane crash? Very nice to meet you.” They shook hands. “They tell me you’re quite the video-game expert.”
“I’m a visual learner, sir,” Ralph said proudly.
“I see,” Jon said. “Well, hopefully while I’m here I can show you some stuff that you might just find is right up your alley.”
“Like what, Uncle Jon?” Brad asked.
Jon put a finger to his lips and winked. “Hush-hush, need-to-know, super-duper secret, all that happy horseshi — well, you get the idea,” Jon said. “I could tell you, but then I’d have to kill you.”
“Really?” Ralph gasped.
“Not really, Ralph, but I like saying that,” Jon said, smiling. “But, I am here to tell you that your sortie this afternoon has been canceled.” Brad’s shoulders slumped. “I feel bad, because my stuff has something to do with it, and I know it was going to be your first mission as the guy who sits in back and looks out the window for stuff.”
“Mission scanner.”
“Right. So to make it up to you, I got you a present. I gave it to your dad.”
“Thank you!” Brad said excitedly. Jon Masters’s gifts were always weird, highly unusual, and one-of-a-kind high-tech gadgets. “When do I get it?”
“As soon as your dad gets off the computer, which might not be until you’re thirty,” Jon said with a smile. “In the meantime, if you guys are done here, why don’t you show me your Civil Air Patrol plane.”
“Sure!” Brad said excitedly. He ran to the communications room and retrieved the airplane’s keys, then escorted Jon and Ralph to the Cessna 182 parked outside. “This is a Cessna 182R Skylane, built in 1984,” he began proudly as they walked up to the red, white, and blue airplane. “It is a four-place, high-wing, single-engine monoplane, constructed mostly of aluminum with some fiberglass components. It is powered by a two-hundred-and-thirty-horsepower normally aspirated piston engine. It has a max gross weight of about three thousand pounds, cruises at about one hundred and forty knots, and has a maximum endurance of about four hours with an hour’s fuel reserve.”
“ ‘Normally aspirated piston engine’? ‘One hundred and forty knots’?” Jon Masters asked incredulously. “Who uses piston engines anymore? It runs on avgas? I didn’t think there were any planes that ran on avgas anymore! And I have unmanned aircraft I can carry in a backpack that can fly twice as fast!”
“The 182 is a good aircraft for the mission, Uncle Jon: good-weather, short-range, short-endurance, low-altitude, low-speed search-and-rescue, flown by civilian volunteers,” Brad said. “We have other planes that fly other missions. The Civil Air Patrol is the largest single operator of 182s in the world, with a fleet of more than five hundred.”
“A fleet of dinosaurs, if you ask me,” Jon said. “The plane is almost thirty years old!”
“They’re introducing newer planes into the fleet as the older ones reach a certain airframe time limit,” Brad said. “We were slated to get a glass-cockpit turbo 182 this year. That was canceled because of the economy and all the cutbacks. Maybe we’ll get it when the recession is over.”
“Or maybe get something better,” Jon mused.
“There’s nothing better than a trusty 182—maybe a turbo 182 with a glass cockpit,” Brad said. He unlocked the pilot’s-side door, then opened the passenger-side door from inside. “We still use the original instruments.”
“Holy cats — I’ll say you do!” Jon exclaimed, his eyes wide in wonder as he scanned the faded Royalite plastic instrument panel. “I can’t remember the last time I saw round steam gauges!” He pointed at the GPS device. “Jeez, that GPS manufacturer hasn’t been in business in fifteen years! And… and is that an FM simplex radio?”
“The radio operates both in simplex and repeater functions,” Brad explained. “CAP operates about five hundred repeater stations around the country to provide communications over a wide area, hostile terrain, or when conventional communications like telephone and the Internet are knocked out.”
“Wow — I didn’t realize you guys did what you do with such… outdated stuff,” Jon exclaimed. “I guess your major tool is the old Mark One eyeball, eh?”
“We have a Gippsland GA-8 with the ARCHER hyperspectral sensor — that’s probably the most high-tech plane in the fleet,” Brad said. “Back in the Vegas squadron they were able to send digital photos from the planes via satellite, but we don’t do that here.”
“It would be easy enough to do,” Jon mused again. Brad could always tell when his uncle’s mind began working a problem, same as his dad: they got this faraway look, as if they were looking through the earth back onto their lab bench or computer, already experimenting and planning. “The transceiver weighs less than a sack lunch. You could even do two-way voice, data, and text.”
“That would be cool,” Ralph said.
“Look at that — vacuum-powered gyroscopic gauges… a wet compass… carburetor heat… my God, an L-Tronics Model LA direction finder,” Jon muttered in disbelief. “Those were built in Santa Barbara, California, by hand practically by one guy, years ago. He was my hero. The guy literally transformed the nation with his gadgets.”
“Most of the time the stuff works pretty well,” Brad said. “And the plane flies great.”
“You’ve flown it?”
“You bet I did,” Brad said. “Ralph too. Every CAP cadet gets five powered and five glider orientation rides. It’s part of CAP’s aerospace education program. We’re not allowed to do takeoffs and landings in CAP airplanes, but I’ve done steep turns, stalls, and slow flight.”
“I didn’t realize the Civil Air Patrol did all that stuff with these planes,” Jon said. “Actually, I never thought about it. So when do you get to pilot one of these hot rods, Brad?”
“Not for a while,” Brad said. “I’ll train to be a mission scanner, get two supervised flights, then train to be a mission observer. Meanwhile, I have to get my private pilot’s license and get a hundred and fifty hours of pilot-in-command time. Then I can train to take a CAP Form 5 check ride, which is like an annual flight review. Once I pass that, I get two supervised flights in the left seat with a crew, followed by a CAP Form 91 evaluation.”
“Sheesh, it sounds worse than the Air Force,” Jon remarked. “They really make you jump through some hoops, don’t they?”