
DATE: Sunday, September 28, 1997            TAG: 9709250206
SECTION: CAROLINA COAST          PAGE: 6    EDITION: FINAL 

SOURCE: BY STEVE STONE, STAFF WRITER 

DATELINE: UP THERE                          LENGTH:  183 lines

BIRD'S-EYE VIEW BIPLANES AND SMALL AIRCRAFT PROVIDE PEOPLE WITH WINGS TO SOAR OVER THE OUTER BANKS.

THIS IS FLYING.

You don't just walk down an aisle and plop down in a padded chair. You climb aboard, lifting yourself between the wings and squirming into the front seat of the cockpit. Yeah, you'll bump your knee.

But the pre-flight adrenalin rush will compensate.

No earpieces with choices of music here. The pilot slips a helmet and goggles and an earmuff-like headset over your head. You hear the crackle of another pilot advising that he's about to land.

The engine roars to life, nowhere near as noisy as you might expect, but you can feel its power.

Thumbs up - and you're tooling down the runway of the First Flight Airstrip. The plane's tail lifts first, a surprise perhaps for those familiar with modern flight. Then, finally, as forward thrust sends the right amount of air rushing below the wings, you rise just as the Wright brothers knew it should happen.

Nod to your right as you clear the end of the runway, a salute to Orville and Wilbur, who unlocked the mysteries of powered flight once and for all just a few hundred yards away - almost 100 years ago.

Then watch as the world shrinks below. You glide over the slow-rolling surf. You join the sea gulls just below the clouds.

This is flying.

An air tour of the Outer Banks is a great way to take in all the sights - not unlike any number of airborne explorations offered at tourist destinations around the globe.

Doing it in Scott Challice's biplane, a two-winged craft that is a close cousin to the Wright brothers' hand-hewn bird, and doing it in this place where manned flight began is a special treat. Perhaps in no other way can you not just see or touch history - but feel it all around your head, shoulders and face.

The plane, a 1941 UPF-7 WACO, is no modern-day reproduction. It's the real thing, used as a trainer in World War II. And the cockpit is open - allowing the air to rush around pilot and passenger, making you feel like you're truly airborne.

``It's like a Harley'' motorcycle, Challice said. ``You're always working on it.''

The ride is a mix of expectations realized and some surprises - perhaps more of the latter.

The wind is invigorating, not unbearable; the noise less; the ride smooth.

If, however, the biplane is too hands-on for your nerves, you can cover much the same territory in the tamer confines of one of the other aircraft operating from First Flight airstrip.

Kitty Hawk Aero Tours - one of several tour operations on the Outer Banks - is a concession of the National Park Service. It features nine aircraft: eight are Cesna 172s, each able to carry three passengers; one is a Cesna 207, able to carry six passengers.

They've handled more than 350,000 passengers in 21 years without any incidents, said owner Jay Mankedick.

Many visitors make the decision to fly on the spur of the moment.

``They go to the visitor's center first'' where they learn the history of the Wright brothers' efforts. ``And that gets air in their blood,'' said Eric Dreelin, 27, the chief pilot. Then they fly.

``They absolutely love it.''

Marcia and Ted Jump - yes, Jump; and no, they didn't - of Rockville, Md., found their flight on a recent day ``very pleasant,'' something of an understatement given their grins.

That's the reaction of most people, said Dreelin - who has never had anyone change their mind about taking a flight once off the ground.

``I've had people that said, `Don't turn so sharp.' But none's ever said, `Put me back on the ground.' ''

An average tour in one of the blue and gold Cesnas includes an oceanside flight south that quickly provides one with a deep appreciation for the fragility of these barrier islands that seem so big and expansive on the ground.

The Outer Banks are but a sliver dividing the waters of the sounds from the sometimes fearsome ocean.

On days when seas are calm, one can get a hazy view of the Graveyard of the Atlantic, looking through the blue-green tombstone to the remains below.

``People really get some awesome photographs,'' Dreelin said, ``especially on clear days.''

From above, you can watch as wave after wave approaches the beach, white lines of foam forming first as laser-thin lines and gradually building and widening as they approach destruction on the shore.

Man's fight against the encroachment of the sea is visible in the form of last-ditch efforts to save threatened homes that once sat well back from the surf and now sit on its edge. People have built walls of giant sandbags, hoping to spare themselves the worst - but more likely only delaying the inevitable.

``There's only so much you can do,'' said pilot Eric ``Beaver'' Bauer as he banked a plane over some of the sandbagged properties. ``It's just a matter of time.''

The patchwork of roads, businesses and homes below takes on a semblance of order from above. One can clearly discern the tourist-oriented areas as opposed to the residential neighborhoods nestled in the woods further from the Atlantic.

And the trees themselves are somewhat of a marvel, given that they were not here when the Wright brothers chose this place for their test flights because landing - or crashing - in unobstructed, soft sand was preferable to other options.

The expanse of green along much of the Outer Banks is the work of man trying to stem the movement of the sands, leaving only the immensity of Jockey's Ridge as testament to the once unvegetated dunes. From the air, you can appreciate its size and its slow movement.

There's a spin past the Bodie Island Lighthouse, set securely back from the ocean in the embrace of marshland. And then you turn back north, flying along the soundside.

As winds blow over the surface of the sound, they create thin white lines of disturbed water like cracks in a solid surface. Whatever direction those lines go, that's the direction of the winds fashioning them.

And what of those dark spots in the water? What is making some areas of the sound bright blue-green and others much darker? Pollution? Some strange growth? A sudden increase in depth?

Look above for the answer.

It's the clouds, casting slow-moving shadows on the water below.

There are many seemingly untouched areas, small inlets and marshlands, islands and coves along the ragged soundside that you never see from the ground.

Even the Wright Brothers Monument takes on a different and impressive image from above, where you can better understand its winged shape and see the giant star structure on which it rests.

An advantage to the Cesnas over the biplane is that you are inside and can chat with the pilot while he gives a guided tour.

Bauer, 27, has logged more than 2,000 takeoffs and landings at First Flight airstrip.

``It's one of the best airports I've ever landed at,'' he said. He provides an easy-going tour, making the work of flying seem like it is second nature.

After so much time in the air, ``The plane becomes an extension of your body,'' Bauer said. ``You just start cruising.''

He came to Kitty Hawk on a tip from a buddy. He had wanted to spend the summer doing flight instruction with an eye toward building his flight time. The Wisconsin native is in the Air National Guard and is working toward flying giant KC-135 refueling tankers. (And, no, they don't go up in flames the way the one did in ``Air Force One,'' he said.)

Flying out of First Flight so many times a day ``is a really unique opportunity,'' Bauer said. ``I'll be working with pilots the rest of my life. And a lot of them will never have flown here.''

That's one of the things Dreelin likes about working on the Outer Banks.

``I was a student pilot the first time I did it,'' he said. ``People come here from all over the country just to have it in their log book that they flew in and out of here.'' ILLUSTRATION: Staff photos including color cover by DREW WILSON

Scott Challice, top, flies a 1941 biplane that gives you a good look

at the Outer Banks and a good feel for aviation as experienced by

the Wright Brothers.

A Kitty Hawk Aero Tours plane rounds the Bodie Island Lighthouse on

a tour of the Outer Banks.

Graphic

HOW TO FLY

KITTY HAWK AER TOURS

Where: First Flight Airstrip, Colington Road, Kill Devil Hills

What: The Local Tour, a half-hour, 50-mile round trip that includes

Jockey's Ridge, the Roanoke Sound, Oregon Inlet and Bodie Island

Lighthouse