My Worlds Collide

My little CherOHkee has been home ten days. And it's been real nice weather. I finally got around to taking it flying today. The weather is supposed to be rainy for the next 5 days. Wife and I had been talking about going to Georgetown, Del. all week. So when we took off today I started heading for Georgetown. She asked where I was going as I climbed out to the east. I said "oops" and turned around to head for Cambridge. I have an excuse for this kind of thing. I am a geezer. I have two blogs. This blog is just about Gen Av. The other blog is all the rest of my absent minded ravings. The blogs sometimes collide. As when I talked about the Livingston Taylor concert we saw.....and he is a Gen AV. pilot. Or when I was at a fly-in and wound up singing a Karaoke song. My occasional rants about religion have now ironically collided with this blog. And brought my crazy writing life full circle. The Horn Point fly in is one of the big aviation events of the year for me. Just yesterday I was working at Horn Point as a volunteer maintaining the field. The Horn Point- fly in is coming May 21st. Two months from now. The end of the world is scheduled for that day as well! No kidding. There is an official "end of the world" predicted for that day. The believers are "Family Radio", led by bible scholar Harold Camping. Thousands of people believe they will be raised into the heavens to be with Jesus and God. On the day that I plan on flying the CherOHkee the 15 NM over to Horn Point to hang out, look at some antiques, see old friends and have a hamburger. Talk about having different plans for a Saturday! Of course I might get rained out with Horn Point. And the "Rapture" might not come that day. But it's a new ball game for me because now I have an amusing thing to talk about as Horn Point approaches. I like fly-ins and I like religious "ironies". Today wife and I had the $50 hamburger at CGE. The restaurant was crazy crowded. We joined a stranger when we finally got a table. He was a great guy. We both have a son out west. We both have Pipers. I mentioned the $50 hamburger cliche. He said his meal was an $80 hamburger. I told him he must be pretty rich with that beautiful, bodacious, Malibu parked outside. He said "I have a Malibu, I used to be rich".

Bring it Home

My airplane came out of the shop the other day. So I had to go and pick it up. Wife could take me of course. And we could have a nice lunch too. But I wanted to go and make a few stops and take my time checking out the plane and paying the bill. And I didn't want wife to have to wait. She was busy anyway. So I took myself in the Subaru. And parked it to pick up in a day or two. It's kind of fun that way. We can still have that nice lunch maybe tomorrow. The CherOHkee had been there almost all winter. It got an annual. And it needed some engine work, a couple of cylinders pulled down, and it was poked and prodded by the mechanics. A couple repairs, a couple AD's. The cost was about twice that off a "normal" annual. But I never get a "normal" annual. Every year I think I have made the final big repair and she should be good to go for several years. But it's tough when the airplane is 42 years old. So you could say I've bought the airplane all over again. At least. Any light plane owner has more invested than he can get back out by selling the plane. But she sure ran well. I did a ridiculously complete preflight and run-up when I picked her up. It's getting easier and easier for me to forget things. Little things. Big things. So I wanted to keep track of the keys, the logbooks, the ships papers. The chocks, the control lock etc. And it was a fair weather Friday afternoon. A few planes were leaving and a few arriving and one in the pattern doing circuits. General Aviation is dying but at least it's still going on. I took my time and let an Arrow take the runway while I sat in the small run-up block by the highway. We just used hand signals like "go ahead" and thumbs up. Even though we both had radios. When I was warmed up and the pattern got quiet, I took off. I wanted to see the engine run smooth and a good static rpm. I held the brakes with full throttle and saw what I wanted. Took off to the west over the bay shoreline. I left in full throttle. 85 mph is best rate on the little CherOHkee. With flaps up. I kept full throttle to 2500 ft. I pitched it back to 80mph. It was cool outside and the airplane was well below gross. It yeilded me about 1000 fpm By the time I got settled into a nice little "run it hard" cruise. I found myself pointing the airplane at Cambridge instead of my place. I had considered Cambridge before as my strip was a little soft. But now I was going there because I didn't want my time with 009 to end in fifteen minutes. The restaurant was open. I sat where I could look at my plane through the large windows. I ate Chili and drank diet coke. I went back to the airplane and looked it over and checked the engine for leaks. All was fine. It would get dark soon. I took off and scooted over the Choptank and the Suicide Bridge. And the Veterans Cemetery. Landed west at my place and tried to skate pretty light over a couple of soft spots. I got a few splots of mud on my stabilator. Parked in front of the shed. Then I spent the next two hours clearing out an airplane shaped space to park in. It was fun actually. It was my own toys and junk that I was moving around. Except for a few things that belong to Grandaddy. I saw a thousand hangar projects that need doing. I got the plane tucked in and put to bed. I closed the hangar doors. It was nice to have the airplane home. Next mission. Have wife drive me back to where I left my car. We will do that tomorrow and eat on the island. GA Informal. :::::+:::::

