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Flying
This thread cranked me up and this will be pretty long. Hope I don't bore anyone.
I solo'd in '61 in a 7AC Champ. Then, over the years owned: 7CCM 90hp Champ, 11AC 65hp Chief, 11BC 90hp Chief/on floats, 108-3 Stinson/190hp/controllable prop, Cessna 170B w/stol, 2 - Cessna 180's..1 on floats/wheelskiis, Bowers Flybaby, Pitts S1S, 2 - Citabrias..1 7ECA & 1 7GCBC w/CS prop and a Decathalon 8KCAB/180hp.
I flew for the Iditarod dog race 5 years in my C170B & C180's. The dogs smelled up the interiors so bad that I finally quit volunteering (I told them to gunnysack the dogs..no luck). This was as a private pilot. I had 2500hrs by then.
In 1985 I got an interest free student loan from the State of Alaska for higher education and got my Commercial, Multi-engine, CFI, CFII & MEI. I instructed & flew air taxi part time for 5 years after work, qualifing for a 50% forgiveness for the student loan...no longer available.
Meantime, I was heavy into aerobatics and was doing airshows around Alaska and BEING PAID!! for having fun.
After an airshow just after I retired from APD I was hired to ferry aircraft for aircraft dealers.
I moved various airplanes (some were scarey!)from here to California and around most of the western states. $100/day plus expenses. What a deal! Then...my wife informed me that I had just missed our anniversary and that I had better get my butt back home...or ELSE..and..get a real job. (I thought I had one). But, when the dealer in San Jose wanted me to ferry a C310 to New Zealand..I figured that she was right, so I ferry'd a C206 back to Alaska from Denver after ferrying a Piper Arrow From San Jose to Denver (where I picked up the nickname "Wildman" (interesting story).
When I got back I took possession of my brand new 1990 Mustang 5.0 convertible and thought I'd spend an unusally warm summer top down..forget that. I got a call from an air taxi operator who had just lost a pilot (quit) and needed one right now. He heard from those dealers I'd flown for that I was a "hot stick" 206 driver, just what he needed. I interviewed, was hired, and the rest is history. It did pay well..which made the wife happy. AND..doing all of this commercially allowed me to write off the student loan on the Federal Tax. During that time I flew C172, C206, C207, PA-18, C172RG and a Beech Travelaire air taxi. Did a stint as a co-pilot on a Shorts Skyvan (how do you spell Skyvan??...L.A.B.O.R.).
So...here I am in 2004, with about 8500hrs, Still doing BFR's, tail dragger ck/outs, basic aerobatics and, recently, a new primary student, who finished his Private and is now flying skiis/wheels in his dad's PA-18.
The only accident in my career that I had was in a PA-18. I was in the back seat doing a BFR in a frined's airplane. On takeoff at around 4-500' the engine puked. Interestingly, the front seat guy thought I had pulled it and I thought he had. That issue sorted out rather quickly and I yelled "I got it". I tried to turn back but it became obvious that we couldn't make the field. All the while I was yelling "keep the nose down and don't stall". At about the 180 degree point I leveled the wings and set up for a "landing" in the trees, which looked to be 20' or so. All the while, the closer we got to the ground, the front seater kept pulling harder & harder on the stick, even as I continued to yell at him to "keep the airspeed up" (I never pushed a stick harder).
Well, I called for full flaps and we went into the trees and then hit the ground..hard. The trees were more like 70'. Engine ripped off, all the windows gone, right wing ripped back at a 30 degree angle & fuel pouring out of the right wing next to the breaker panel. I hurt like h..l!! Then I saw the fuel.
I was out of that airplane and around to the left wing while the front seater was still messing around. He was O.K. and we both survived. My L4/L5 was crunched and needed a fusion but everything is fine.
What's interesting is the tendency to pull back on the stick as the ground gets closer when this happens. This is normal..stay away from the ground. The only remedy for this is TRAINING!! Train like your life depends on it...it probably does.
