Pilots

In his 50 years and more than 21,000 hours of flying, Walter Pine has been in the thick of adventure. He has piloted a C-130 Hercules on daring single-airplane missions into North Vietnam and has flown stunts and camera airplanes for the Hollywood movie industry. Yet he says that some of his most exciting hours in an airplane have been in the right seat of a small, single-engine Cessna 150.

Pine learned to fly at the tail end of World War II and spent 36 years in the Air Force, flying a variety of airplanes from a B-17 bomber to a C-130 modified for unconventional warfare missions. During a one-year tour in Vietnam, he earned the Silver Star, the Bronze Star, and the Distinguished Flying Cross for his work flying Special Forces agents in and out of the North Vietnamese jungle.

When the time came to retire from the Air Force, Pine was not ready to stop flying. So he got his civilian ratings and went to work for Tallmantz Aviation in Orange County, California. Besides being a typical fixed-base operation, Tallmantz also operated a museum of flyable aircraft that were used frequently in movies and television shows.

Pine became a member of the Screen Actors Guild and worked on a variety of films, flying story aircraft and Tallmantz's B-25 camera airplanes until the company closed down in 1985. He and his wife Marilyn then moved to Keller, Texas, a small, rural town north of Fort Worth, where one of their three daughters lived. Pine was still not ready to fold his wings, however. So at the age of 62, he began his third aviation career, this time as a primary flight instructor.

Flight instructing was not new to Pine. He had been an instructor pilot and flight examiner for most of his Air Force career, flying even most of his combat missions from the right seat. As a civilian instructor, however, he has come to realize that teaching people to fly is as or more exciting than any other type of flying he has ever done. "Instructing is some of the most interesting, emotional flying you can do," he explains. "Doing a precision maneuver for the movies is demanding, but the outcome is not nearly as much in doubt as when you turn another person loose in an airplane for the first time."

Pine's brand of instruction is based on his military background. His lessons typically last a half-day, although he only charges for the time he and his students actually spend in the airplane. "In the military, we wouldn't think of taking a student out for only 50 minutes," he explains. After more than 40 years of giving instruction, Pine also realizes that a lack of confidence is often a much bigger obstacle for students than building their technical knowledge and skills. In fact, he specializes in teaching students who have had difficulty learning to fly. "I very rarely have gotten students from scratch, who haven't already been abused by somebody else," he notes.

One of his most satisfying success stories was a student who had 107 hours of instruction when she began taking lessons with him. "She was a good student and very intelligent," he remembers. "She just needed to get her head straight." After a short time of instruction with Pine, she passed her private check ride with flying colors.

Pine attributes much of his success as an instructor to the number of years he has spent in a cockpit. "It's a shame that a lot of the [flight] instruction now is done by people with the least experience," he says. "Some big airplane pilots think small airplanes are beneath them. But you have a lot more freedom in a small airplane, and even the military instruction I used to give didn't give me the thrill of putting a new student up there for the first time."

A year ago, liability concerns led the owner of the small airport where Pine had been instructing to stop renting out airplanes, so Pine's schedule is not as full as it once was. But he continues to teach the occasional student, and when he is not giving lessons or flying with friends, he still sometimes pilots B-25s for commercial photo shoots or movie productions.

Whether the airplane is a B-25, a Learjet, or a Cessna 150, however, the only thing that really matters to Pine is to keep flying. "It's hard to take [flying] apart in pieces and say what it is that makes it so appealing," he says. "It's like a person — it's all the parts together that you love. It's the wonderful fraternity of people around the world who are crazy enough to stay around airplanes and flying. It's the planning, the dreaming, the thrill in sailing over the landscape and doing a little bit of navigation. Even a short trip in an airplane is an adventure."

And at an age when many people sit back and rest on their laurels, Pine is still looking for more adventures. "A lot of retired people just roll up in a ball and quit," he notes. "Flying helps keep me alive."

Lane E. Wallace, AOPA 896621, is an aviation writer and private pilot who has been flying for more than seven years. She owns a 1946 Cessna 120 and is restoring a 1943 Stearman.