I Can Fly!
“What I like best about flying is the freedom it affords to navigate an ocean of air and see the Earth from a wider perspective. I never tire of the beauty of the Earth by day or the sky by night.”
—Chesley “Sully” Sullenbeger on National Aviation Day
Should I tell my parents?
I hadn’t bothered to tell my parents because I wasn't sure how they would feel. When I finally had the courage to reveal that I had bought an airplane and learned to fly, I was pleasantly surprised that they did not have heart attacks or even object to my new adventure. I'm sure my father had done more dangerous escapades at my age! In fact, my father was rather enthusiastic about the idea... And in retrospect this was not surprising because by the time my father was my age, he had built a roller coaster in his backyard and two racing cars from scratch.
Like most kids growing up during World War II, I was fascinated by all planes. My father's tales of seeing 1930’s stunt pilots perform dangerous aerobatics like flying upside down captured my imagination, too.
It all began in 1952, when I was a sophomore at Northwestern, a friend suggested we buy an airplane together. Since I had saved a little money from summer jobs, I decided to give flying a try. We scoured the ads looking for a plane and eventually found one at Palwaukee Airport, just northwest of Chicago. In those days Palwaukee was a small field that had no control tower, one dirt runway and a rather informal flying school. We found a three-passenger Stinson offered for sale at $650. Three-passenger? Only if they were midgets. It was actually a two-passenger plane with space behind the seats for a little luggage. The plane was 16 years old with a green fabric skin. The only instruments were an altimeter, a compass, and gauges that showed the RPMs, the oil pressure, and the engine temperature ─ no radio and no navigational equipment.
We were able to negotiate the price down to $500. Who could go wrong investing $250 in a real live airplane that was airworthy?
My friend and I paid the flight instructor $10 an hour for flying lessons. The first thing we were taught was how to prop the plane because it didn't have a starter. One person would sit in the cockpit to handle the controls while someone else would grab the propeller with both hands. The person outside would raise one foot in the air, then pull down on the propeller while swinging the raised foot back to create momentum. That would swing the prop person safely back from the propeller. On a cold day this might take six or more tries before the engine came to life.
Without navigational instruments, our cross-country flights were done using detailed maps that showed highways, railways, and rivers. Railways and rivers were the easiest to follow as highways could be confusing sometimes. By following railroads and rivers, I was able to successfully complete my solo cross-country flight to Indianapolis and get my pilot’s license. After that, I would take the plane up on weekends just for the joy of flying and to improve my piloting skills.
I had a long weekend in the spring of ‘53 so I decided to fly my new airplane to Kansas City to show it to my folks. Chicago to Kansas City is a little over 400 miles by air so, at a little over 100 miles an hour I could make it in just over four hours with one stop to refuel. The weather was good and the flight to Kansas City was uneventful except that I noticed that the engine was running a little hotter than usual. Stateline Airport was a grass strip just south of Kansas City and I found it easily.
The next morning, I took my father for a flight. We climbed to about 500 feet, but I could see that the temperature gauge was rising just about as fast as we were. It was obvious that doubling the payload of the plane was having a very negative effect on performance. Breaking out into a sweat, I was thinking about returning to the field as soon as possible, but my father was having the time of his life. Everything looks different from the air, and he was exclaiming how great old Charlie’s farm looked from up here and that he’d never realized that there was a lake over there. He was totally oblivious to our crisis. So, he was terribly disappointed when I told him we had to abort the flight after less than 15 minutes. We managed a safe landing. Then I had to decide what to do.
With important classes on Monday, I headed back to Chicago. Because the plane was losing oil, the airplane was overheating, and the oil pressure dropped. What should have been a one-stop flight turned into a three-stop flight and every stop took longer than usual as I had to add oil. Adding oil meant each time I stopped, I had to descend, get into a landing pattern, land, taxi to the service facilities, find someone who could sell the oil to me and someone to prop the plane to get me started again.
I hadn’t realized how much time those stops had consumed until the sun set well before I got to Chicago. Without any night landing experience, I still felt I had to press on. My one advantage was the crystal-clear evening. The bright lights of towns made them easy to spot, and I could see the aircraft beacons from a long way away.
I’d been sweating on the flight with my dad, but now I was wringing wet with perspiration and my heart was racing by the time I approached Palwaukee for that first night landing. I landed smoothly, and you never saw a more delighted guy tying a plane down.
A crack in the crankcase had caused the problem. We had it repaired and continued to fly the plane quite a bit on weekends.
During that year we owned the airplane, I had some touch-and-go moments mostly as a result of learning while doing. With only one runway and no control tower and no radio communication at our airport, I had to be very alert for other airplanes that might be trying to land.
Crosswind landing is always tricky even with radio contact. On my first crosswind landing, I had two options. I could approach the runway crabbing into the wind so I could line up with the runway and then straighten out just before landing. Or I could fly the wing low. To fly the wing low, I used my rudder to line my nose up with the runway, and ailerons to correct for left/right drift all the way from final approach to touchdown. I had to be very certain that the wing tip didn’t touch the ground. Essentially, I was slipping the plane through the crosswind in order to keep myself lined up with the runway. Touch down! I had just executed another landing,
I eventually accumulated 100 hundred hours in that little plane.
The following spring a windstorm hit Palwaukee where the plane was tied down and badly damaged the tail and some of the fabric. We sold the plane for $300 as we were getting close to graduation and didn’t have the money to repair it. Not bad for all the use we got out of it.
It was many years before I bought another airplane, but in the meantime, I found my flying experience very useful. I had continued to rent Cessna 150s and 172s, just enough to keep my proficiency up. Then I moved to Kansas City to work for Clipper. We had a big business selling saws and diamond blades to contractors who were doing new highway construction. The contractors used our equipment and blades to cut contraction joints in new concrete.
Many of these jobs were in remote areas and I found that if I rented a plane, I could visit them quickly. Sometimes I would land at a nearby airport, but I often landed right on new pavement not yet opened for traffic. In those days, it was not uncommon to land at a small field where there were no rental cars and have the field manager or one of the mechanics lend me his car for a couple of hours—no paperwork and no charge!
I gave up flying when we moved to Aspen in 1967. Mountain flying is a lot trickier than flatland flying and I had little need for an airplane in my real estate and property management business. Just flying back and forth to Denver was still exciting, as in those days Rocky Mountain Airways was flying Cessna 310s with a single pilot. Because I knew how to fly, I was always given the co-pilot’s seat and occasionally the pilot would let me take over the controls for part of the flight.
Aspen was a great place for glider flying and I took some lessons, but I was too busy working to become proficient.