ADVENTURE AWAITS
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BY RICHARD DUPERTUIS
the love of flight N ATA L I E V E R H O O G , F L I G H T I N S T R U C T O R
Photo courtesy of Kelly Verhoog
JUST BECAUSE it felt like a fun first thing to try, pre-med student Natalie Verhoog climbed aboard a small plane idling in Benton Airpark and lifted off into Redding’s summer sky. Of course, she brought along a flight instructor, who narrated to her everything he did in the cockpit, noting things like fuel, airspeed and how to set the angle of their bank. Then he turned the controls over to Verhoog, a young woman barely out of Redding Christian High School. “Once we were up in the air, he let me!” she exclaims, still excited by the memory. “It was amazing. I did climbs, turns and descents. I just fell in love with it.” Summer break done, she jetted back to Baylor University in Waco, Texas, where she promptly changed her major to aviation sciences. Today, Verhoog is a full-time flight instructor at Texas State Technical College, also in Waco, and an enthusiastic one. A typical work week for a flight instructor at the college serves about 10 students a day over a five-day week, from 8am to 7pm. But that’s not enough air time for her. “I added Saturdays. That’s a whole day, seven extra flight blocks,” she says. “Why? Because I love my job.” A good part of time her job involves introducing a first-time flyer to the small-plane experience. “It’s called a discovery flight,” she explains. “Everything is done manually. You show them how to use
instruments – like for time and fuel, direction, distance. After that, it’s basic stick-and-rudder skills.” She shows someone who’s never flown in a small plane before how to hand-fly one. Then, some thousands of feet in the air, Verhoog hands control of the plane over to this person. She guides them through holding an altitude. She talks them through descending at a constant air speed. She introduces them to basic maneuvers, like 360-degree turns banked 45 degrees, and some maneuvers mandated by the FFA, should one desire to go for a pilot’s license. “A discovery flight is designed to share the joy of flight. As a flight instructor, my job is not only to teach, but keep complete control,” she says. “I keep the student in a safe little bubble, so they don’t have to worry about anything going wrong, so they can concentrate on working the controls. I keep it light-hearted, calm. But safe. I take this as a great responsibility.” During this flight, Verhoog watches her student closely, for a discovery flight is like a test on the first day of lessons. She wants to make sure that this person really, really wants to fly. Not all do. And she will remove from a lesson plan anyone who doesn’t look like they are going to fit well into a small cockpit. Not everyone, she knows, is born to be a pilot.4 continued on page 36
MAY 2020
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