Alaska was my 50th state to visit, and I had purposely avoided taking the airlines up to the “Last Frontier” in favor of a more adventurous arrival. I had grown up on my dad’s shaggy-dog tales of pushing an ancient Oldsmobile station wagon up the unpaved Alaska Highway of the 1970s. The Alcan, the Yukon—these were fanciful, faraway places that loomed large in an 8-year-old’s fertile imagination. Discovering their real-world counterparts for myself as an adult made for a joyous, memorable journey—all the better for sharing it with my frequent riding partner, Brad Phillips, and my wife, Dawn, on her first big trip on her own motorcycle. 

And yet there was an unexpected element of frustration. As I gained an appreciation for the grand scale and severe beauty of the landscape, so did it become evident that the few roads here are the slenderest ribbons of civilization that barely scratch the surface of the wilderness. All the really interesting bits seemed to start at the untracked horizon. The epic distances also limited the amount of backcountry exploration possible, even if we’d been equipped for off-road travel. This is vast country that begs to be explored by air. 

Indeed, the farther north we went, the more we found ourselves in airplane nirvana. Every Tom, Dick, and Harriet we met seemed to own a tricked-out Super Cub or a 185. Light plane traffic was a regular feature even above the loneliest stretches of road. When we got to Anchorage, I went bug-eyed at the vast rows of rugged taildraggers parked cheek to jowl at Merrill Field (PAMR)—a mini-Oshkosh without end. And then more of the same at the Lake Hood gravel strip, plus hundreds of seaplanes and amphibs around the lake. I’d found bug-smasher heaven.

• READ MORE: Finding That Right Pilot Buddy to Bid With

On the return leg of the trip, Dawn and I detoured from the Alaska Highway via the Haines Cut-Off, and then took the Alaska State Ferry down the Lynn Canal to Juneau. There we rented a straight-back Cessna 172 on bush tires, accompanied by a grizzled Alaska veteran of a flight instructor, and set off for several hours of exploration around spectacular Glacier Bay, including a low-altitude inspection of Muir Glacier. It was a highlight of the trip for both of us, and we talked about flying an airplane of our own to Alaska someday. 

Five years later, it almost happened. Having decided to sell everything, buy a sailboat, and escape to the Caribbean for a few years, we set off on one last hurrah with our 1953 Piper Pacer. We visited friends in New England, Florida, and Phoenix, explored Mexico’s Baja California peninsula, and revisited old haunts up the West Coast. But then, in Vancouver, Washington, our mid-time O-320 engine nearly self-destructed—I was lucky to land in one piece. Instead of enjoying one last adventure to Alaska and selling the Pacer there at a profit, I sadly gave her up as is/where is, absorbing the $12,000 loss philosophically.

Since then, I’ve spent quite a bit of time up north for work. On the Boeing 757 and 767 I occasionally flew to Anchorage, and since being based in Seattle as a 737 captain, both Anchorage and Fairbanks have featured heavily in my summertime bidding strategy. Of course, Alaskans will tell you that the best thing about Anchorage is that it’s so close to Alaska. I enjoy that proximity, the ever-present GA activity, the scruffy cast of interesting characters to chat up over a brew at Darwin’s Theory, and the occasional hiking or fishing adventure.

When Dawn and I bought our Stinson 108 in August 2022, there was no question of whether we’d fly it to Alaska. It’s a tail-dragging, tube-and-fabric natural for the north country. The question was when? Building our hangar and attached living quarters came first—and that project was largely finished by July of last year. More seriously, the plane was unproven after a complete rebuild. And while the restorer did an excellent job of returning the Stinson to 1946 factory spec (plus modern radios with ADS-B), there were some updates that needed to be made before taking it farther afield. 

Since then, I’ve put about 100 hours on the tachometer, with a few minor issues cropping up. My A&P/IA encourages owner-assisted maintenance, which has been great for getting to know the airplane. We’ve added an Airwolf spin-on oil filter, installed shoulder harnesses, retrofitted LED lighting, and swapped out the ancient, venturi-powered turn coordinator for a modern uAvionix AV-30C primary flight display. I’ll never fly the Stinson IFR, but inadvertent IMC happens, and I feel much better having adequate instrumentation to survive a 180-degree turn. 

• READ MORE: Exploring New Zealand’s Grand Islands by Air

Weather permitting, we’re taking the Stinson on a shakedown cruise to Northern California in a few weeks. It should be about 13 hours round trip, our first longer cross-country with the airplane. If all goes well, we’ll head up towards Alaska the following month.. The general consensus seems to be that late May to early July is the best weather period, after incessant lows stop roaring ashore from the Gulf of Alaska but before the thunderstorm and wildfire seasons get going. In reality, weather can be extremely variable any time of year in this part of the world, and our itinerary will stay accordingly flexible. 

