IT'S FUNNY HOW relationships begin. Meeting some special person by chance, being unable to close your back door on a lost kitten that wandered by, or being introduced to a machine that you simply can't forget. An early model Champion Aircraft, a 7FC Tri-Champ, came into my life decades ago when I was a student at the now-defunct University of Illinois' Institute of Aviation in Champaign, Illinois (CMI). I remember my instructor pointing across the ramp to a line of bedraggled looking single-engine airplanes painted a dull orange with bits of black trim. Maybe not an airplane to fall madly in love with at first sight, but that paint scheme also probably prevented more than one midair collision in the university's flight training area above the corn and soybean fields of central Illinois. Those Champs weren't shiny, sexy machines, but they were incredibly easy to fly. About eight hours into my training, I impressed my instructor enough that he signed me off for a few touch and goes in the Champaign traffic pattern. Pushing that throttle forward the first time as captain of that Boeing 707-OK, it felt like one to me-I realized my entire world was going to change. And while I wasn't thinking about it back then, it seemed that no matter how hard we all beat up those Champs with our lousy crosswind landings or inept use of those awkward heel brakes, the airplanes performed like Timex watches; they took "a lickin' and kept on tickin'."
展开▼
