I Learned About Flying From That

Monday dawns full of promise. I gulp down my coffee, zip out to the Rockton Aerodrome in Rockton, Ontario, grab a plane from the Southern Ontario Soaring Association, and head out on a 300-km adventure. The thermals are bad and the wind is strong. I fight my way to York Soaring, our sister club 60 […]

Few things are as rewarding for pilots as having a partner who shares our passion, sense of wonder and exhilaration. I had such a person in my life before I lost her to cancer two years ago. Often when I think of Jackie, I reflect back on memorable trips we had together. But it was […]

We’ve all done it—accidentally pressed a wrong button on a computer. It happens. Well, the US Marine Corps CH-46 Sea Knight helicopter has a lot of buttons and switches, and it’s really important to get them right. Aboard the USS Saipan, off the coast of Sicily, I was on the flight schedule. Easy mission: Fly […]

I was providing flight instruction toward a commercial rating with a student whom I had recently helped obtain her instrument rating. We were flying my own Cessna Cardinal RG, and we had already flown together a great deal. In fact, she actually handled the airplane better than I did in most cases, especially landings. Because […]

In 1980, as a local banker for 15 years, I was asked by the bank’s directors to become more involved in community affairs—specifically, to take over the position of chairman of finance on the executive board of the Boy Scouts of America in our town of Greenwich, Connecticut. In that position, I was responsible for the finances […]

By the fall of 1978 I’d worked for Piper Aircraft in Lakeland, Florida, for three years. I was the assistant chief engineer-technical, which meant I had the people in the structures, aerodynamics, power plants, systems, electrical/avionics and flight-test groups all working for me. At the time, we were working extremely hard to certify the new […]

I planned to make a flight on a Wednesday from my small community airport in the Detroit area to KLUK near Cincinnati, Ohio. Late on Tuesday afternoon, I found out the runway would be closed at my strip on Wednesday as part of an FAA-mandated taxiway destruction. If I wanted access to the airplane on […]

I have never parked my airplane after a more or less uneventful flight and been so dismayed at the sight of my wing when I shut down the engine. The flight, approach and landing were ­textbook, with no hint at all of the excitement that could have greeted me that night. No, the ailerons were […]

Sometimes we face situations as pilots that we feel lucky to walk away from. In my case, I learned a valuable lesson in dealing with hazardous attitudes and forgoing a checkout on a similar airplane to the one I had been flying. Little did I know that this situation would become the catalyst for my […]

In 1986, I flew a Beechcraft Baron 58 each night carrying canceled bank checks from Baltimore to Richmond, Virginia; Charlotte, North Carolina; Philadelphia and back to BWI, departing at about 10 p.m. and returning by 6 a.m. the next morning. I was part of a network of check-carrying general aviation aircraft that crisscrossed the nation […]