I should be able to bid a work schedule with about three weeks off. There are a few potential routes north. Having regularly plied the coastal route in the flight evels, I’d love to go that way, but the chance of getting a long, reliable weather window (in an area with notoriously poor weather and few airports) is pretty slim. In all likelihood, we will clear Canadian customs in Abbotsford, British Columbia, and head north to Prince George via the Fraser River Valley.

From there we can head northeast to join the Alaska Highway, northwest to the Cassiar Highway, or straight up to Watson Lake via MacKenzie and the infamous roadless Trench. The last two are more direct than the Alaska Highway but feature far fewer airports and little weather reporting. The Stinson’s relative lack of range is a big factor here. We can only do about 300 sm in still air with one hour reserve. We’ll likely need to carry jerry cans.

Frankly, given the potential for lengthy bouts of poor weather, I’ll be happy to just make it to Anchorage, where we have several sets of friends. Anything beyond that is a bonus. We enjoy the Kenai Peninsula and wouldn’t mind exploring around there and visiting family friends in Homer. It would also be nice to get up to Denali in good weather. Time permitting, we’d like to land above the Arctic Circle at Bettles, though I doubt we’ll have the time to get all the way up to Deadhorse or Barrow. If we really hit the weather jackpot, I’d love to visit Prince William Sound and the Gulf of Alaska coastline from Valdez to Juneau on the return leg. We’ll see how it goes. 

For the first time in ages, I’ve bought a bunch of paper charts and pubs, as we’ll be in areas too remote to depend on an iPad. Paper is also good for getting a feel for the lay of the land and war gaming various weather scenarios. The plane is nearly ready. I’ve ordered the FCC radio station license and CBP user fee decal. I’m currently getting together camping and survival gear and will shortly begin the weighing and winnowing process. I’m also spending a lot of time looking at flight procedures and weather sources for Canada and the various areas of Alaska. 

I’ll admit that I’m a bit nervous. This is a big trip that will definitely stretch my comfort level. It’s the most ambitious thing I’ve done in a light plane in at least eight years, perhaps ever. But most everything I’ve done in my life that was worth doing started out with this exact feeling. In every case I’ve been able to stay calm, take each challenge as it comes, think things through, and come up with solutions that get me through in one piece, usually with some more great stories to tell around the campfire.

With any luck, I’ll have a few more to tell you in the coming months. 

This column first appeared in the July/August Issue 949 of the FLYING print edition.

The post Love Affair: The Last Frontier Awaits appeared first on FLYING Magazine.

I recently caught up my logbook in preparation for a New Zealand PPL validation, and I’m closing in on 16,000 hours. The country’s authorities also wanted to know my solo time—e.g., sole occupant of the aircraft. The number was surprisingly small, most from way back when I was a Part 135 freight dog. These days, all my work flying is multipilot, but even when puttering around in my Stinson 108, I’m usually accompanied by my wife or friends. I don’t mind flying alone, per say, but I do find it more rewarding when there’s someone with whom to share the experience.

In two decades at the airlines, I’ve come to appreciate that those I fly with really are one of the best parts of the job. Over the years, I’ve shared the flight deck with hundreds of pilots and enjoyed flying with almost all of them. Going through my logbook, I see so many familiar names—and some are still good friends. This is a small industry, and I have chance encounters with past colleagues all the time—in airplanes and airports, obviously, but also in crew vans and layover hotels and pilot-frequented bars, like Darwin’s Theory in Anchorage, Alaska, or Moose’s Saloon in Kalispell, Montana.

My last two airlines, Horizon Air and Compass, were small regional carriers, and it was pretty common to fly with the same person multiple times. This didn’t happen much during my first eight years with my current employer as we’re a huge airline of 17,000 pilots, and over that time I flew three aircraft types out of three large bases. Once I bid to the fairly small Seattle 737 base, though, I started occasionally flying with the same first officers, and it was nice to experience that familiar, small-airline vibe once again.

• READ MORE: Exploring New Zealand’s Grand Islands by Air

One thing I haven’t done, until recently, is buddy-bid with anyone. This is the practice of coordinating your schedule bidding strategy with a pilot in your base to fly as many trips together as possible.

My good friend Brad Phillips, who I’ve written about here, buddy-bid the majority of his 11 years at Horizon Air with just two captains. I’ve also written about Joe and Margrit Fahan, a married couple at my airline who, prior to their joint retirement, buddy-bid international trips on the Airbus A330 together. Over the years, I’ve had trips where I really clicked with my counterpart and probably should have broached the idea of buddy-bidding but always figured that variety is the spice of life. Besides, doing so with any degree of success demands a good bit of seniority out of both parties, and until recently this is something I usually lacked.

