The Way We Were Wednesday

This is a modern picture, taken at Payne Field last month, but this is the era of airplane I grew up around.  My father owned a couple of planes in the mid 60's, but for the most part he rented.  There is an old saying, if it floats, flies or fornicates it is better to rent than own.  

When I was growing up the local airport operator, was also dealer for three of four airplane manufacturers.  The rental fleet was often nearly new.  There was a simple formula for figuring out the hourly rent, if the plane sold for $25,000, they would rent it for $25 an hour.  That included fuel, and they are not very fuel efficient.  

I remember one day, a new really nice plane had been added to the fleet.  It was sleek and fast, and dad looked forward to flying it.  For the insurance to cover it, he had to go out with a flight instructor for an hour to confirm that he knew how to fly it.  It had retractable landing gear.  On the insurance companies check list, was demonstrating how to put the landing gear down if the power system failed.  I was in the back seat, watching the clouds float by as my father and the flight instructor tried to do this.  Neither one of them could figure out how to do it, they couldn't find the crank for the manual system.  The flight instructor had me dig out the owners manual, so he could look up how to do it.  I found it funny, maybe why almost nothing in flying bothers me.  

Was it funny that the flight instructor didn't know how to do what he was teaching someone else to do?