Bartel Part 2

In the summer of '66 I had just turned 17. My senior year was coming in the fall. The most exciting thing in my life was that I had a drivers license. I had no car, and limited access to the family car. I rode a bicycle. I was a paperboy. I mowed lawns in the neighborhood. I hadn't ever been away from home for more than one week. I had never kissed a girl. Strangely, all I could think about was girls. During this mundane innocent summer I was to go from a student pilot with not one logged hour to a pilot with 40 hours and a federal Private Pilot's license. I was in the blazing 90 degree heat of South Carolina. Six teenagers in each hotel room. No girls. A blue surplus Air Force school bus to drive us to and from the hotel. A World War II aerodrome with it's classic triangular shape and obligatory clumps of sod growing up through the tarmac. I ate grits for the first time in my life. The sixty of us were dressed in fatigue uniforms with combat boots and silly hats. We would have looked like prisoners had we not had colorful patches and emblems and ranks and insignia. The civilian instructors took one look at us and changed the uniform: Lose the silly hat and baseball caps are optional. Lose the combat boots. Wear tennis shoes. (they were called sneakers). Lose the fatigue shirt(it was called a blouse). So our new uniform was a clean white T shirt, fatigue pants, and tennis shoes. We were there to fly, not drill. I knew no one there. Except Bartel. Bartel was the first kid launched. He was the first kid to solo. Every instructor took a turn flying with him. He was a legend by the third day. Due to alphabetical order, I could not room with Bartel. My five roomates were animals. Teenagers can be mean children. I was glad I was on a rollaway instead of one of the double beds. These guys were gross. But I learned a lot when they talked about girls. I was afraid I would be the last cadet to solo, but as usual, I was somewhere in the middle. As I have always been. I would see Bartel during the day at school. We would get sessions to study in the air conditioned trailer. This would be when I could talk to Bartel. It was like he was at a different flying encampment than I. I would ask about his five roommates. He would just say what fine gentlemen and pilots they were. That they would study together and write letters home and play chess. Bartel wasn't sweating in the heat. I was dying. Bartel also wasn't sweating the big graduation checkride. I was permanently nervous. And I did fear that my roommates would kill me for the fun of it some night. One day we were leaving the hotel on the Air Force school bus as usual. But Bartel, my seventeen year old classmate was driving the bus. I thought I must be dreaming. This is impossible. Cadets don't drive cadets in any vehicle! Against regulations! Lawsuits! Training requirements! Maybe I was just tired and nervous. I got out of my seat and walked up to the front of the bus. Maybe it was just an adult who looked like Bartel. After all, Bartel looks like and acts like an adult. But it was Bartel and I was saying how the heck do you get to drive the bus? But he told me we should talk about it later because I should be seated while the bus is in motion. Damn it Bartel! When I had my free study sessions in the air conditioned trailer I usually put my head on the desk to sleep. I was going through a growth spurt. I was five eleven going on six foot one. Bartel would study in the trailer. When I would look at what he was studying, it would be aerodynamics, or instrument flying. I was tired of the lunch sandwiches we were eating. White bread and peanut butter. Or white bread, peanut butter, and banana. I had never had that. I complained to Bartel about lunch. He said he'd been eating chicken salad mostly because he had access to the instructors cooler and also the cadets rations had some chicken and tuna which ran out fast, but his roommate was in charge of that. He told me the hotel gave him an apple and/or orange every day too. You just had to ask for it. I just said, "Damn it Bartel". I had learned to cuss. Also, I had started smoking. Actually I had been smoking since I was eight years old. But I just blew the smoke out without inhaling. But now I was inhaling. One cigarette a day with the five roommates. These guys were Neanderthals. Bartel was the first Cadet of the Encampment to take his checkride and be issued an FAA temporary Private Pilot Certificate. He didn't just bask in the glory and now goof off and drive the bus and go to town. He still had a week or more for the rest of us to get checkrides. He helped some cadets with their pre lesson reviews. But he started hanging out at the other end of the field where the gliders were. He was trying to get a ride in the tow plane or possibly a check out. But that wasn't going to fly, even for Bartel. But he got some access to money from home, which must have been tough as he is one of nine children and