Page 187 - Never Fly Solo

160 | NEVER FLY SOLO
to show my instructor pilot, Capt. Bob Massarella, that I was
ready to fly on my own. It was a traffic-pattern-only flight,
and I was all over the place. My airspeeds were fast, my alti-
tude was consistently a hundred feet off, and my glide path
on final approach to the runway was too steep, almost to the
point of being dangerous.
We taxied back to the hangar in silence. I had messed up,
and Captain Massarella and I both knew it. I had only two
more shots to qualify for solo, or it was over—I would wash
out of preliminary flight training and never even make it to
jet training after graduating from the Air Force Academy. I
was deflated and angry with myself.
As we began to pull into the hangar, Captain Massarella
barked, “Stop the aircraft!”
Alarmed, I pulled the throttle back to idle and hammered
down on the brakes. “What’s up, sir?” I asked.
Then he began to unstrap from his seat. I looked at him
in utter bewilderment and asked, “What are you doing?”
“Waldo, I’m getting out of this aircraft, and you’re going
solo. If you want to kill yourself, that’s fine with me, but I am
not going to be in the plane when it happens.”
In an instant, he had jumped out of the plane, slammed
the door behind him, and was standing on the tarmac giving
me a thumbs-up. He smiled. “You can do it, Waldo!” he
yelled out. And before I could get a word out, he was gone.
What the hell! I thought. I’m not ready for this!
There I was, by myself in this plane with no one there to
help me. All I could hear was the steady rumble of the prop
engine, and my breath over the intercom. I was supposed to
go solo . . . right now. With that, I began to panic. My legs
started shaking uncontrollably. My mouth became parched. I
started to freak out. How the heck was I going to do this? I