Journal, April 1, 1994: I got checked out on the Piper PA28 Cherokee 160 this afternoon. I flew it just great, start to finish. The instructor said he “really enjoyed” flying with me. It wasn’t a perfect day. The wind was at 220 at 20, and it was quite squirrelly on final, all cross-controlled. It…
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Please note: this entry contains descriptions of violence and death that some readers might find upsetting. I read this at Open Mic Night Monday, October 7, 2024… There’s something about seeing freshly-dead, burned-up bodies that puts an air of frivolity around the day’s business. The lives of four people, on a business trip, were rather…
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Journal, July 1, 1994, my 31st birthday… To celebrate, I flew, of course. First, I flew the 150 alone to the practice area and did some spins. It had been a while, and guess what? Spins are still a huge rush. At 9 p.m., I flew two short field landings on runway 12, the second…
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Right after I got my pilot certificate in May 1993, I got checked out to rent airplanes at airports in my area. N2870Q, a Cessna 172, belonged to Dub. Dub and I were the first students to graduate from Phil’s class at the Ada airport. That was Saturday morning, May 1, 1993. Dub took his…
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Ever since my late wife’s daughter Chele and her family moved to Anna, Texas, I’ve wanted to visit Dallas/Fort Worth International Airport’s Founder’s Plaza, which is about 45 minutes from Chele’s home. My readers know that I have always been a big fan of aviation in all forms, and I became a pilot in 1993….
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I recently had the opportunity to fly in the camera plane to photograph a Douglas A-26 Invader, a fast medium bomber of late World War II. The aircraft was fueled with Ada-based General Aviation Modifications, Inc.’s new aviation gasoline, G100UL, the first-ever 100-octane unleaded aviation gasoline. I sat on the floor in the back of…
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Sometimes flying on a Saturday is the most fun you can have, and sometimes factors as fickle as the wind and the weather bring that all to a halt. Today was one of those Saturdays. I was invited by General Aviation Modifications Inc. President and fellow pilot Tim Roehl to be the photographer for a…
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In 1996, at a meeting of the local chapter of the Experimental Aircraft Association, a fellow pilot, one of the guys I learned to fly with, told us he departed Guthrie, Oklahoma to fly to Ada under low ceilings and visibility, without any charts. He tried to “scud run” under the clouds until he passed…
Continue reading →I recently wanted to switch off, tune out, and relax, so I picked one of the least threatening movies in my DVD collection, Airport. As it happens, I own the “Terminal Pack” of airplane disaster movies, a box set of four of these films that also includes Airport 1975, Airport ’77, and The Concorde… Airport ’79,…
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I got my pilot’s license Saturday, May 1, 1993. Every pilot remembers seminal moments in their flying careers, like their first solo, their first long cross-country, or the first time they carried passengers. The day of my check ride was no different. Fellow student Dub and I were both getting our check rides that day….
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Chris Eckler, Ada City School’s STEAM (science, technology, engineering, arts and mathematics) educator, invited me to fly with him in the Cessna 172 we both rent, the one that lives at our home airport in Ada, to Weatherford, Oklahoma, to deliver some Christmas gifts for children in need, and pick up some for kids back…
Continue reading →My social media circles might have noticed this week that I have returned to the aviation hobby after a 20-year hiatus. I always wanted to be a pilot. I became a licensed private pilot May 1, 1993, just short of 30 years ago. I flew a lot in the 1990s, when the hobby was less…
Continue reading →The hottest movie topic in 2022 was Top Gun: Maverick. I am sorry, my friends who loved this movie, but… The biggest problem I have with this film is the same problem I have with the final three Star Wars films in the saga: rehash. The same title card and Faltermeyer/Loggins intro music. The same…
Continue reading →When I feel like I am getting into a creative rut, I sometimes turn to the rather large cadre of work I have created in my journals over the years. Just in the last few days, I picked up a journal from 2002 and read in it some, putting little Post-It® notes on the pages…
Continue reading →Journal, March 1997… “You sounded really euphoric on the phone,” she said. Alone in the four-seat Cessna Skyhawk, I climbed quickly to 4500 feet to find a very special layered sunset. I did a couple of hard-breaking power-on stalls, and handled them perfectly, then headed back for my required three night full-stop landings to remain…
Continue reading →In some ways, the era before 9/11 was an age of innocence. I have written many times over the years about where I was when 9/11 happened. Since Saturday is the 20th anniversary of the 9/11 attacks, an entire generation of people, some my friends and relatives, have little to no memories of that day….