But then in summer 2022, I flew with Steve Masek, and we went salmon fishing in Anchorage and had beers at Darwin’s and got along famously. We bid several more agreeable trips together, our wives met and gelled well, and Steve and Daniela gamely helped Dawn and I lay down 3,000 feet of PEX tubing the weekend before our hangar floor was poured. But then Masek got himself awarded a B737 captain slot, far below me on the list in that dark, dank corner where poor junior slobs are forced into reserve, red-eyes, and four-leg days. It was a dumb thing to do, but I’m thrilled for our junior FOs because Masek is a super guy and an excellent pilot.

Before his upgrade last fall, we buddy-bid one last long Anchorage overnight. We wet our lines in Ship Creek on a midnight rising tide, chomped cigars, and quaffed Woodford Reserve in the moonlight—and, alas, the salmon treated us to not even one solitary nibble.

• READ MORE: Part 2: Exploring New Zealand’s Grand Islands by Air

By then I had already found Masek’s replacement, Heather Griffin. We flew a three-day trip together last July and quickly realized that we were going to be fast friends. Heather got her start flying skydivers and is a licensed skydiver herself, as am I. Griffin also flies paragliders, which is a goal of mine. She snowboards and I ski, we both sail, and we both ride dirt bikes.

On the last day of our trip, she realized that I’m the guy who writes for FLYING and used to live on a sailboat and spent years cruising the Caribbean, and she told me that she actually decided to pursue an airline career after her dad (also a pilot) showed her my columns as evidence that she could fly for a stuffy old airline and still live an unconventional, adventurous life. Aw, hell—with me, flattery will get you everywhere. Instant BFF.

Griffin and I were planning a flying, camping, and dirt-biking trip to Tieton State Airport (4S6) in the Cascades of Washington state for a few weeks hence, and she and her husband, Kevin, accepted our invitation to join. We had a great weekend, flying the Stinson at sunrise and sunset, riding Bethel Ridge in the mornings, splashing in Rimrock Lake during the sweltering afternoons, and talking around the campfire while millions of bright stars wheeled overhead. Dawn got to know Heather and liked her a lot.

Meanwhile, I developed a man-crush on Kevin, who’s as cool as his wife: an air ambulance pilot with a bunch of tailwheel time, a badass dirt bike rider, and a great storyteller with a wicked sense of humor and a colorful past as a Coast Guard flight mechanic, commercial fisherman, and Alaskan surf shop operator.

• READ MORE: Pilot Mental Health Remains the Last Taboo in Aviation

With the spouses properly introduced, Griffin and I started buddy-bidding. When the PBS window opens each month, we peruse the bid package and text back and forth, debating the merits of various trips and crafting a common strategy that will fit both of our plans. Sometimes it works; sometimes it doesn’t. When the schedule assignments come out, we dig into the reasons report, figuring out what we did right and where we went wrong. As our trips together approach, we confer again to make layover plans: playing pinball in Raleigh, North Carolina, skydiving in Phoenix, roping up at an Anchorage climbing gym, or skiing at Lake Tahoe.

In cruise, shared interests fuel our conversations, and future adventures are a frequent topic. It didn’t take much to convince Heather and Kevin to join Dawn and I on an 11-day, 11-person dirt bike trip down Baja California in January. Griffin’s dad, Scott Condon, came too—and at 65 turned out to be the best and fastest rider of us all. It was a fantastic time with a wonderful group of friends, and we’re planning another big ride in the Pacific Northwest this summer.

In February, Heather and I got skunked, our buddy-bidding strategy foiled by pilots just senior to us. I flew with a bunch of great folks anyway—several of them brand-new to the airline—and had a lot of fun. March brought better luck. I’m about to fly a five-day trip with Griffin that includes a long Cozumel layover, and later on we have an easy four-day with 26 hours in Cabo San Lucas, where Dawn and Kevin will join us.

Most days, this is a really good job, and I frequently wonder at my good fortune. And then, when I thought my work life couldn’t get much better, I gained a good friend to fly with—and it did!

This column first appeared in the May 2024/Issue 948 of FLYING’s print edition.

The post Finding That Right Pilot Buddy to Bid With appeared first on FLYING Magazine.

Describing these two hours required three pages crammed with significantly more words than my usual monthly allotment, and yet I promised to cover the balance of the tour in a single additional installment.

Well, here goes nothing.

I won’t even attempt to adequately describe the remainder of the first day, which involved a lot of probing around the Fiordland’s misty maze of mountains and glacial valleys with several minimum-radius turnbacks from socked-in passes before finally finding a clear one that dropped us into perfectly named Doubtful Sound. When I finally landed ZK-WAX back in Wanaka, our home base for the week, I was thoroughly exhausted, exhilarated, and emotionally spent. It was the most visually intense day of flying in my life, not to mention a great deal more work than I’m used to putting in these days. A good cigar, glass of scotch, and eight full hours of sound sleep were in order.

