Martha Lunken

When a private-pilot applicant around here can’t scare up another examiner and is desperate enough to call me for a practical test, I tell him (for me, that means male, female or unknown) to plan a flight any place he wants to go … well, someplace that’s at least a couple of hundred miles away. […]

Like all born-again aviators, I consider low flying (“flat-hatting,” “dusting off,” “buzzing”) illegal, immoral, immature and possibly fattening, but, gee whiz, it’s still kind of sad that creative contour flying has gone the way of venturi tubes and ashtrays in the instrument panel. Maybe the daredevils who didn’t prang themselves all went west. Or maybe […]

It’s an odd name, “Silent Birdpersons” or “Flying Burritos” or “Kwiet Kestrels.” Not just right, but close. It’s possible you’ve heard of, maybe even belong to, this quasi-venerable and intergalactic order of aviators — male aviators. If not, it’s something like the Flying Knights of Columbus or the Order of Masonic Boom(ers). Except that the […]

With everybody enamored of machines that aviate without the interference of humans, “Unmanned Air Vehicles” are currently a hot topic. Like that Airbus with a cabin full of passengers bound for Minneapolis that flew itself so well it just kept going … 150 miles beyond Minneapolis. See, I just can’t buy that story about two […]

The wag who said he was “sure there was money in aviation because he put it there” might have been Ebby Lunken, who saw a sizable chunk of cash disappear into his beloved Midwest Airways. It was a grand idea and would have succeeded if the income from ticket sales had even approached the outgo […]

While I scribble this on a grocery sack from the back seat of a 172 and gaze at the lush, green ridges and valleys south of London, Kentucky, I’m thinking these hills and “hollers” probably look the same as when Daniel Boone and the settlers came through the Cumberland Gap just east of here. Even […]

A big chunk of my first 6,000 hours was spent instructing … possibly 5,000 hours too many. Yeah, it takes patience, but it’s fun and spiced with occasional adrenaline moments, like when somebody is trying to kill you. It’s also a little like logging one hour 6,000 times. When I found myself nodding off on […]

One evening in the late ’60s, probably after a few “ginskies” in the Sky Galley bar, Ebby and Walter Rye decided to buy a curious little antique airplane I’d seen advertised in the yellow rag (Trade-A-Plane) that arrived that day. I think they called the seller from the phone in the bar and closed the […]

My 1956 Cessna 180, 72B, “wintered” in Piqua, Ohio, while Mark Runge worked his magic on the annual plus some spa treatments and minor cosmetic surgery (we old girls need all the help we can get). I was in no great hurry to get the airplane back since the January weather was dreadful and then […]

It was late March, when Midwestern flatlanders flying over the Appalachians to Florida for spring breaks or a week at Sun ‘n Fun have so often found that Old Man Winter is still very much around. A kind of permanent “front” that hangs around London, Kentucky, especially after a cold frontal passage, has scared the […]