Pilots

There would be no country air show this Sunday, no hopping rides in the Stearmans. The sky had disappeared behind a sopping bank of thick cloud from which a persistent rain fell. Walt Starling and the other pilots and performers in the Bealeton, Virginia, Flying Circus Air Show pushed three of the Stearmans into a hangar and out of the rain, effectively ending the hot-dogs-and-hamburgers cookout that had been going on under the hangar beams.

It had been a disappointing day, yes, but the Flying Circus would not shut down for another few Sundays. Starling could look forward to plenty of weekend fun flying in a Stearman, his antidote to the rigors of the work week.

Of course, most people — most pilots, at any rate — would consider Starling's work to be more pleasure than pain. He is an airborne traffic reporter for Washington, D.C., radio station WLTT-FM. Starling has been an eye in Washington's sky for 18 years and an estimated 18,000 flying hours.

He reports each day on the fits and starts of the city's legendary snarl of commuter traffic from about 7 to 9 a.m. and again from 4 to 6 p.m. His observatory is a Cessna 172, which his company, Washington Sky Watch, owns and which he flies.

Starling spends the time betwen rush hours at — where else? — the airport. College Park Airport, "the world's oldest continuously operated airport," according to its owner, the Maryland National Capital Park and Planning Commission, is home base for Starling. He lives within walking distance of the field. Besides keeping the Skyhawk there, he also is a partner in the airport's only maintenance shop, Flying Machine, Incorporated. His two partners are his father and mechanic Vince Beall.

Flying Machine has been in business since June 1989. The shop's specialty is restoration of classic and antique aircraft, but it also caters to the approximately 85 airplanes based at College Park. The most important customer is Starling himself. He must be able to rely 100 percent on launching each morning and late afternoon in the Skyhawk to make his traffic rounds. "I've never missed a rush hour for mechanical reasons," Starling says. "The airplane always works."

On weekends, Starling takes the family in the 172 to a grass strip in tiny Bealeton, southwest of Washington. There, he helps stage the Flying Circus Sunday-afternoon air show for a small but appreciative paying crowd. He does it mostly because he's an unrepentant fan of aviation in any form, but it doesn't hurt that he's also able to drum up a little business for Flying Machine. Starling owns a striking black-with- white-sunburst Stearman that he keeps at the Flying Circus Aerodrome over the summer. The Stearman was restored by Flying Machine, and it's a persuasive advertisement for the shop's capabilities. The circus attracts a lot of Stearmans and other classics and antiques, all current or eventual candidates for some restorative work. One, a lovely 1929 Fleet, was brought to mint condition by Flying Machine.

Starling got the idea for Flying Machine from his experience in trying to keep the Skyhawk in top condition. "I've been doing traffic reporting since 1974, and I realized early on that I'd have to have the best maintenance available," he says. When the Maryland Park and Planning Commission went looking for someone to take over College Park's county- operated maintenance shop, Starling put together a proposal. He won by default — there were no other bids.

The shop has restored in whole or in part the Stearman and Fleet, a Bellanca Cruisemaster, a Tiger Moth, Great Lakes, Tri-Pacer, and a J-3 Cub. Restoration work is charged at a cheaper per-hour labor rate than routine maintenance on "modern" airplanes. Starling reasons that a restoration typically will involve lots of time, so a discount is called for. He gets his hands dirty working on projects, as does his father, but the bulk of the work is done by Beall and a talented protege, Bill Honan.

Starling inherited his love of airplanes and flying from his father, who flew for the Civil Air Patrol, ran flying clubs out of College Park in the 1950s, and still owns and flies a Cub. The young Starling nurtured a competing interest in broadcasting by studying radio and television at the University of Maryland. (The campus is just a couple of thousand feet northwest of the airport.) Starling also was president of the college flying club. He traces the beginning of his career as a flying traffic reporter to a paper he wrote in a college class, proposing the concept. The third generation Starling, Walt's son Brent, was to begin flying lessons in October on the day he turned 15.

After almost two decades in the business, does Starling consider himself a professional aviator who also happens to be a broadcaster, or is it the other way around? "I used to think I was in broadcasting, and aviation was just a way to do it," he says. "But if I had to make a choice between the two, I really don't know what I'd do." The evidence appears conclusive, however. If he is going to spend most of his waking hours in and around airplanes and airports, he's going to be accused of favoring the flying part of his persona. It's no wonder a friend, upon hearing of yet another Starling aviation undertaking, asked him rhetorically, "You never get enough, do you?"