I started flying before I had my driver’s license. My Mom or Dad would drive me to Kalamazoo Aviation when I was 16, so I could learn to fly in a 1970 Mooney Cadet M-10. The Cadet was a cool plane; 2-place trainer built on the old Ercoupe type certificate, slide-back canopy (that you could fly with open), leather seats and full 1970-style avionics (a single Nav/Com). I learned good solid stick and rudder skills in that plane, or so I thought... until years later when I discovered gliders and tailwheels, and then began to sort-of figure out what those big pedals on the floor were really for (apparently they’re more than just foot rests!) I wrote about some of my early solo cross-country adventures in the Mooney in this article.

Recently, I was able to track down the Mooney that I flew in the mid-70’s, N9514V, and was happy to find it still flying (now in Pennsylvania), and cleaner than I remember seeing it 40+ years ago. That’s incredible, because many of the planes I’d fl

own are no longer around (hopefully, not due to anything I did to them, although I did apologize to the current Cadet owner for all those early touch-n-go’s I did in her plane --- they were more arrivals than landings).

In 11th grade I took a ‘Private Pilot Ground School’ at Portage Central High School. It was a daily, 1-hour ground school that used the Jeppesen-Sanderson workbook. The class was both semesters, which gave our instructor, Harold Hope, a chance to really expound on such exciting topics as the pitot tube, and density altitude (plus, as the class was under the ‘Industrial Arts’ umbrella, I didn’t have to take shop class!) Harold was a great teacher, and also instructed at the old Kal-Aero FBO. A couple years after I graduated, he was killed in the crash of a twin-engine plane in which he was checking a pilot out.

Also in the 11th grade, I participated in a special program in Kalamazoo County where two students from each High School went to an ‘off-campus’ 2-hour daily class at Western Michigan University’s Aviation hangar at KAZO airport. This was essentially ‘Airframe & Powerplant 101’. We learned to rivet, bend metal, hand-prop a plane, and plug auxiliary power into the cowling of an old Beech twin --- while the engine was running! Stuff you’d never be able to do today, with all the liability issues our professors were apparently unaware of at the time!  The second semester we spent the entire course breaking down, re-building and re-covering the fabric on an old Citabria. Pretty ingenious; WMU used the 12 of us as free labor to re-build this guy’s plane, and we got a hell of a first-hand education on how airplanes were built!

The first plane I ever bought was in 1983; it was a ‘67 Piper Cherokee 140. A flight school in New York sold a fleet of them (6 or 7, I think) to a dealer in Orlando, FL, where I was living at the time. My heart fluttered and I broke out into a cold sweat the first time I drove by the dealer at Orlando-Sanford Airport and saw ‘For Sale’ signs on six beautiful Cherokees. I got to pick whichever one I wanted; $7,000 out the door. I did a quick review of the various log-books and a once-over on the condition of each (what’s a ‘Pre-buy Inspection’???) and settled on N477FL. This was years before the Internet, but now I know from online NTSB records that although it wasn’t disclosed in the logbooks, the plane had been wrecked prior to my purchase. 

’FL’, of course, was the “Flite-Liner” designation Piper gave to their trainers in the late 60’s. I loved that plane; flew it everywhere along the eastern seaboard and built a lot of good solid VFR time in it. A major regret was that when I relocated to San Diego in 1984, I thought it would be too difficult to get the plane out here (no time to fly it myself; you know how ‘work’ has a way of getting in the way of flying...), so I SOLD it! Really stupid. Kind of like the time I moved from Michigan to Tampa, and sold my sailboat before I moved (I probably could have sailed almost every day in Florida; I know, I know...)

After getting away from flying for over a decade in the 90’s (that pesky ‘work’ and ‘life’ thing again); I got back into it big-time several years ago. I became current in a 172, then went on to get my Instrument rating.

A few years ago, I earned a tailwheel endorsement and took some basic aerobatics training... then the first (of 3!) spin endorsements (I love spins & stalls!)... also got my complex and high-performance endorsements... followed by my Commercial rating... then I discovered gliders. Wow; that’s a whole ‘nother chapter! 80% of flying gliders is just like any other light plane; but the other 20% is unlike anything you’ve ever done. I learned good emergency and energy management techniques, stabilized approaches, and a little thing called rudder skills (56’ wingspan; can you say “adverse yaw”?)  I began flying gliders just to have some fun (waiting for the recession to end); and ended up getting my Commercial glider rating; yes, another rating I’ll never use, but I got to do an emergency spot landing within 100’, so I do have that going for me! Most recently, I’ve been using my CFI-I (Certificated Flight Instructor-Instrument) license to impart many of my experiences and observations gleaned over the years, through Flight Instructing.

Lately, I’ve been doing less and less flying for business, and more for pleasure or skill and recency purposes. I enjoy volunteering for Angel Flight and have met some really strong, brave people through those flights. I have also flown 4-legged passengers on a number of occasions; as a long-time dog-lover, I’ve helped Pilots ‘N’ Paws facilitate rescue dog relocations, and assisted our local

Lab Rescuers group in helping rescue, rehabilitate and re-home some wonderful labs.

1. - Garry Wing
   

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