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I got my pilot’s license in 1984, but it was another five years before I became a pilot. Even then, my education had only just begun. Someone said: “If we are lucky, we will encounter at least one person whose life elevates and inspires our own.” I’ve been a lucky man, indeed.
Beginning almost forty years ago, I spent time in the cockpit with a series of pilots whose influence I have only recently started to appreciate. These men and women taught me the art and science of flying. Gray-haired and bifocaled, most had come of age in the forties and served in our country’s Armed Forces during those desperate times. Their generation is rapidly disappearing from the scene. Soon, they will become only memories for pilots like me who were old enough to cross paths with them in their twilight years. This essay is a belated tribute to them. They were, to borrow a term from Eugene Sledge, of the Old Breed.
Beginning almost forty years ago, I spent time in the cockpit with a series of pilots whose influence I have only recently started to appreciate.
I began working on my Commercial license at Armel Aviation basecd at Dulles International Airport (IAD). Diane Cole, the president of Armel, arranged to have a former Israeli Air Force pilot as my instructor. We met at Dulles in Signature’s lounge. I was looking for a tall, robust, eagle-eyed fighter jock. I was beginning to think he hadn’t shown up when we spotted each other.
Itzhak Jacoby, who had been shot down twenty years earlier on the first day of the 1967 Arab-Israeli war while flying a French Vautour fighter-bomber, was a professor of biostatistics and public health at the Uniformed Services University of the Health Sciences in Bethesda, Maryland. He was about five-and-a-half feet tall, with a pronounced paunch and small, delicate hands. A pair of black, horned-rim spectacles squatted low on a fine Roman nose, and thick, black, wavy hair coalesced with a neatly trimmed salt and pepper beard framing his face. A slight Israeli accent gave his deliberately spoken words a certain dignity.
Jacoby was the opposite of Charlie (see Why’d You Do That?)—short, squat, low-key, and soft-spoken. He had a knack for explaining and demonstrating commercial maneuvers. After a few flights in the C-172, we transitioned to the Armel’s Piper Arrow. And for the first time, I used a headset and, another technological marvel, a Velcro-mounted push-to-talk switch on the yoke. Amazing stuff back then, I thought. I haven’t picked up a handheld mike since.
Jacoby was affable, available, and accommodating. Weekday lessons that summer began after work, around 18:00 hours. We’d depart Dulles and head over to the practice area near Frederick, Maryland (FDK). There, we’d practice chandelles, lazy eights, turns-around-a-point, turns-about-a-point, and spiral down to a landing. We often cruised back to IAD in the twilight haze, asking for a “practice” ILS approach to get back in. After each lesson, we’d schedule the next. Jacoby would utter the two-word phrase that prefaced every future liaison: “Let’s coordinate.” I left the flying club and Dulles for Montgomery County Airpark (GAI) around this time. The flying club had served its purpose; it was time to move on.
GAI was a general aviation airport, was more convenient, and had more aircraft, including a Seminole that I used for my multi-engine rating. That November, I passed my commercial checkrides. Annabelle Fera, my commercial DPE, had conducted checkrides from Private to ATP for over 35 years before retiring in the ’90s. She reminded me a lot of Ms. Benn. She wasn’t out to fail you. You were okay if you flubbed a maneuver as long as you recognized, admitted, and corrected your mistake. About the same time that I earned my commercial and multiengine ratings from Annabelle, I began to think about purchasing an airplane. That spring, I started looking, and Itzhak, the consummate networker, had heard of an available plane.
Max Karant was selling his 1965 Piper Twin Comanche (PA30). His PA-30, also known as a Twinkie, had just come out of an extensive factory annual inspection. And Karant was asking only $30,000 for the airplane. This seemed like a good deal, so I called Mr. Karant and arranged to meet him at FDK to look at N13-Kilo.
Karant’s 1965 Piper Twin Comanche (PA30), also known as a Twinkie.
He was waiting for me at his hangar when I drove up. He looked about eighty years old, with a bulbous boxer’s nose upon which rested a pair of thick, black horn-rimmed glasses right out of the 1950s. He appeared to be, as someone once described him, to be coiled up in the pissed-off position.
After introductions, Max slid the hangar doors open. The PA-30, introduced in 1963, was a beautiful light twin with long, flowing, graceful lines that made it so appealing in its day. N13-Kilo was a little worn and a bit long in the tooth, but there was nothing that a good paint job couldn’t fix. Inside the cockpit, a jumble of steam gauges and a mix of King and Narco radios were splattered across the panel. A 3M Stormscope had somehow been shoehorned in, and a Brittain B4 autopilot replaced the factory original. Max was especially proud of his KNS80 RNAV. Best of all, it had a relief tube connected to a Venturi on the plane’s belly.
I was sold. Unbeknownst to me, Max Karant was a celebrity in general aviation circles. Jacoby filled me in. Starting as an editor for Flying magazine in the 1940s, Max went on to become one of the founders of the Aircraft Owners and Pilots Association (AOPA). Early in his career, he had headed the FAA off at the pass when they tried to gobble up airspace and hamstring general aviation. He provided hours of congressional testimony in this effort, and it paid off with the freedoms we enjoy in GA today.
