Photo by I | Thomom Mickey Duke, the chief flight instructor at McKenzie Flying Service, has been flying since 1972. Flight school puts reporter in control By B.J. Thomsen Of tlw Km.r.ld The plane was tiny, like a gnat, compared to the immense United Airlines jet parked far ther down the tarmac. The cockpit was well under an arm span wide, and the dashboard was filled with an alarming ar ray of switches, numbered dials and lights. I strapped myself into the seat, with the help of my in structor pilot, Mickey Duke. I was apprehensive but eager about the flight. As the wheels of the small plane left the black asphalt run way, a feeling of detached freedom and a new understan ding of how an airplane flies became one in my mind. 1 had flown before but only as a passive occupant, much like one would ride a bus or the train, without a complete understanding of what was happening. The controls on an airplane. I discovered, are nothing like that of a car. and as the pilot let me take control of the little Cessna 152, 1 felt like an infant just learning to walk. As the plane continued to climb toward the gray-and-blue patchwork sky, 1 fought to keep straight in my head the func tions of the ailerons, flaps, rud der and elevators. "Flaps are for roll?" I wondered aloud. "No, flaps are used to increase lift,” Duke reminded me. "Ailerons are for roll.” 1 remember back to the film strip 1 watched as part of the in troductory flight I was taking at McKenzie Flying Service before going out to the plane. Sure enough, ailerons, the flaps on the wing that move opposite each other when the wheel is rotated, allow the pilot to tip the plane either left or right. The rudder, the moveable vertical section in the tail, allows the pilot to turn left or right by moving footpedals and serves the same function as the front wheels on an automobile. And the elevators, the moveable part of the tail's horizontal section, allows the STUFF IT ,\ V t.\ TtRY !li MU 484-2799 1809 Franklin Blvd.