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One spring not too long ago, I had some work that I needed to get done on my airplane. I own a Cessna 172 that I keep at Frederick Municipal Airport (FDK) in Maryland. For several years, I have been taking my airplane to Hagerstown, Maryland, which is about a 20-minute flight from FDK, for annual inspections and most major work. I had some mounting pressure to get the work done as soon as possible. The pressure included a pending checkride and shortly after, a long trip from Maryland to West Texas, where the airplane would be left for nearly a year so my son could build flight hours.
One of the reasons pilots fly twin-engine airplanes is for the redundancy. If one engine fails, another one is still operating to get you safely back to an airport.
I was in Cincinnati on a business trip around the eastern half of the United States in my new Beech Sundowner. My meeting broke in late afternoon and I headed for Lunken Field, next stop Fort Wayne, Indiana, (FWA).
It was finally a great morning to fly in northern Wyoming, with severe clear skies and gentle winds after several days of high winds, low clouds, and rain, so I took advantage of it.
As with most flights I’ve taken, this trip started out uneventfully. I had topped off my Cessna 170B in Caldwell, Idaho, and was en route to McCall (MYL) to meet my wife.
On a Friday some winters ago, my family and I decided to spend the weekend at a house we have in a flying community north of the lakes region in New Hampshire.
It was a clear spring day. The weather was perfect, and my family was waiting for me to make the cross-country flight down the coast and through the mountain range from Seattle to central Oregon.
Friday night TV reruns were suddenly disrupted by my phone. “Porterville a.m. Wheels up!” Nothing more was said; the message was understood. It meant my “Dawn Patrol” flight destination would be Porterville, California. “Wheels up” meant be there at sunup.
It was middle of July 2015. My wife and I had just moved to Little Rock, Arkansas, and I had taken a job flying a fleet of Beechcraft King Airs for a small charter company. On this occasion I was flying an older model King Air 200 on a one-hour Part 135 charter flight from Jackson, Mississippi, to Little Rock.
I earned my private pilot certificate at Cable Airport (CCB), a nontowered airport in Southern California. Because of time and money constraints, I flew only enough to maintain currency (but not proficiency).
In November 1986, my father and I, along with two family friends and their dog, embarked on our annual trip to my grandmother’s house for Thanksgiving in my father’s 1964 Cessna 182.
It was a beautiful day for a quick flight over to Maui for dinner. A nice, easy, clear afternoon for a flight from Honolulu International (PHNL) to Kahului (PHOG).
At one time, our entire family of six weighed about 660 pounds, fully dressed for Montana’s weather. We’d pack our 1978 Piper Turbo Lance, fasten the four kids’ seatbelts, and fly someplace on a free weekend.
“Palpable anticipation of adventure” is perhaps the best way to describe what it’s like to approach a waiting biplane. On this cool fall morning, the porcelain blue skies over Tucson, Arizona, were lightly scattered with fluffy clouds adding to that prospect of adventure.
My old man was an original jet fighter jock in the North American F–86 Sabre during the Korean War. He taught me a lot of adages regarding flying. One in particular would prove correct: “Being a pilot is hours of boredom, with moments of sheer terror.”
