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4746

osquito

FLlGHT OF THE

g a

494948

I’ve known Armando

for only a few minutes, and alreadyhe’s calling me his “berry good friend.” He has me wriggleinto an olive-drab flight suit that matches his own and pats medown. It’s a precaution, he says, against a cell phone, keysor anything else drifting out of a pocket and getting sucked back into the Mosquito’s prop, which at 5,000 rpm could provea fatal screw-up.I gather that your average ultralight pilot would have a hard time just keeping the souped-up, small-winged Mosquito— a customized version of a GibboGear Manta model—in the air.But Armando is hardly your average ultralight pilot; he onceset records and made headlines by island-hopping 3,000 milesacross the Caribbean from his adoptive Florida to his nativeVenezuela in “nineteen beautiful days.” Nowadays he spends a lot of time in Hawai‘i, where his son, Nacho, is stationed in the Air Force, and he’s come up withanother island-hopping mission: to become the first personanyone can think of to fly the whole length of the main Hawaiianchain in an ultralight. (OK, there were these two zany brothersfrom Florida calling themselves “The Wrong Brothers” whocreated a big media splash in 1980 by flying straight fromthe Big Island to O‘ahu—but that was different and left outKaua‘i.) Anyway, it’s all part of Armando’s grand plan toeventually fly the Mosquito around all fifty states.Through a mutual friend, Brazilian-born photographer Sergio Goes, I’ve been recruited to tag along as part reporter, part passenger and part ground crew. Sergio and I will be leap-frogging in and out of airports and rental cars down the lengthof the archipelago, chasing the Mosquito with containers of the carefully measured gas-and-oil mixture Armando needs to power the little two-stroke motor.When I meet up with him at Dillingham, he’s already flownnorth from O‘ahu to Kaua‘i and back; now he’s heading south.He and Sergio huddle in the Mosquito’s small hangar, rufflingthrough ragged maps and scraps of paper, chaotically tryingto plot out the trip. When I ask nervously whether it mightn’t be a bit late in the game to be figuring out a flight plan, Sergiolifts his head and deadpans, “Relax, there’s nothing to worryabout. You’re in the hands of South Americans!”

A few minutes later,

I’m squeezing into the Mosquito’sminuscule back seat to ride along on the next leg of the trip,

The first time I meet Armando Martinez, he’s picking up his airplane. I mean,literally lifting up the nose of the hang glider-like ultralight, which he lovinglycalls “my little Mosquito,” and hauling it out of its hangar at Dillingham Field,a serene little airstrip on a remote stretch of O‘ahu’s North Shore.Going through his preflight check, it’s obvious that Armando’s steamy loveaffair with his little Mosquito is the stuff of

telenovelas

. He adoringly sweepshis eyes over her every surface: the golden fabric of her wing, her svelte “trike”fuselage, her perky little motor, the curves of the twin propeller at her rear.He makes it clear from the get-go that he is ready to lay down his life forher. “I have to tell you, people have been hurt flying the ultralights; somehave died,” he says earnestly in his peculiar accent—think Desi Arnaz meetsSylvester the Cat. “I believe it is very safe. But if God is calling for me, thenI can be in the safest place in world, and still I go to Him.”So much for “Welcome aboard.”

All systems go: Our man in the sky Derek Ferrar (back seat) with ultralight pilot extraordinaire Armando Martinez. Martinez (alsoopening spread, flying with his son Nacho off Ka‘ena Point, O‘ahu) has already island-hopped his “Mosquito” from Venezuela toFlorida; now he’s hoping to become the first ultralight pilot to fly the main Hawaiian Island chain, from Kaua‘i to the Big Island.

