Page 4 - Demo

Prelude to a Legend:
BY DAVID FORTUNA
Abridged and edited excerpt from You Betcha Baby! The Legend of Vincent “Squeek” Burnett by David Fortuna and Evelyn Burnett;
that you
had to push
forward to go
up and pull back
on the stick to go
down. The stunt was
all a matter of timing in
seconds. The pilot had his
minimum altitude now, and his air
speed indicator read 150 miles per hour (mph).
The sturdy old biplane would not stall above 90 mph up- side down, so his current air speed gave him a safety margin of 60 mph. The steady roar of the engine was reassuring. His two safety belts gripped him securely. In another split second he would snip the ribbon and pull up to gain altitude, thrill- ing the onlookers below.
Except this time, the engine cut out with no warning at all, just quit cold. An accomplished stunter doesn’t stop to ratio- nalize in such a situation. No time for that. He might die.
Instead, he pushed on the stick automatically, in what psy- chologists call a conditioned reflex, but not too far. Too much would bring the nose up sharply, causing the ship to stall in flight.
©T
gently south of the field for his dive. Spectators in the grandstand made tiny blobs of color against the green of the ground. He kicked the airplane over on its back, squinted briefly at his instrument panel, and eased back on the stick until the nose was just inside the border of the airport.
He would level off at fifty feet and inch down to within five feet of the ground, just in front of the grandstand, to cut a ribbon between two upright poles. The public liked the stunt and paid good money to see it, because it looked dangerous. And as a matter of fact, it was very dangerous. But years in the business had taught this pilot the tricks of stunt flying while maintaining a wide margin of safety, and today, he felt extra sure of himself.
He shoved the stick to flatten his dive. With the airplane on its back, the elevator control was reversed, which meant
 LYNCH’S FERRY
2008 by David Fortuna.
he airplane’s engine was turning up perfectly as the pilot made a thousand feet of altitude and banked
Aviator Vincent
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