• READ MORE: Exploring New Zealand’s Grand Islands by Air

I was glad to find it wasn’t just me: Adam Broome, the North Carolinian piloting FlyInn’s other Cessna 172 (ZK-TRS) with his wife, Lissa, and FlyInn instructor Nick Taylor, confirmed that he was equally wiped out. And then McCaughan informed us that thanks to the weather window holding, we would be moving up our exploration of Mount Cook and the Southern Alps to the next day, never mind the wind forecast. This was akin to starting with the caviar and moving straight on to the crème brûlée—or perhaps more like competing in back-to-back Ironman triathlons.

The day began with calm winds, fair skies, and a short field approach into a 1,500-foot crop-duster’s strip in a cow pasture (very recently used, as I discovered soon after landing). From there we jaunted across to Lake Hawea and up the scenic Hunter River valley. The farther north we went, though, the windier and more turbulent it got.

At McCaughan’s urging, I moved farther and farther toward the downwind side of the valley until my right wing seemed to almost scrape the rocky slope— and then we were in a steady, powerful lift, riding the elevator upward at 1,500 feet per minute in relatively smooth air. My experience flying gliders came in handy, especially the bit of ridge soaring I’ve done. I became increasingly good at visualizing areas of lift and smooth air throughout our windy week and started to really enjoy surfing the ridges. Dawn, for her part, gamely endured the occasional solid thumping in the back seat, the price of admission for a whole week of world-class scenery.

• READ MORE: Pilot Mental Health Remains the Last Taboo in Aviation

Now climbing through 10,000 feet, the immense, icy form of the Mount Cook massif rose ahead. This was familiar territory, as we had camped and hiked in Aoraki/Mount Cook National Park the previous week. Mount Sefton, which had towered above our campsite in the moonlight and blazed in the morning alpenglow, slipped inconspicuously under our right wing. The Tasman, Hooker, Fox, and Franz Josef glaciers, whose gravel-strewn terminuses we had glimpsed from below, revealed themselves for the colossal blue giants they are, emerging from one enormous ice sheet draped around the shoulder of 12,218-foot Mount Cook. Climbers’ huts clinging to desolate rock ledges gave perspective to the landscape’s epic scale.

As Dawn and I gazed around, McCaughan sent a constant stream of radio position reports since flightseeing is popular here, and Mount Cook lies within a mandatory broadcast zone. There’s a standard circuit around the sights, but we were deviating to stay out of strong rotors downwind of the peaks. In any case, there weren’t too many sightseers braving the maelstrom, the conditions of which reminded me a bit of the long-ago winter I spent flying freight up California’s Owens Valley. The Southern Alps are a lot lower than the Sierra Nevada, though, and the winds aloft weren’t nearly as fearsome as during a West Coast frontal passage.

• READ MORE: On the ‘Bax’ Foot: A Lifelong Writer Tackles the Spoken Word

After landing for lunch at Glentanner, we headed west to Lake Ohau and started up the fertile, ranch-dotted Hopkins Valley. As we approached Mount Glenmary the wind started really kicking again. Turning up a side tributary, we surfed up the leeward slope to clear a low saddle under Mount Huxley then ducked into the calmer Ahuriri River drainage. Working our way south, beyond Lindis Pass we descended into a gorgeous, golden valley with green fields, farm buildings, and an airstrip at the bottom.

This is Geordie Hill Station, the 5,500- acre ranch where five generations of McCaughans have raised Merino sheep and beef cattle and where Matt and his wife, Jo, started FlyInn. Originally, guests stayed at the ranch. Now accommodations are in the lake resort town of Wanaka, a 10-minute flight west. Dawn and I came to really enjoy Wanaka, but I think we would have been equally happy staying in the beautiful, peaceful surroundings of Geordie Hill Station.

The next day, Matt McCaughan’s ranching duties took precedence, and we were paired with affable, experienced instructor Peter Hendriks for an overnight trip to the southeastern coastal city of Dunedin. The wind was still kicking, but at least lower terrain made for a less intense workout. From the central Otago crossroads of Cromwell we crossed into the Nevis River valley and followed it down to the verdant Southland Plains. We stopped at Mandeville’s pleasant little grass strip for lunch, checked out the Croydon Aviation Heritage Centre’s beautiful collection of vintage de Havilland aircraft, and made a quick flight with just Hendriks and I to complete the training requirements for my New Zealand PPL validation.

• WATCH: V1 Rotate: New Zealand by Air

Job done, Dawn clambered back into ZK-WAX and we headed south to the Catlins, a beautiful stretch of remote, craggy coastline straight out of western Ireland. We followed the wild coast northeastward, put in a good word with the controllers at Dunedin International Airport (NZDN), and landed at nontowered Taieri Airfield (NZTI). FlyInn put us up in a very nice hotel in central Dunedin, an atmospheric college town with a strong Scottish accent. Dawn and I had a good afternoon walkabout, then joined Hendriks, the Broomes, and Taylor for a lovely seafood dinner at an excellent restaurant tucked away by the seaport.

