“I do not want to impose on you, Brad,” Yvette said. “You have a very big few days coming up, and I have only a few questions.”
“It’s no problem,” Brad said. “Go south on Broad Street, right turn on Airport Road, and stop at the gate that’s marked ‘General Aviation’ on the left. I’ll come out and open it for you.”
“Well . . . I would love to see your plane, but I do not wish to disturb you.”
“Not at all. I’m just waiting for the plane to update itself. The company would be nice.”
“Well, in that case, I would be happy to join you,” Yvette said. “I can be there in about ten minutes. I am driving a rented white Volvo.”
Ten minutes later on the dot, a white Volvo sedan pulled up to the terminal building. Brad stepped through the walk-through gate and swiped his access card on the reader, and the drive-through gate began to open. He jumped on his bike and headed back to his hangar, with the Volvo not far behind.
Brad had left the bifold hangar door open and the inside lights on, so Yvette could see the Silver Eagle as soon as she pulled up. “Nice to see you again, Brad,” she said as she emerged from the car. She shook his hand, then offered him a business card. “I hope you remember me?”
“Yes, I certainly do,” Brad said. Damn, he remarked to himself, she’s even hotter than last time. He turned and motioned to the plane. “There she is.”
“It is beautiful!” Yvette remarked. “It looks like you keep it in immaculate condition.”
“I still consider it my dad’s plane, so I work on it every chance I get and clean it up after every flight,” Brad said.
“Your father was such a great man,” Yvette said. “I am so sorry for your loss.”
Brad always had to remember to play along with these sentiments offered to him all the time from the media—it was tough, but he was getting better and better at playacting that his father was indeed dead. “Thank you,” he replied.
Yvette stepped inside the hangar and began admiring the plane. “So. Tell me about your sexy plane, Brad McLanahan.”
“It is called a Silver Eagle, a Cessna P210 Centurion which had its 310-horsepower piston gasoline engine replaced with a 450-horsepower jet-fuel turboprop engine,” Brad said. “It has a bunch of other mods to it as well. About two hundred and fifty miles per hour cruise speed, a thousand miles range, twenty-three-thousand-foot ceiling.”
“Ooo.” She gave Brad a naughty smile and said, “That would make it eligible for the four-mile-high club, not just the mile-high club, yes?” Brad tried to chuckle at her quip, but it just came out as a crude snort as he distracted himself thinking about how in the world he could manage to join that club in the cockpit of a Silver Eagle. “And you said the plane was updating itself?”
“Updates are broadcast by satellite,” Brad said, shaking himself loose from his fantasizing. “When they’re needed, I just plug the airplane into external power, turn it on, and wait.”
“That does not sound like a normal way of updating avionics and databases.”
“This plane has a few upgrades that are not yet available to the rest of the general aviation community,” Brad said. “My dad used his plane as a test bed for a lot of high-tech stuff.” He pointed to a tiny ball mounted midway along the underside of the right wing. “He used this plane for surveillance missions with the Civil Air Patrol years ago, so he had those sensors mounted on the wings. They’re about the size of tennis balls, but they can scan twenty acres a second day or night on both sides of the aircraft with six-inch resolution. The images are broadcast to ground receivers, or they can play on the multifunction displays in the cockpit, with flight or navigation information superimposed on it. I’ve made several landings in pitch-black with no lights using that sensor.”
“I’ve never heard of that before with a sensor so small,” Yvette said.
“I can do stuff on this plane that won’t be available to the public for at least five years, and maybe ten,” Brad said. “Completely automated clearances, air-traffic-control advisories, automated flight planning and rerouting, voice-actuated avionics, lots of stuff.”
“Can I write about this, Brad?” Yvette asked. “Can I tell my readers about this?”
Brad thought for a moment, then shrugged. “I don’t see why not,” he said. “It’s not classified top secret or anything—it’s just not available to general aviation yet. It’s all been approved by the feds, but it’s not yet being manufactured or offered for sale.”
“But it represents the future of general aviation,” Yvette said. “I am sure my readers would love to read about this. May I get copies of the Supplemental Type Certificates and approvals for these wonderful systems?”