Letters from our May 2019 issue

The page one picture from the May 2019 issue looks exactly like what I saw when I flew my 1946 J–3C to a 1952 meeting at Wings Field. I was 16 years old at the time and was overwhelmed by this middle-aged crowd. I had planned to join but did not become a member until 1961, when my military engineering defense efforts never gave me any time off to purchase charts. I now fly BE35 and CE310.

John Ewing
AOPA 210083
Yuma, Arizona

Banner day

I loved Julie Summers Walker’s article on the banner tow adventure (“Member News and Notes: Banner Day”). Living in Indianapolis and close to Indianapolis International Airport, I am used to seeing banners in tow during the month of May. The banners are picked up somewhere west of the racetrack and not IND, but back in the days of Goodyear at Indianapolis Motor Speedway, their blimp was parked at night at IND.

David Maloney
AOPA 3562543
Indianapolis, Indiana

Forgotten era

The 80 years of AOPA milestones (“The Foremost Advocate”) covered most early general aviation growth and safety awareness, but neglected the efforts toward affordable aviation. At a time when one hour of flying with instructor costs a pilot one day’s take home pay, many start-up enthusiasts from 1973 to 1983 offered low-cost, lightweight aircraft. From Jim Bede’s $2,675 BD–5 to today’s nearly 600 FAA-compliant kits, AOPA recognized this phenomenon with the formation of AOPA Ultralight Division and Ultralight Pilot publication in the early 1980s. This milestone should be duly noted.

Richard C. Janusz
AOPA 456847
Lancaster, Ohio

Read about the formation of AOPA’s Ultralight Division and other efforts to promote affordable flying in Freedom to Fly: AOPA and the History of General Aviation in America, available online for $39.95 (aopa.org/freedomtoflybook). —Ed.

Freedom to fly

I just read Thomas B. Haines’ article (“Waypoints: Exercise Your Freedom to Fly”) and I just want to thank him for his efforts with AOPA.

For me, a far cry from earning my pilot’s license at age 16, I was 45. Since that time I have earned both instrument and commercial ratings, but unfortunately I have not been able to fly in a long time. While I have been a pilot now for 20 years, my last flight was in 2009. What a wonderful flight it was, though. I went out with an instructor in a taildragger (and I do have a tailwheel endorsement) and flew over the glaciers at the base of Mount McKinley in Alaska! What a grand flight. Prior to that and before my father sadly passed away, I flew the two of us around quite a number of places.

The reason I did not get my license at age 16 is not because I didn’t want to fly, trust me. It was because I knew how expensive it was and even if I was somehow able to afford the training, I figured I wouldn’t be able to afford to rent the aircraft, which is pretty much true. So I long for the time when we can get this aviation thing at a much lower cost, in the future when there’s more technology with fuel cells and things of that nature, then it’ll be much more affordable and thus attainable.

Steve Vigé
AOPA 1411181
Castaic, California

Gold star

I read with interest Barry Schiff’s “Going For Gold” in the May issue, not least because Fran Bera, whose world altitude record was mentioned on page 68, was a close friend with whom I frequently flew with and against in The Ninety-Nines’ Palms to Pines air races.  

Just three days after reading Barry’s article, I was at a Ninety-Nines gathering when a niece of Betty Hicks, a Ninety-Nines member who had passed away, arranged for a box of Betty’s aviation memorabilia—that she wanted The Ninety-Nines to have—to be brought to us. Among them was a memento of Fran’s altitude record, in the form of a small trophy—a spark-plug mounted on a wooden base and bearing an inscription of her record. After receiving a little TLC, which it obviously needs, the trophy will be passed on to The Ninety-Nines Museum of Women Pilots, located on the Will Rogers airfield (OKC), in Oklahoma City. To the end, Fran was one heck of a character.

Patricia Prentiss
AOPA 5805803
Newport Beach, California

Memory items

I very much enjoy Natalie Bingham Hoover’s articles in AOPA Pilot, and especially so the last one titled “Flying Life: Committed to Memory.”

I have been flying since 1981 and I am the owner of a 2001 Baron 58. I am retired now and have decided to obtain my CFI in order to give something back to the aviation community. Her article hit home because I just got done “learning” answers to 700 or so FAA written questions for the Fundamentals of Instruction, Flight Instructor Airplane, and Advanced Ground Instructor exams. Lord! But, they’re done.

Her list of the essential items is excellent. Thank you. I’d add trim runaway. I’ve never had one but some of my friends have. Dramatic. And quick. There are three ways to deal with it in a Baron: Autopilot disconnect switch, circuit breaker, master. I fly single pilot IFR regularly and so use the Bendix/King KFC 225 autopilot in flight. It’s something that’s always in the back of my mind. Again, thank you very much for her thoughts and her articles.

Mike Lepore
AOPA 757872
The Villages, Florida

Kudos

Thanks to Barry Schiff for your faithful writing over these many years. A job well done!

Rog Moberg
AOPA 595523
White Bear Lake, Minnesota

Hangar Talk

As a photography student at then-Shepherd College in West Virginia, Senior Photographer Chris Rose often had to shoot assignments for class at night. “Night life in West Virginia wasn’t much,” he says. “So, the best place to shoot at night was the Charles Town Races. It was well lit, there were interesting characters there, and the motion of the horses offered challenges.” Rose felt familiar, then, at Churchill Downs in Louisville, Kentucky, for the 145th Run for the Roses for the story “First Saturday in May,” on p. 58. “It was wet, I was carrying around a $12,000 lens I had borrowed, there was so much mud, and did I say I was soaking wet?” During a break from the action and the weather, Rose posed with Bill Daugherty’s filly in the stables before race time.