The next morning, we took a two-hour harbor cruise with local wildlife expert Rachel McGregor, spotting blue penguins, sea lions, and magnificent northern royal albatrosses at Taiaroa Head. A few hours later, we viewed the harbor from the air before heading up the coast to Oamaru and then inland via the Waitaki River and its series of impressive hydroelectric dams.

The weather window finally collapsed with a strong cold front bringing more wind, rain, and clouds than even a Kiwi pilot might care to tackle, giving us a Saturday off to poke around Otago wine country by car. Sunday dawned clear but windy, which we planned to mitigate by transiting Queenstown and Lake Wakatipu en route to Glenorchy. Queenstown Tower thought otherwise, given the steady stream of jets arriving down the Kawarau Gorge, so we were ordered to remain clear of controlled airspace. Alas, we bounced our way west across the mountains north of Queenstown, emerging from Monument Saddle to spiral down over the gravel-strewn Dart River on the way to landing on yet another beautiful grass runway.

After a ride into Glenorchy and a pub lunch, we headed back up the Dart River, this time via jet boat. It was a fun and beautiful journey, as the shallow draft and rapid speed took us 20 miles upriver into some rather gorgeous wilderness. It was well into the afternoon when we departed for the quick flight back to Wanaka, except there was so much interesting scenery that we dawdled and wandered, our track resembling a Family Circus cartoon. In particular, the spectacular Rob Roy Glacier near Mount Aspiring offered a perfect semicircular amphitheater to hang the flaps out and make a slow pass close inside the perimeter. ZK-TRS beat ZK-WAX back to the stable rather handily, and neither we nor Hendriks minded one bit.

Our last full day of flying circuited rural Otego, and I expected a fairly tame day out. McCaughan was back, his business with the spring lambs concluded, but he accompanied the Broomes while we nabbed Taylor, a very cheerful chap and laid-back instructor. After dropping in to visit the historic gold rush town of Clyde, we followed the popular Otago Central Rail Trail northeast to the Ida Valley and a little township called Oturehua. Now, Oturehua doesn’t have an airport, but there is a fairly level sheep paddock alongside the highway that Taylor assured me was fairly landable.

So much for a tame day out.

It seems the sheep had been absent for a few weeks as the grass was quite a bit taller than expected, but ZK-WAX handled lawn mower duties with aplomb. We visited 19th century farm-implement factory Hayes Engineering Works, with its fascinating water-powered, leather-belt-driven machine shop. Everything still works. The old-timer docent gamely powered up the shop and demonstrated use of the original lathe, press punch, shears, band saw, and more. After our visit, we enjoyed a beautiful flight surfing the ridges to Geordie Hill Station, where McCaughan gave us a longer tour, and Jo McCaughan cooked a fantastic lamb dinner. It was a really nice way to cap off our FlyInn experience.

We ended up moving our departure back by one day to do some more hiking near Wanaka and up around Rob Roy Glacier. The following morning we flew ZK-TRS to Queenstown to catch our airline flight home. True to form, New Zealand gave us a windier-and-cloudier-than forecast sendoff, with a slightly dicey ridge crossing and a good couple final thumps of turbulence.

I now hold a NZ PPL validation, which gives me solo privileges in New Zealand through June, should we care to return. We’re sorely tempted. My wife Dawn and I fell in love with the people, landscapes, and aviation scene in New Zealand, and I learned a great deal about mountain flying and NZ operations during our time with FlyInn.

If you have the time and money for a flying tour of New Zealand, I would highly recommend it. It’s a grand adventure, and a true bucket list experience.

This column first appeared in the April 2024/Issue 947 of FLYING’s print edition.

The post Part 2: Exploring New Zealand’s Grand Islands by Air appeared first on FLYING Magazine.

I’ve subscribed to this venerable periodical since my early teens and read it in the local library for a few years before that. I’d peruse the news and gawp at the air-to-air photos and soak up every word of the articles, but first I’d head straight to the columns, for it was there that my love of aviation and appreciation of good writing were most equally rewarded. My two favorites were Len Morgan’s “Vectors” and Gordon Baxter’s “Bax Seat.” Morgan was everything I wanted to be, with the fortune of having been born in a more interesting age. There was such grace and poignancy to his writing, infused with the wisdom of a long life well lived, and a little sadness as well, for his more interesting age was one in which an aviator regularly lost compatriots he called friends.

But my favorite personality in the old FLYING was Gordon Baxter. “Bax” wasn’t so much a pilot as he was a character, and he was very upfront about that. His columns were full of his foibles and inadequacies as an aviator, as well as various hijinks that made me wonder how he ever evaded the steely gaze of the FAA and various designated examiners. (Martha Lunken is his spiritual—and literal—successor. Somewhere Bax is looking down—or up—and thanking the controlling deity that he predated webcams.)