his parents had already paid his room and board for five weeks in Carolina. He started taking lessons in the two seat Schweitzer glider. There was a Cadet program going on for gliders. You could tell a glider Cadet by his scarf. A Cadet in the glider solo school might have a red scarf. A blue scarf would designate a glider student in the glider private certificate program. Graduate helpers might have a white scarf. We called them scarfs, actually they were bandannas. You couldn't wear a scarf in the heat. The heat that we suffered from was the same heat that was generating these huge invisible columns of air that started at the hot ground and slowly at first rose into the cooler air aloft. Thermals. That was all these glider kids talked about. In their kerchiefs. Thermals can be somewhat predictable and this area in South Carolina was known for its Thermals. Because a huge high pressure system would stabilize the air over the variably heated ground and create a cycling thermal machine until a new weather front would come and chase it all away. It is called the "Bermuda High". After it's source. Some of these glider kids were 15 years old. You only have to be 14 to solo a glider. As I got near my checkride I was only flying once a day. We would "rehearse" the checkride. So I would have time to hang out at the glider tents, and once in a while I would walk a wing, or go fetch a tow rope, or get the tow pilot a coke. Also some Maryland kids had shown up for glider school. And Bartel was there and he had a bandanna on. I had to ask him about that. It was green and white or something. He told me he was a special category. A Cadet graduate renter. A graduate renter? Damn it Bartel. When Bartel had his first solo in the glider I happened to be hanging out in my usual spot in the glider area. So we were watching because he was our powered school ace. So he gets towed up on his first solo. At about 400 feet the tow plane's engine revs, then sputters and quits. The prop stops cold. The tow pilot pulls his release to get rid of the glider and the rope. He turns a bit to stay over the field and gets the super cub down with a bounce and a good job, on another runway. Out of gas. Bartel found himself in the emergency for which he had just been practicing. 400 feet is enough altitude to turn the glider around and come in downwind. We all watched this and it started to look like Bartel was headed for us as he started getting set up and maybe overshooting a bit. So again I was in a dream. Was it in slow motion? Was I delerious from the heat? Cadets were running around pushing sailplanes further back toward the tents yelling things like "it's Bartel, he's downwind comin in" "He's gonna hit us" "he's gonna crash!" Bartel got lined up, dropped the rope like a pro and set the lumbering "222" down like a feather. He was mobbed like Lindburg and when I finally got to talk to him all I could say was "Damn it Bartel". My checkride came and I was so nervous I was afraid I wouldn't remember anything. And Ray Clark was the examiner. He ran the flight school. Everyone revered him. For some reason he liked me. It wasn't because I was any kind of ace like Bartel. But somewhere around day 10 of the school Ray Clark was flying over to Greer which was a big control tower field at Greenville SC. I was admiring his brand new Cherokee Six. This was before there were "Lances" and "Saratogas". Ray Clark asked if I wanted to go with him. I said yes and he stuck me in the left seat. This thing had radios and an autopilot and a controllable propeller. This was way better than eating dust with the glider kids, or sleeping in the trailer. I was Bartel for a day. But now it was time for Ray Clark to give me my checkride. It went well. He spent time giving me touch and goes and short and soft and go arounds. That was the stuff I loved, and I was OK with. Where I was weak was in navigation, chart pilotage, etc. As soon as I would leave the pattern I would be "almost lost". So I got my Temporary Airman Certificate. And I was not the last guy to get it. Now I had a few days free, and could hang out with the glider guys etc. Bartel had made arrangements with the school to rent one of the trainers and he wanted me to go flying with him but he wanted me to share in the rental. I was pretty much broke. He was taking this kid "Johnny Hutchins" who was about 9 years old. The kid was a local. He would hang out every day. Bartel put Johnny Hutchins in the right seat and me in the back. We took off and cruised around. Bartel wanted to show me this quarry and lake that he liked to fly over. We circled it for a while and then he buzzed it right on the deck. I was scared. Scared of crashing and scared of getting in trouble. But Bartel seemed calm enough. We landed and Bartel didn't rent the plane any more. And Johnny went home. And Bartel asked me if I thought he got too low over the quarry, and if I thought anyone would turn us in. I said "Damn it Bartel".

