Pilots

Michigan’s Upper Peninsula is probably the last place that you would expect to find a successful flight instructor. Gale-force northwest winds off Lake Superior dump prodigious amounts of winter snow measured in hundreds of annual inches. In January, 10 degrees above zero is viewed as a heat wave. The local joke is that there are 10 months of winter and two months of poor sledding. IMC is the rule, not the exception. The land expanse is vast—300 miles across—and dominated by forests, lakes, and short "mountains." From Pictured Rocks to the Keweenaw is some of the most spectacular scenery on earth—and the cradle of some of nature’s most bitter furies.

Michigan was awarded the Upper Peninsula (U.P.) after Ohio burglarized the Toledo Strip. By pure accident, the booby prize turned bonanza, and half of the nation’s iron ore—some $48 billion worth—was pulled from shaft mines sunk here between 1850 and 1900. But by the 1950s it was all but gone, and the population turned sparse and, statistically at least, impoverished.

This is when seven-year-old Jerry Dahl would cut across a grass runway in the mining town of Stambaugh on his way to school and watch the occasional airplane. Circumstance and career would take him away from Stambaugh and keep him out of the cockpit until 1984, when he returned, started a local business, began flying lessons, and bought his first airplane, a Cessna 175. Instrument, commercial, CFI, and seaplane ratings quickly followed in the next four years, but Dahl was continually frustrated by the transient nature of the instructors, most of whom were time-builders at FAR Part 135 freight operations out of nearby Iron Mountain or Marquette, and never stayed around for long. That is when Dahl decided to offer locally based flight instruction.

Today he is one of the busiest pilots in all of Michigan, offering instruction in a pair of 1960s-vintage Cessna 150s, a Piper Cherokee 140, a Piper Warrior, and a Taylorcraft (for tailwheel endorsements) out of airports in Stambaugh, Crystal Falls, and Iron Mountain. Annually, he logs more than 650 hours of instruction. Most of this comes during the short summers, when sundown arrives after 9 p.m. "I put 400 hours on each 150 last summer," he says. He has built this practice through word of mouth and by plastering his business card to every naked airport bulletin board he encounters. He also flies Part 91 aircraft for area businesses, everything from a single-engine Piper Comanche to a Cessna Conquest turboprop.

Students run the gamut from high-school dropouts to CEOs to Boeing 747 captains. Speaking of the latter, Dahl deadpans, "They are the worst. They forget everything."

Dahl generally prefers to start students at Iron Mountain, where the 6,500-by-150-foot main runway accommodates even the most errant and where pattern traffic can breed good radio skills. Then he takes them to the grass strip over at Crystal Falls. "Then, when they think they know what they are doing, I take them up to the little cliff on the hill."

Dahl is talking about Stambaugh, his home airport, the shortest paved public-use runway in all of Michigan. (It was paved in 1967.) It measures 2,000 by 40 feet. There are deep cracks in the pavement with brush popping through. This is "asphalt, deteriorated surface" at its most extreme. The markings are barely visible. There are no runway-end identifier lights, threshold markers, or touchdown points. The low-intensity runway lights operate off of a pilot-controlled frequency separate from unicom, and they can be temperamental. The windsock is lit—sometimes. The dilapidated hangars look like they were built before World War II because most of them were. Old tires frame the half-dozen tiedowns on the east side of the north-south runway. Halfway down the runway sits a metal-fab "FBO shack." It is little bigger than a one-hole privy, adorned inside only by a rotary-dial pay phone and a guest register. Need fuel? Too bad. Need a burger? Try Kermit’s Bar, about 300 feet off of the departure end of Runway 35.

For the uninitiated, these cosmetic imperfections pale next to Stambaugh’s most striking characteristic, the reason Dahl calls it "the aircraft carrier." Stambaugh is bracketed by West Iron County High School to the east, and drop-offs of 100 to 300 feet along the west side and off of both runway ends. Nearly all of Stambaugh was undermined, and the airport is no exception; the drop-offs were caused by cave-ins of the old mines below. The topography can make for interesting winds and occasional sheer. And the blacktop often facilitates ice. Landings here are full flaps with power, with one hand ready to firewall the throttle at all times.

Landing at Stambaugh, like on an aircraft carrier, "builds character," says Dahl. So does flying in the U.P. in general. Dahl tries to drive home one main point to all of his students, especially when discussing emergency landings in this sometimes inhospitable place. "Keep flying the airplane. If you keep flying the airplane, even into trees, you’ll walk away."