By the time I started reading him, Bax had grounded himself because of recurring seizures and only occasionally took flight with other pilots. But, in his own exaggeratedly down-home Texas fashion, Bax was able to convey, in a way few others could, everything that people like you and I find wonderful, magical, and captivating about flight, airplanes, and aviators.

• READ MORE: Allure of International Flying Lies Across the Glittering Sea

I think the other reason I liked Bax was that he so clearly had the gift of gab, something I decidedly lacked at that self-conscious age. Long before he wrote for FLYING (and Car and Driver), and even before he started writing for local newspapers, Bax was a well-known radio personality in Southeast Texas, famous since 1945 for his madcap style and on-air antics. He frequently moved stations, being fired each time “for the same reason they hired me. I’m Gordon Baxter, and there’s no cure for that.” Later he spent a fair amount of time on the speaking circuit, and he wrote about that too. He drove around the South to spin a couple hours of folksy humor to perfect strangers eating rubber chicken—they loving him, and he loving them right back. As a bookish, introverted teenager with a slight speech impediment, that sort of easy volubility awed me, and I was a bit jealous of it. Still am.

I’ve loved words from an early age, but for me they were things to be considered and weighed, massaged and delivered to the world in my own good time. By my teens I knew my strengths and weaknesses fairly well, and I counted writing among the former and speaking as one of the latter. Like most people, I’ve always tried to lead publicly with my strengths while privately working on my shortcomings. These included my lack of ability in practical matters (so I worked on my own vehicles, cruised aboard and maintained Windbird, and built our hangar-apartment) and my natural aversion to pain, discomfort, and risk (so I ski, motorcycle, dirt-bike, and

skydive). In my late teens, I made a conscious effort to come out of my shell and talk to people even when it was uncomfortable, and as I’ve aged, I’ve become increasingly extroverted and comfortable in my own skin. Dawn scoffs when I describe myself as an introvert, noting with some exasperation that “you’ll talk till the cows come home!” She’s not wrong. It helps that I’ve accumulated a pretty good cache of funny and/or interesting stories (some of them even true!) as I’ve traveled the world and embarked on various adventures. I love hearing a good story, and I enjoy telling one.

That said, I haven’t gone out of my way to seek out public speaking opportunities. The only one I’ve accepted until now, at the abortive ModAero aviation/music festival, ended up being somewhat disastrous, insomuch as I poured myself into preparation for a presentation that ended up being attended by all of four people (Taking Wing, June 2016). More recently, my videos for FLYING’s V1 Rotate web series have forced me, for the first time, to really hone my delivery. Seeing yourself in high-definition video is the most brutally honest form of feedback you’ll ever get. Making the videos has improved my pacing and rhythm of my intonations, cleaned up my enunciation, made me more conscious of my posture and facial expressions, and prompted me to become more liberal with gestures. It has actually changed my speaking to more closely mirror my writing. Fortunately, I’m usually filming myself and have the luxury of virtually unlimited takes—because a lot of takes have sometimes been required to get it right!

• READ MORE: Just Another Day in Airplane Heaven

So when Larry Buerk from EAA Chapter 818 emailed me with an invitation to speak at its meeting, I decided the time was right to take the leap. As a longtime EAA member (and a product of the Young Eagles program), these are folks I’m comfortable around. It’s about as low stress of an environment as I could wish for my debut. Indeed, once we land at Skagit, head inside the terminal, and start meeting folks, the nerves mostly subside. After an hour of chapter business and another guest, it’s my turn to speak. I cue up the accompanying photo presentation and begin my lecture on “Creating an Aviation Homestead in the Pacific Northwest.”

Buerk films the entire thing for the chapter’s YouTube channel, where you can find it if you’re so inclined. I’m pretty stiff at the beginning, hands drawn toward the lectern and eyes toward my laptop screen. As the presentation proceeds, though, my body language opens up considerably. I do a better job of maintaining eye contact and using gestures. The audience of 25 or 30 is agreeably engaged, laughing at my jokes and periodically interjecting pertinent remarks and questions. The interruptions to rehearsed flow actually help me loosen up. I speak extemporaneously at some length in response to questions. The members give me a nice round of applause afterward and stick around to chat and give Piper a scratch behind the ears. It’s a really nice experience.

Does my humble little presentation for a local EAA chapter mark the launch of a second (ahem, third or fourth) career touring the rubber-chicken speaking circuit, like our ole pal Bax? Probably not! That said, having faced a lifelong bugaboo and coming away without embarrassing myself and even enjoying the experience, I do think I’d like to stretch myself with a few more speaking gigs and see if I can’t get better with a bit more practice. If you’re desperate and need a freebie speaker to fill time at your EAA chapter, flying club, or airport association meeting, well, I’m a sucker for all those types of events and can probably be talked into all sorts of foolishness. Drop me a line and lure me in. I’m particularly susceptible to hints about rides in cool, old airplanes.

