Piper takeoff

Growth over comfort – true for airplanes and kids

Growth over comfort. I’m not sure when I learned that phrase or where I heard it, but it completely sums up my experiences of becoming a pilot. I certainly was not comfortable the first time that small plane rose off the runway. I was not comfortable the first time I heard that stall horn blare, and I certainly was not comfortable the first time I turned final and my instructor said, “Your airplane.”
Crow FBO ramp

Compound emergency – a line boy learns a lesson

I thought for a spell, (it’s always bad when a pilot starts thinking) and decided even though I had been taught never to leave a running airplane unmanned, it would be alright this time because, heck, I was an expert! Besides, I was in a hurry, and the parking brake would hold it.
De Havilland Beaver on floats

Fear the reader – my first charter seaplane flight

The day was June 8, 2018. After a long and laborious process to get my FAA Part 135 Air Taxi Certificate, I had finally scheduled my first revenue-generating charter flight in my 1959 de Havilland Beaver on amphibious floats. This 200-mile round trip flight was planned from Gig Harbor’s Tacoma Narrows Airport to Roche Harbor Airport in the San Juan Islands.
First solo shirt tail

Aviation addiction syndrome – it could happen to you

Don’t look now, but there might be a pilot inside you trying to get out. Just ignore the voice in your head telling you not to chase your dream. That’s what I did.
BRS handle

For want of a nail…

I got the news the hard, modern way: skimming local news on my smartphone, I cried out to my wife, “Don and Nancy [names changed for privacy] were killed in an airplane crash!” I could think of little else for hours afterward. Why? Did they run out of fuel? Throw a prop blade? Hit geese?
4R9

The emergency that wasn’t

The sun was low on the horizon as we got to the plane, and the idea of a takeoff over the water after sundown was low on my list of fun things to do with a tired/hungry kid in the right seat. Everything was normal until I got to the oil.
172RG on runway gear up

My intentional gear-up landing

I needed to get to work soon. I glanced at my phone to check the time, just as I saw Tex put the gear handle down. I heard the familiar whir of the hydraulic gear pump, but I felt an abnormal shimmy in the airframe. I knew then that we had a problem, and I dropped my phone back into my shirt pocket.
OSH18

Adventure at AirVenture – the experience of flying to Oshkosh

For those who have never done this, the rules are really simple but prescriptive. You are to approach Ripon and find another plane to follow, 1/2 mile in trail, at 1800 feet and 90 knots. Here is what the NOTAM does not say: NOT 78 knots, NOT 2000 feet, NOT 110 knots, and NOT direct from Ripon to Fisk.
Piper Seneca

A multi-engine rating in a weekend

I recently added a multi-engine rating to my commercial certificate and it was one of the most fascinating experiences of my 30+ year flying career. Obtaining the rating was a bucket list thing. In light of the time available to me for flying, I chose to do an accelerated program held over a weekend to minimize the impact on my work schedule.
DC-4

A long and noisy flight during the “good old days” of airline travel

My idea of air travel was a sexy TWA Constellation or the mighty Pan Am Stratocruiser, not some clunky old DC-4. The Brits were already flying the first jet airliner, the Comet, and Boeing engineers were hard at work on the Dash-80, code name for the Comet’s competitor, the 707. But my father insisted on obscurity…
Miriam Seymour

Guy garbage: a woman learns to fly in the 1950s

“Girls can’t fly airplanes,” was verbal garbage the guys kept tossing at me when I announced that I intended to learn to fly. It was the 1950s, and that was a common litany despite what women pilots had accomplished during World War II.
Luscombe

My greatest misadventure

My dad inspired me to start my flight lessons, and he always told me a pilot must be alert for the signs. And as I asked him, “How do I know if something is a sign?” He answered, “Sometimes we just realize we were warned after we get into and out of trouble.”
Columbia River

The incident that caused me to walk away from flying for two years

For the first time, I was truly concerned about my safety, and that of my son, in an airplane. How had I let myself get in this situation? What are my options? Will I become a statistic? Looking down at the terrain below me, I know there are no “good” places to set an airplane down that has just run out of fuel.

Bucket list flight to the Wright Brothers Memorial – check!

It was a trip that I’ve thought about making for the past 18 years. It was a place I often dreamed of flying into as I planned my next $100 hamburger, but thought, I just don't have the time this week, I’ll soon get out there. On January 26, 2018, that trip became a reality.
King Air 350

5 events that shaped my flying life

I learned to fly in a Piper Colt at tiny Concord Airpark east of Cleveland. It was nearly 50 years ago and in the more than 10,000 hours of flying all types of general aviation airplanes since these are the events that did much to shape my life in the air.
California coast

Plan to fly, fly the plan

How could it have been seven years since my last time behind the controls of an airplane? I knew I had to get back in the cockpit but I was unsure of how to kick start my training. Just as planning for an intricate cross country flight can be broken down into small legs, I developed an easy and realistic plan to help take the pressure off of myself.
Citation X

Congratulations, you’re a captain now

I’ve always wanted this: to command a jet, to be the captain. My copilot, who was twice my age, had flown F-4s in Vietnam and did 30 years at the airlines, looked at me and said, “So, what do you want to do?” I felt small. I had passengers in the back and a jet I barely understood, and I was trying to figure out what to tell ATC.

My first solo IFR cross-country

My wife and I were planning a long cross-country to the Outer Banks of North Carolina to attend my niece's wedding on the 18th. Without the IFR ticket, we would have been driving, so there was some pressure to pass the checkride on the 14th. For this trip, I reserved my club's Cessna 172RG for the long weekend and we departed on the morning of the 17th.
F-4 Phantom

Delivering F-4s to Iran

Delivery crews for Phantoms going to overseas locations were drawn from USAF Phantom units, and I was one of those on several deliveries, including one to the German Air Force, one to our unit in Soesterburg, Netherlands, and one to the Imperial Iranian Air Force. It was the delivery to Iran that, as Ollie North says, is “a story that deserves to be told.”
Clouds in mountains

An aeronautical decision that changed my life

Bad weather for the weekend was expected, and the orders were: fly the Maule tomorrow to this airstrip, take a car to where the radio is, pick the radio up. By the time the chief pilot adjourned the meeting, it was pouring. I thought he was going to mention the weather, but no, he had made arrangements for the Maule to be free from work until Monday, and the plan was in motion.