Bartel ... Part 1

As a young teen I had collected about five rides in airplanes. I was in Civil Air Patrol. So I was learning from little books called "aircraft in flight" and "Navigation and the Weather". Mentors had given me old Sectional Charts which I poured over as I plotted cross country flights. I read "I'll Take the High Road" and "Anyone Can Fly". I had stacks of outdated flying magazines that folks gave me. In the spring of 1965 when I was fifteen years old, I found out about a flying scholarship that was being offered to Cadets who could qualify. This would be for the following summer. 1966. So I started working toward that. Planning a year ahead. I soon found out that I had three big problems as an applicant. 1. I was too young by a few months. 2. I wouldn't have enough "stripes" in the CAP program. 3. Bartel: The shoe- in candidate for the one and only slot in the state of Maryland. My CAP local leader told me not to be discouraged. Since I would be seventeen before the flight school started, I was only too young for the arbitrary age limit to apply. Perhaps a waver. I could get the necessary stripes if we held meetings twice a week instead of once, to speed up the program. As for Bartel, he was still the likely choice. He was a straight A student. At a highly respected High School in Washington DC. I was a C student in public school. Bartel had soloed an airplane at Freeway. He was the right age. He was beyond the "stripes" stage too. A Cadet officer. So I plodded along and the extra meeting on every Saturday in the the summer of sixty five was a strain. I was delivering papers and mowing lawns and my old boyhood "summers" were gone forever. My Junior year happened and I got my drivers license. I struggled with Algebra I. I joined a folk singing group. And I never got to first base with a girl. I went to a special board of review at State Headquarters in Baltimore as the final step in application to the Flight Scholarship. There were two finalists. Myself and Bartel. And one slot for Maryland. The board had already reviewed our applications. We both had written test results from the FAA Private Pilot Written. You needed 70 to pass. My grade was 74. I had heard that Bartel's was in the nineties. We both had letters of recommendation from a clergyman. I had a nice cordial letter from our minister who knew I hadn't come to church in years. But Bartel was enrolled in a Seminary and had a letter from a Cardinal or something. We both had a letter from a school official. Bartel had a headmaster with a PhD. I was worried about this one. I went into the office of my high school one day and asked if I could get a recommendation letter from the principal. They said simply Mr. Smith does all the letters, we'll set up an appointment for you. I begged them to allow me to get the letter from the principal, Mr Chase. He had been at the Jr. High I had been to and when I went to high school Mr. Chase was moved up to principle. I had known him for five years and he would even remember me from the smaller school. And he was the principle. Not the VP. But no, I had been given an appointment during my gym class to see Mr. Smith. The problem was, I had just been in trouble with Mr. Smith. I was always a good kid too. But I had been in Mr. Smith's office not once, but twice, in the last two months. Once for sliding down the terrazzo hallway on one heel and one toe at running sped. I was quite good at this. I learned it from a classmate named Bob Petty. I had taps on my shoes because I was on a drill team in CAP. I don't know where Petty got his taps. The second offense was for fighting. I argued that we were off school grounds, which we were. But Mr. Smith said that we created a disturbance because instead of boarding the buses after school half of the school went to see the fight down the hill, and the buses left without them. Some of the kids with no ride home got into a few fights of their own. My fight was with my best friend at the time, so we both lost. But I looked a lot worse than he did. When I got the recommendation letter from Mr. Smith, it was sealed in an envelope. But I had to open it because It might have been bad. Somehow I got it open and it was a normal recommendation. We both had letters from a "Civic Leader". I don't know where Bartel got his. I was worried about mine though. Where would it come from? I had on my paper route a nice enclave of upscale houses at the top of our suburban neighborhood. We lived in a much lesser house at the bottom of what my father called "Mortgage Hill". On my paper route in one of those nice houses lived a US Congressman. Carlton Sickles. I even had mowed his lawn. He had a lawn service but he would use me if he needed a touch up for a party or something. He had payed and tipped me so well, I hated to ask for the letter, but I did. It became the jewel of my application package. The board interview went well. I was 16 years old. I knew little about eye contact, and polite conversation. But I had been trained in military courtesy. I got to see Bartel, my rival, for the first time. He was one sharp Cadet. And he smiled at me, but we were kept apart. Sometime after the boards, the results were in. The reason we had to wait a few weeks longer for the official results was because Maryland had lobbied National Headquarters for a second slot due to a tie between two qualified candidates. National came up with another slot for Maryland. So on July 16th, 1966, one week after my seventeenth birthday, Bartel and I boarded an Air Force Transport at Friendship Airport in Baltimore. The airplane hauled us all over the eastern middle of the US. Picking up Cadets. When we landed finally at our destination, the old World War II airport in Chester, South Carolina, we were exhausted. But I was happy because I was going to flight school. And I didn't get seasick/airsick riding in that old transport for seven hours. And I had a brand new best friend. ..... Bartel.

