Martha Lunken

Every spring the Greater Cincinnati Airmen’s Club held a spot landing contest at Montgomery County (now Dayton Wright Brothers) Airport in Southern Ohio. It’s a non-towered field about 30 minutes north of Cincinnati with a long paved runway pointing southwest into the prevailing wind. I’m sure some wise soul realized that challenging rusty, winter-weary aviators […]

In 1964, the first year I was eligible to vote, Barry Goldwater was my man and, besides, everybody in conservative, Republican, southern Ohio knew he was a shoo-in. Then Jerry Swart came up with a trip to Antigua in the British West Indies over election week and invited me to play copilot in the Beech […]

I soloed Andrew Loewenstein last week. He’s a good-looking kid with black curly hair, the 16-year-old son of a corporate pilot friend. Drew had only three hours of “dual received” in his logbook but that doesn’t reflect years of flying little airplanes with his dad. So I sat in the grass while he took a […]

As I was hefting two humongous boxes of maintenance records into the 180, I found myself thinking about the draconian FAA rules for operating a DC-3, the outta-sight fuel prices, the cost of round engines, spare parts, insurance, a hangar and maintenance. And I said to myself, out loud, “Martha, do we really want to […]

That year winter arrived on the heels of a cold front that marked the end of an interminably long and hot Ohio Valley summer, one that lasted nearly to Thanksgiving. Arriving at the ‘drome for a flight check I got a brutal reminder that airports are the coldest places on the planet. Back to the […]

Every once in a while life intrudes on this love affair I have with airplanes, and I feel like that bewildered soldier at Little Big Horn: “Mr. Custer, what are we doing here?” How often did I gaze out the window of some FAA office (when they were still on airports), angry, frustrated or scared […]

I Shivered a little that September morning at Nashua Airport, on a ladder with my finger in the left tank of the Cessna 180 taildragger. Good, the 100LL was puddling over the flaps. Topping these tanks was kind of funky because the airplane had rubber bladders and stiffly hinged flappers under the caps … new […]

Illustrated by Chris Gall It was the summer of 1989, and the Midwest was sweating through an endless stretch of hot and humid days, cloudless but wrapped in a thick layer of haze. Weather forecasts were so boringly predictable that calling for a VFR briefing was pointless; the vis would come up to three miles […]

A full page ad in the morning paper invited readers to a showing and reception for one of the new small jets (VLJs) at Million Air Cincinnati on the following Tuesday evening. It sounded like fun so I called the 800 number for an invitation. The young salesman was cordial but seemed intent on establishing […]