Preflight

Meet Bill Kershner

Those words could come from someone who is a fellow student, an aviation legend, or anywhere in between. Most of aviation's legends are very unpretentious, and it's been my privilege to meet a number of them.

I first met the late Martin Caidin many years ago at the Sun 'n Fun EAA Fly-In in Lakeland, Florida. We chatted about airplanes and the show, and I'm thinking, No, this can't be the Martin Caidin. A few weeks later I opened my mail to find a note from Caidin, accompanied by a signed copy of the prolific author's latest book.

Frank Kingston Smith was another. He learned to fly in 1955 as an escape from his work as a Philadelphia lawyer, and then wrote a number of aviation books. His 1957 classic, The Weekend Pilot, helped to attract several generations of pilots into aviation. Articles he wrote for AOPA Pilot magazine in the early 1980s are available online.

Younger pilots in particular may never have heard of Caidin or Smith, but there's a very good chance that they've read something by William K. Kershner, who has been a flight instructor for 55 years. After four years as a Navy pilot he worked as a corporate pilot, flight-test pilot, and special assistant to William T. Piper Sr. when the latter was president of Piper Aircraft. Kershner has written five acclaimed books -- The Student Pilot's Flight Manual, The Advanced Pilot's Flight Manual, The Instrument Flight Manual, The Flight Instructor's Manual, and The Basic Aerobatic Manual -- and for years has operated an aerobatic school in Sewanee, Tennessee, using a Cessna 152 Aerobat. He's done a lot of spins; at last count some 8,000 spins totaling more than 35,000 turns. "I don't count it as a spin unless it's at least three turns," said Kershner, who didn't log spins during his first 24 years of flying. He's been called "the spin doctor."

I first met Kershner at a Wings Weekend in North Carolina some 15 years ago, and I immediately felt a kinship with him. He had written about learning to fly in Clarksville, Tennessee, where I once lived -- many years after Kershner rode his bicycle to the airport and washed airplanes in exchange for flight time.

In an article Kershner described the autumn aroma of dark leaf tobacco being fired for market. Tobacco was a common crop in that part of Tennessee, and it was of the fire-cured variety. Fire departments were busy in the fall; people would see smoke wafting from a barn and presume that the structure was burning. I recall the day that a transient aircraft reported such a "fire." Describing the location from the air was complicated by the pilot's lack of familiarity with the area.

Kershner has written for our sister magazine, AOPA Pilot, and many of those articles reflect his humble personality. He was apprehensive about his first flight into a towered airport. Kershner once started an airplane and prepared to taxi, but the airplane wouldn't move because the chocks still were in place. Most of us have done that at least once, but not with the president of Piper Aircraft aboard, in front of a large crowd. Another article describes a very circuitous taxi route at a towered airport that I think -- hope? -- has been embellished just a bit.

Kershner's most recent book, Logging Flight Time, includes many of his AOPA Pilot articles as well as unpublished materials. It's available from Blackwell Publishing and at many pilot shops. We're delighted that we'll be publishing several articles Bill Kershner has written especially for AOPA Flight Training. Look for them during the year.

If you've already looked inside the back cover of this issue, you noticed that we've made some small changes. "Aviation Speak" and "What It Looks Like" have moved forward in the magazine -- into "Training Notes and News" -- to make room for a new department, "Why We Fly."

This monthly feature will allow us to profile interesting students and flight instructors. We feel that their experiences and insights can provide motivation and inspiration to current students, as well as those who may be contemplating their flight training. Turn to page 76 to meet Jann Bowne, who recently earned her private pilot certificate -- some 30 years after her first, and much less pleasant, experiences with general aviation aircraft.

We're counting on you to help us find subjects for this column. To suggest somebody, send us an e-mail with a brief description of how their experiences might help or inspire student pilots. Or write an article about them yourself -- we'd be pleased to review it for possible publication.