Years Ten thru Fifteen

I'd like to try to construct a list of the people who started me in aviation. A chronological list. It would have to start with my father. Sometimes he would talk about airplanes and flying them. Second would be my older brother who took lessons at Freeway. This was a full introduction to me. He was 16, I was 12. It was very cool that we could go out to Freeway by ourselves in the car. We had recently moved from New Jersey where seventeen was the driving age. My brother driving at sixteen had made our adjustment to our new home in Maryland, and leaving all of our friends and family behind, much more bearable. I promptly forgot all my friends in "The Caldwells" except for the two girls I was in love with. Anyway, we would drive to Freeway in the family 1961 Mercury "Comet". My brother would take his lesson. Sixteen dollars an hour "dual" in the Piper Colt. While he took his lesson I would walk all over the airport and look at every single plane. Every time we went. Also there were airport bums. There was a lean- to shed on the runway side of the hangar where the guys would just sit for hours. They all had jobs and families they weren't attending to. So this hangar crowd really represents collectively my third "mentor" on the chronological list. Bernie, Stan, Tony, Vick, Ed, Bob S., Timmy, et al. Fourth would be Bill Millican from junior high. He was in the CAP Cadets, which I wanted to join. He had had a few rides in the CAP PA-18 Cub. He knew everything. He told me he was going to "solo" soon. But we both knew at thirteen, he wasn't old enough. We would sit at our desks and use rulers for "sticks". And our feet were on imaginary rudders. He taught me a lot that way, I think. Little did I know , "chair flying" would be something I would do a lot of in order to prepare for "check rides" in my airline career. Then there were the pilots of the four or five airplane rides I had before I took my first logged lesson. The first ride was in the PA-18. Then, a Luscombe, then an Air Force C-119 Flying Boxcar, then a Beech T-34, then a Mooney. This is about the end of my pre- lessons mentor list, except for one. The one who inspired me before I ever met him. The one who is the subject of my next blog post. Bartel.