John Mugavin is made of rare stuff. This stocky, hugely talented, successful and gutsy guy is also as friendly and “old shoe” as they come. Mugavin is a familiar name around here for both the primo auto-body shop he owns and operates, and his fame as a dirt-track driver. Twenty-five years after building his first racer in 1963 (a ’57 six-cylinder Ford), John got his private license and bought a Cessna 175. But last week at a local fly-in, he told me he was selling the airplane he’s owned for nearly 50 years, and while I know it wasn’t a quick or easy decision, I can’t help feeling sad about it.
I met him about five years after he learned to fly at Sporty’s school of all things aeronautical at Clermont County Airport (I68) — not far from his body shop. I was there as an FAA inspector to give him a medical flight test in the 175. He’d been helping a friend with an Earth-moving project and, in a grisly accident, one of his legs was crushed under a backhoe. It had to be amputated at the thigh, and he’d pretty much decided his flying days were over. But in the end, his friends and his own dogged iron will wouldn’t let that happen.
John has an enviable knack — more like genius — with tools and all things mechanical, so he designed and installed modified hand controls, got a field approval from the FSDO, and Don Fairbanks taught him to fly again.
This took a huge commitment and work, but it wasn’t all that unusual; I’d taught and given a number of medical check rides to amputees. Then I discovered that John’s Cessna had been converted into a taildragger, and it suddenly became very unusual. I was skeptical.
Think of it — one usable foot on one rudder pedal and two hands for the other rudder, the ailerons, wing flaps, to adjust the throttle, carburetor heat and mixture, and set the instruments and radios. But John is nothing if not determined, and Don Fairbanks is a legendary instructor. So we did it all, including crosswind takeoffs and landings from both directions, and he did a better job of staying in the middle of the runway than most pilots with two functioning legs. I was so proud of him and so pleased to issue the Statement of Demonstrated Ability (SODA).
I would learn there are few physical infirmities that can keep a determined pilot on the ground.
It was only after years of giving Dick Zerbe Part 135 DC-3 flight checks that I learned this friend and “big iron” freight dog with lots of type ratings was missing the lower part of a leg from an early parachute accident. Yeah, he had a slight limp, but I chalked that up to having sat too long in a cramped cockpit.
And I remember an enthusiastic group of fliers at Middletown, Ohio, in the ’60s who would hoist themselves up onto the wings and then into the cockpits of their rudder-pedal-less Ercoupes. This was a local chapter of the International Wheelchair Aviators, a group founded by four monthly “fly to lunch” paraplegic aviators.
I was a brand-new flight instructor at Lane’s Lebanon Airport when I took on a student named Lou who had lost vision in one eye in an early childhood accident. Everybody told me depth perception was going to be a big problem but, hey, didn’t Wiley Post do it with only one eye? I did a little research and found what Wolfgang wrote in Stick and Rudder. He explains that depth perception isn’t much of a factor at the distances we deal with in airplanes. I taught Lou to shift his focus in and back out on approaches and landings to see the whole picture, and he soloed in the normal — for those days — 10 to 12 hours.
FAA inspectors commonly give medical flight tests to applicants with color-blindness issues. Check the Aircraft Owners and Pilots Association site for specifics because there are some changes, but these are for pilots seeking second- or first-class medicals; for a third class, a flight test isn’t required. Pilots with otherwise disqualifying conditions, like defective hearing or loss of a limb, can also get a SODA by requesting a medical flight test through their aviation medical examiners (tip: pick a good “pilot advocate” doc).
I guess the most incredible medical flight check I gave was in a Cessna 172 with a wheelchair-bound paraplegic who had been profoundly deaf from birth. He needed help with the preflight inspection, getting into the airplane and, of course, he couldn’t use the radio. But I was allowed to list these limitations on his certificate if the test was successful. So I printed cards with the maneuvers I wanted him to demonstrate, i.e., departure stall, slow flight, pattern entry, landing at XYZ airport and so on. At one point, I distracted his attention after takeoff and slowly slid the throttle to idle to be sure he noted the power failure.
He did an amazingly good job, I issued the SODA and, a week later, an examiner passed him with flying colors on the private practical test. Six months later, he crashed the Cessna and survived uninjured, but he quit flying.
We all tried, but sometimes *^%@ happens!