That's the end to this little short story. Hope no one is offended by my being too long winded.
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Great flying stories!
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Wildman, I see each of the paragraphs above turned into a chapter in a book. Sounds interesting.
Dave
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Shortmagnum...actually, My wife & I have discussed writing a book. We didn't have any children so devoted our lives to adventure. I really believe that if I devoted myself to chronicling our exploits it would make an interesting read. And..those paragraphs tended to go along the lines of our history. I just typed away as I thought back...And..I'm no Earnest K. Gann. (High & the Mighty..Fate is the Hunter), though, I did meet him once..at a Q.B.(Quiet Birdmen) meeting in Seattle.
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Shortmagnum...actually, My wife & I have discussed writing a book. We didn't have any children so devoted our lives to adventure. I really believe that if I devoted myself to chronicling our exploits it would make an interesting read. And..those paragraphs tended to go along the lines of our history. I just typed away as I thought back...And..I'm no Earnest K. Gann. (High & the Mighty..Fate is the Hunter), though, I did meet him once..at a Q.B.(Quiet Birdmen) meeting in Seattle.
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Wildman, I think there are lots of guys like me who at one time were "in to" flying in one way or another but for whatever reason never continued. If we can't experience it firsthand we can at least feel it through guys who have.
Why don't you just start by making an outline of various experiences and then start to fill in the details. Take each story separately and you won't have to worry about the whole thing at once. I have not done any popular writing but I have written a fair number of scientific papers and I would think that some of the process should be similar. I can't spell and my grammar is straight out of the back woods so I really have to depend on others to give me feedback.
Unlike my writing, however, you would have to be interesting. 
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I think both of you should write that book. My wife started writing children's books several years ago from ideas she been thinking about for over 20 years. It's a good and satisfying thing to do. It also hard work and takes a lot of time.
A few years before you soled I spend an evening with family. My father flew commercially and a fellow pilot's brother was visiting. He was a senior biologist for the Alaska government. I don't remember how senior or the exact agency. It was an evening of fascinating stories for me in my late teens. Many of the stories were about flying and if your experiences were anywhere similar it would make a fascinating book. The main thing about writing is that it's good to have a story you really really want to tell, and that's a large part of the satisfaction as well.
I think I also soled in '61 in a Luscombe 8E. I joined the AF before completing my license and ironically have been only a passenger ever since.
Despite the satisfaction of writing, getting a publisher interested is like winning a lottery. Actually selling books is mostly about small margins and mass distribution. Large publishers have large distribution. 'Do-it-yourself' publishing or 'vanity' publishing houses don't and the efforts usually come nowhere near to making back costs. But profit really isn't the point.
My wife self-published her books and by controlling production costs it has kept the costs down to what could be called recreation. She's also managed to tell her stories to hundreds of people beyond family and friends.
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Wildman: Please put me on the list for a copy of that book when you're done!!
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Thanks for the encouragement, guys. My wife of almost 40 years was scared to death of flying early on...after she saw a wing uncovered (that's ALL there is to one!!??) Then, on the way back from the "south 48" over Teslin Lake in the Yukon, and after battling headwinds and moderate turbulence for almost 8 hours and listening to the wife being terrorized by the "bumps", she lost it and began ranting about not wanting to die in the water.
I lost it and reached over and opened her door and told her that that was just about enough for one day and to get out. She promised to be good and would take the bus from Whitehorse. Well, she ended up flying all the way back with me...under control.
THEN...she learned to fly! Now she has a commercial & instrument rating and has even learned basic aerobatics. A little knowledge hurts and then helps.
She could really help and add to the book. I don't know if she would want the part about her running her Citabria into the woods on a sandbar and having it chainsawed out, in the book...but that's just another story.
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Wildman
Now there is another great story!!
Do it!!
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04-07-2004, 03:40 
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