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I was recently honored to once again help jury some East Central University Mass Communications students’ senior presentations, specifically those students who emphasized visuals like photography, graphic arts and design. It got me thinking about my college days and earlier, and about what I imagined I wanted to be as an adult – “what…
Continue reading →Aviators and aviation fans who follow the news know that recent months have not gone at all well for American passenger aircraft manufacturer Boeing. Two Boeing 737 passenger jets crashed in recent months, both brand new Boeing 737 MAX aircraft, killing a total of 338 people. The entire 737 MAX fleet has been grounded since…
Continue reading →YouTube has recently suggested a lot of 9/11 conspiracy videos to me. If I click on one of them and watch it, YouTube mines that and suggests more. As I watch them, one thing is pretty clear: few people buy all the way in to the “official” story of the day, which says that 19…
Continue reading →Readers might recall that three years ago my media cohorts and I were treated to a “media ride” on the Experimental Aircraft Association’s 1929 Ford Tri-Motor. The “Tin Goose” was in town again this week, and we took the usual media ride. It was fun, but in all honesty, as a pilot, I’ve flown a…
Continue reading →As I covered an Ada softball game at their field next to the Ada Municipal Airport, I couldn’t help but notice a larger number of Cessna Cardinals in the landing pattern, and an even larger number parked on the grass near the airport’s signature business, GAMI/Tornado Alley Turbo. I surmised we were having a fly-in…
Continue reading →Seemingly fit to go along with my last post, I went on another media ride today, on a 1929 Ford Tri-Motor, with many of my old media buddies. The plane was exactly as I expected it; primitive, mechanical, loud, awkward. I’ve flown may planes and wanted to fly many more, but I had no desire to…
Continue reading →Journal entry, Sunday, June 5, 1994: I departed Ada in a rented Piper Cherokee 160, N5422W, intending to fly to Tulsa International Airport (my friend Robert lived near there at the time) at about 3 p.m., climbing to 3500 feet. It was choppy at that altitude, but I couldn’t get higher for a scattered to…
Continue reading →May 1, 1993: I climbed into a spritely Cessna 150 named “Old Gomer” with a flight examiner. We flew for an hour, testing my skills and knowledge. When we were done, we parked the airplane, then went into the airport so he could issue me a temporary airman certificate. I was a pilot, the first…
Continue reading →In the summer of 1992, I was encouraged by a young lady I was dating at the time to embark on a lifelong dream, to learn to fly. I began my training in August with an excellent pilot named Phil Lawrence, in a sharp-looking Cessna 150 with the name “Old Gomer” painted on the engine…
Continue reading →I am counting on most of my fans to be like-minded in the way I let music carry me away. For example, if I listen to “Crystal Baller” by Third Eye Blind, it takes me back to my first vacation with Abby in 2003. If I listen to “Mercy Street” by Peter Gabriel, it takes…
Continue reading →For many years in the 1990s and early 2000s, I flew a lot. Airplanes in my neck of the woods were cheap, my rent was low, and it was easy and convenient. A lot of people flew with me over the years, including my mother. (My sister says that the day I took mom flying…
Continue reading →I got tagged by someone to post eight things about himself that no one, or at least very few people, knew about him. One of his was that he witnessed the murder of a police officer, which is tragic and wicked cool at the same time. So, here are eight things you might not know…
Continue reading →Here are a couple of photos from my days as an aviator. The reason I don’t fly any more, and many of my pilot buddies don’t fly any more, is that it has gotten much too expensive. Part of that is the panicky idiot mentality of Americans after 9/11, which was incorrectly laid at the…
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