This column first appeared in the December 2023/Issue 944 of FLYING’s print edition.

The post On the ‘Bax’ Foot: A Lifelong Writer Tackles the Spoken Word appeared first on FLYING Magazine.

As we settled into the Boeing 737’s cozy cockpit and started to build our nests, I recounted some of the more maddening episodes of my last four-day tour and told John that after this trip my wife and I were headed to Italy for 11 days of sightseeing, hanging out on Lake Como, and attending the Formula 1 race at Monza. John, for his part, revealed that this pairing would be his very last outing in the senescent, unloved 737 as henceforth, he was departing for the sunlit uplands of the Airbus A330.

John’s pronouncement induced a flood of conflicting emotions. On one hand, I hate to lose good first officers who I actually know, and John is not the only cockpit companion who has recently succumbed to the glittering charms of an international widebody fleet. But on the other hand, he’s been at the airline for six years, and in these heady days of explosive advancement, that’s considered quite a long time indeed to hang out in the right seat of a narrowbody aircraft. John’s promotion to the A330 will yield him a considerable leap in both pay and quality of life, not to mention a welcome change of scenery. I’m glad for him, and a little jealous too. I was a Boeing 757/767 FO for four years, and the fleet took me to five continents. I miss that flying. I’d like to do it again.

To pilots who haven’t done both, the differences between domestic and international airline flying must seem a bit frivolous, perhaps even ego driven: There is the prestige and romance of jetting across oceans versus the workaday squalor of flogging aging “little” airplanes up and down interstate corridors three or four times a day. To be sure, there is absolutely an element of that. Rolling down the runway in a 370,000-pound airplane, lifting off with ponderous ceremony, and embarking on a transoceanic journey of some 4,000 miles always gave me a really warm, stirring sense of contented excitement, a feeling of setting off on a grand adventure. Few domestic routes impart such a poignant sense of wonder. And to be sure, friends and strangers are always more interested to hear about your exploits in Barcelona than a 12-hour layover in Cleveland.

Aesthetics aside, though, there are real distinctions in the working environment between domestic and international fleets. “It’s like a whole different airline,” goes the common refrain. Things are far more relaxed, much more “gentlemanly” to use an archaic but apropos term. We have only one leg per duty period on which to concentrate our energies. There are three pilots to share the load (four on flights of more than 12 hours). We show up at the airport 90 minutes or more before departure and have all the time in the world to go through our preflight duties. Dispatch usually completes the release well ahead of schedule and is quite proactive in heading off potential problems. Likewise, there are multiple gate agents plus a supervisor to ably handle most passenger issues in conjunction with the purser. In domestic flying, it often seems that the captain is the default troubleshooter. With international operations, very few problems make it forward of the cockpit door.

With an augmented crew of three pilots, you spend one-third of the cruise time absent from the flight deck, resting on your designated break. Long flights are rather shortened by being broken up into thirds as pilots cycle in and out. I found that most international flights of eight or 10 hours practically flew by, in comparison to five-hour domestic transcontinental flights that seem to drag on forever. It helps that you change out cockpit companions every three hours or so, keeping conversation fresh. Even if you can’t stand the person—and I’ve found maybe two or three of these in 19 years of airline flying—you only need to stew in silence for a few hours before being relieved.

Relief pilot is not a predesignated position at my airline. Theoretically, the captain assigns duties at the beginning of the trip, but in practice they will usually fly the first leg and let the two first officers hash out the rest among themselves. The relief FO normally takes the first rest break and then relieves the pilot flying (second break) and pilot monitoring (third break) in turn. This made it an unpopular position on eastbound trans-Atlantic legs, where first break often coincides with a circadian high and an active meal service, making for difficult rest (most of our 767s lack a bunk room like the A330; we use a first-class seat with a curtain). As a lifelong flexible sleeper, I usually volunteered for relief duties on these flights, and, besides the gratitude of my fellow FOs, was often rewarded with a flying leg on the westbound return.

I took a lot of pride in being a good relief pilot, especially during high-workload periods at busy international airports, where a sharp relief crew can be worth its weight in gold. You see a ton from the jumpseat and can often help the flying pilots head off trouble before it ever begins. My crowning moment came during a takeoff from London-Heathrow (EGLL), when the captain’s oxygen mask started spontaneously free flowing, but the sound was masked by unusually loud packs. Just after rotation, I realized the source of the noise and, throwing off my harness and headset, flew across the cockpit to smack the errant mask into submission. We all glanced up at the crew oxygen gauge; it was barely above the minimum, saving us from a mandatory divert. The captain bought the layover beers that night.