We agreed to meet that Saturday so I could give him a deposit while I scrambled for a loan. I called him a few days later to set up a time when I got some bad news—another pilot interested in N13-Kilo was flying up from Raleigh that Saturday. The Twinkie, so tantalizingly close, was now drifting away. But providence intervened; a late March snowstorm rolled in early Saturday morning, socking in the Southeast and grounding the Carolina pilot.
I met Max that morning in the little restaurant on FDK’s field. Jacoby joined us, and the three of us sat at a table in front of the restaurant’s picture glass window as the snowflakes rushed down, blanketing the field in a quiet, white quilt. Coffee was served and kept coming for the next few hours. It became apparent that Max was checking me out—I would have to prove worthy of N13-Kilo.
I thought he might be leery of selling his airplane to someone with only ten hours of multiengine time, so I’d asked Itzhak to come along to assure him I’d be appropriately trained. After a while, Max agreed to the sale. With business out of the way, he loosened up and bit and began to tell us a few of his aviation exploits.
Max had crossed the Atlantic five times in general aviation aircraft, including one time in an Apache—a fat, slow, ugly, and underpowered predecessor of Piper’s “Indians” series of aircraft. Max was in a rare club after that feat. In the early sixties, he ferried a Tripacer to Colombia. Running into a torrential rainstorm over Panama, he landed on an abandoned, overgrown jungle airfield to wait out the storm. After shutting down, a seven-foot tall, loincloth-clad native wielding a machete confronted Max before he had time to open the Tripacer’s door. I refer you to Max’s book, My Flights and Fights, for the remainder of the story.
My favorite tale was Max’s close encounter with icing over West Virginia in the early seventies. Unable to maintain level flight, Max declared an emergency and received vectors to a nearby airport. Descending through the clouds, his windscreen iced over, he broke out just in time to make the runway. After pulling off the runway and taking a brief moment to thank the Almighty, Max radioed the tower and said, “Cocktails, anyone? I brought the ice.”
Later, I read those stories and more in Max’s book, but to hear him tell them in person was captivating. Itzhak departed after a while, sensing his presence was no longer needed, leaving Max and me to finish our business. We sat there a little longer. He gave me a few tips on flying the Twinkie and some sage advice about flying and life in general. Eventually, the small talk faded, and after a long pause, I looked him in the eye and said, “I’ll take good care of N13-Kilo, Max.”
I handed him a check, and we called it a day. I paid the tab and stepped outside with Max; the snow had turned into a rainy drizzle. I walked with him to his car, and as we shook hands, I spotted a tear in his eye. I never asked Max why he was letting his beloved N13-Kilo go. I assumed he might have lost his medical or his insurance. Or maybe he just knew it was time. The day will come when we all will make our final landing, chock the wheels, and walk away.
After the sale, I occasionally heard from Max asking if everything was okay with N13-Kilo. He must have missed flying terribly. Itzhak and I talked about taking him up, but we couldn’t seem to find the time.
Finally, almost seven years after I’d last seen Max, I made a date with him to go flying. I picked him up at AOPA’s headquarters ramp at FDK. N13-Kilo still bore his name below the pilot’s side window. We embarked to the south through the VFR corridor toward Washington National Airport. I made a low pass over Runway 36 before turning east, crossing KARANT intersection as we headed out over the bay and the eastern shore. After crossing over to the Atlantic, I reversed course and headed due west. I unlatched the vent window next to me, and on the 16th of March, 1997, “Max left N13-Kilo for the final time.” Max had “gone west” a month before in February, and in keeping with Max’s wishes, I scattered his ashes from N13-Kilo over the Atlantic.
Still, Max never really left N13-Kilo. Years after I bought her, a controller or pilot would query me on the radio, asking, “Is that you, Max?” I’d respond that no, it wasn’t Max. I could sense the disappointment in their replies. Max had touched many people in his life. His memory still lingers in the dwindling number of gray-haired pilots flying today. I will never forget that snowy March day I spent with Max thirty-four years ago. During the hours spent with him that morning, drinking cup after cup of coffee, I learned why it is we pilots take to the sky.
- Flying with the Old Breed—Max Karant’s Twin Comanche - December 2, 2024
- Flying with the Old Breed—Why’d You Do That? - October 30, 2024
Hey Lee, thanks for the great story! I just bought the book!
Glad you enjoyed it.
You are a fine writer brother. I remember going to the airport here in Charlotte and sitting in your airplane. As Abigail
would say “Great Re-memories”.
Excellent article Lee. We have these early GA pilots to thank for the incredible freedom we have to fly in this country. It’s the envy of the world.
Wonderful story!
Wonderful tribute, thanks for writing.
Enjoyed this writing! Well done! It’s good to learn more of those that paved the way for the rest of us GA pilots! Rest in peace, Max!
Beautiful!