IN THE EARLY '90s, a friend and I bought a Kitfox. It had a Rotax engine specifically made for airplanes. The worst mechanical event during our ownership was when the exhaust came loose in flight, filling the cockpit with noise and smoke. Our kids grew up with this little airplane, and we flew all the time with the doors off, with them sticking their heads out into the slipstream for a better view. When a friend put his Cub on floats up for sale, we decided to purchase it. We sold the Kitfox to a friend who owned a powersports business, and that was the end of the Kitfox for me until late Summer 2002. The new owner of the Kitfox then wanted to sell the air- plane. The buyer, a student pilot, needed tailwheel instruction, and I agreed to spend some time training him. I did not find out until our first lesson that the student had 55 hours of instruction and had yet to solo. This can be a red flag and may indicate someone is better off trying something besides flying. Because he was the new proud owner of the Kitfox, I agreed to give it a go. After two lessons in non-ideal weather conditions, the student had yet to make a landing where I did not have to intervene. On wheels, this lightweight airplane could be a handful for someone of my experience, let alone a newbie. I told our friend it was a lost cause. He asked me to take the student up on a calm evening; if he could not manage landings, then I could call it quits. OK, deal! October 2 featured perfect low-wind conditions, so we met around 5 p.m. to practice landings. There was a light wind out of the northeast so we used Coldwater Airport's smaller 3,500-foot Runway 3 (now 4). The landings were not going well, but the takeoffs started to get smoother. Around his fourth try, he landed without bouncing horribly and with zero input from me, and then made two more landings without help. As we climbed after the sixth landing, out of the blue he asked, "If the engine quit right now, what would you do?"
展开▼