STORY BY

DEREK FERRAR

PHOTOS BY

SERGIO GOES

clear across the island to Sandy Beach. Armando makes sureI’m strapped in tight, then fits me with a bulky headset so wecan talk to each other over the rush of the wind and piercing buzz of the engine.He leans over me to pull-start the Mosquito like a lawnmower. After a couple of tugs, the motor hacks to life, and Armando jumps in the front seat. As we taxi, I’m struck again by how little there is to this thing. His back is between mylegs, and my feet rest on pegs outside the fiberglass cowling likeI’m a Backseat Betty on a Harley run.Armando’s got the Mosquito stripped down to a minimumweight of about 300 pounds. A hand-held GPS serves as theinstrument panel, and a walkie-talkie is our radio. There’s nofuel gauge; he checks the level by leaning out of the trike inmidflight to eyeball a translucent strip in the fiberglass gastank. The one luxury item is an iPod velcroed to the dashboard which pumps Armando’s collection of classic rock tunes throughour headphones. As we roll out onto the tarmac for takeoff,Kansas’ “Dust in the Wind” is blasting. I am not comforted.We pick up speed for a few yards, and then—poof!—we’resuddenly off the ground. At first I grip the sides of the trikewith white knuckles, overcome by the feeling that I’m justgoing to tumble out into midair, especially when Armando banks a series of steep turns to catch an updraft off thecliff face. But gradually I relax into the powerlessness of the passenger, surrendering to Armando’s flying mastery, comewhat may.The Mosquito skews side to side disconcertingly, butArmando has it under control. He tells me later that once youmaster the art of surfing the air currents, it just becomes amatter of trimming the steering bar with small nudges. Just likesurfers can feel the movement and spirit of the living ocean, hesays, “in the Mosquito, you really feel the spirit of the sky.”We fly out over the ocean, where he points out a whale breaching and kite surfers racing along the shore. I don’t realizehow high we’ve risen until I see how tiny their fluttering airfoilslook below us. Although it’s barely past dawn, a strong head wind is already cranking against us. We seem to crawl along,with the groundspeed display on the little GPS unit barelyregistering 30 miles an hour.(With no wind, Armando tells me,the Mosquito will average around 75.)Beneath us, the farms of Mokulë‘ia roll by, and from thisvantage point I see hidden estates and secret ravines I never knew were there. We follow the artery of the highway up over O‘ahu’s central plateau, with the military bases and housingdevelopments forming circuit-board patterns below.Halfway across the island, Armando cuts east toward theKo‘olau mountain ridge. Soon the fingers of steep, folded rock sweep up toward us alarmingly. Ahead, a gap in the ridge-linescrapes the bottom of a roiling cloud bank, with the taller peaks on either side lost in mist. My teeth are chattering, and it’s only partly because of the biting cold wind at 4,000 feet.Armando aims to squeeze through the slim gap betweenrock and cloud. Too high, and we’ll be flying blind in theunpredictable cloud drafts. Too low, and, well …“Hang on,” he warns over the headset. “It’s going toget bumpy.”Understatement. As we approach the ridge, blasts of wind slam us around, and the Mosquito bucks and rolls as Armandosurfs the sky, grunting as he muscles the wing around. A wall of cloud streams up over the ridge and rolls abruptly down toward us like a breaking wave. We’re almost enveloped until Armando pulls a quick dive under it.Suddenly the ridge is maybe 100 feet below us, looking waytoo close for comfort. Just as quickly, it drops away on theother side, and we’re through. The expanse of O‘ahu’s Wind-ward side opens up ahead: rooftops, golf courses and the broad sweep of Käne‘ohe Bay dotted with ivory sandbanks.We head south, with the cold crosswind now driving usalong at a much faster clip. Almost before I realize it, we’reapproaching the island’s rocky southeast corner, and the air begins to warm as we descend. We cross out over the water next to the ashy cone of Koko Crater, and Armando drops theMosquito suddenly into a steep downward spiral.“It’s no good to fly low for a long a time in this wind,”he tosses back through the headset. “Better to just go for it!”For a moment, the arc of our turn sends us dead for thecrater slope, and I taste my heart in the back of my throat.Then, in an instant, we wheel around and plop sharply onto the broad lawn at Sandy Beach, a popular landing pad for thehang gliders and other sky junkies who ride the updraftsagainst the cliffs nearby.As we swoop down, a lone figure waves us in like a trafficcop. Armando rolls the Mosquito across the lawn to a bathroom blockhouse at the far end, its walls painted with murals of Hawaiian surf heroes.The traffic cop comes trotting up. He’s Eddie Tadao, aVietnam vet helicopter pilot who now spends his days flyingan assortment of kites on the breezy lawn at Sandy’s, decked out in an array of fanny packs, utility belts and a vest bejeweled with a multitude of colored carabiner clips. He’s the one-manair traffic tower of Sandy Beach, proudly calling the strip of grass “my little airport.” Eddie used to fly ultralights and paragliders himself, he tells us, until one day he came down

Photographer Sergio Goes (red flight suit) took advantage of the unique aerial perspectives to shoot the patterns andgeometries of Hawai‘i’s landscapes, often leaning precariously far out of the trike. “Hanging from wing in the trike, we arelike water sloshing in bucket,” Armando says, “and I am like a big hand holding bucket. My job is not to spill it.”