You might suppose the primary draw of international flying to be the layovers, and in my case you wouldn’t be wide of the mark. I took full advantage of 24- to 48- hour Europe layovers and 36-hour South American interludes, cramming in as much adventure as was prudent. It’s instructive that I’ve written about many international layovers in these pages—flying a microlight in Germany and a classic Robin taildragger in France,

hang gliding in Rio, visiting a World War I aerodrome in Italy and a flying boat museum in Ireland—while spilling minimal ink over their domestic counterparts.

I also enjoyed the international crew dynamic. It’s not unusual for all three pilots and a majority of the flight attendants to at least meet for happy hour, if not for dinner or a night on the town. This is much rarer on the domestic side at my airline, though I’ve put good effort into rectifying that since upgrade, with better-than-average results.

• READ MORE: A Primer on Pilot Certificate Conversions

A lot of my compatriots, however, don’t necessarily care if they quaff Maibock in Munich or Miller in Milwaukee, and an equal number profess indifference to the cabin crew’s participation, or lack thereof, in layover fun. The real draw of international flying, for most, is that it’s supremely efficient. In John’s new category of Seattle A330, even junior pilots can easily cram a full month’s flying into only 12 days, leaving the rest free for family, hobbies, or second careers or businesses. The trips are also very commuter-friendly, with late report times and early releases. On international fleets, there’s very little the company can legally do to reschedule you to cover broken trips. One need not fear storms up and down the East Coast. At worst, you go home early with full pay.

All of which explains why the international fleets go insanely senior at my airline. John is just now able to hold A330 first officer status, but he could have held Seattle 737 captain more than two years ago. Likewise, I would be slightly more junior as an A330 FO than I am as a 737 captain. Despite that—and the prospect of a 20 percent pay cut—the idea of taking a downgrade looks attractive each time I see the A330’s monthly bid package.

Pretty much my entire career—and my life—has been divided up into roughly five-year chunks. Whenever I do anything for that long, I tend to become bored and knock over the house of cards to see what I can build next. I’ve been a 737 captain for three and a half years, and while I’m still reasonably engaged, I’ve started to eye my next move. The most optimistic projections show that I might be able to hold A330 captain in six years (be still my heart). I probably ought to go “learn French” on an Airbus product in the meantime, which in Seattle means A320 captain or A330 FO.

Which to choose? I won’t lie. I do enjoy flying with “my own favorite captain” every single week, and to be stripped of that fourth stripe does involve a certain subjugation of the ego. On the other hand, I’m writing this column at a table overlooking the Grand Canal in sunny, beautiful Venice, sipping an Aperol spritz and remembering a time not so long ago when this was my everyday work life. It’s tempting, very tempting, to go back to that. We’ll see, but John and I may yet fly together again somewhere across the glittering sea.

This column first appeared in the November 2023/Issue 943 of FLYING’s print edition.

The post Allure of International Flying Lies Across the Glittering Sea appeared first on FLYING Magazine.

It looked like airplane heaven.

Dawn and I had been living and cruising the Caribbean aboard our 42-foot sailboat, Windbird, for the previous three years. On long passages, we curled up in the cockpit at night, watching phosphorescence stream into the starlit combers sweeping under our stern and listening to the gurgle of water past the hull, and dreamed up our post-sailing life together. It would be centered around general aviation, we determined, but would also include terrestrial adventures like motorcycling, camping, and travel. It would involve a return to the Pacific Northwest, where we lived a decade previously and still missed. We’d get a quiet place in the country, with lots of room for our dog, Piper, to run and roam. We’d take an active role in forging our homestead, getting dirt under our nails and calluses on our hands while building upon some of the more practical skills we had gained in our years at sea.

This morning, almost exactly four years after I first laid eyes on our future home, I awoke to bright sunlight streaming through our bedroom window. It’s another beautiful summer day, with a light breeze just rustling the windsock past the handsome strand of cedars. I get up and put coffee on the stove then step out to the hangar. It’s a bit of a mess, with boxes and detritus from the move still scattered about, but I’m steadily building workbenches and custom shelving and getting things organized. I open the 44-foot hydraulic hangar door and sunshine flows over the Stinson, sitting rather incongruously gift wrapped in painter’s plastic. Last week, I noticed the finishing tape over the left wing spar was lifting and peeling back in two spots, requiring I take those areas down to bare fabric, iron the tape flat, reapply adhesive (Poly-Brush, as my airplane is covered with the Poly-Fiber system), and build the finish back up. Today, I’m spraying Poly-Spray, the silvery UV coating that likes to get everywhere (thus the gift-wrapped Stinson and tarps over everything nearby).

Just another day in airplane heaven.

Our 50-by-60-foot hangar is basically as I envisioned when I first saw the clearing it occupies, except it has an attached 15-by-60-foot, two-bedroom apartment that wasn’t in the original plan. The wooded building site up the hill is still undisturbed. We actually went so far as having an architect draft house plans based on a rustic design I’ve had in my head for years before COVID-19 and runaway construction costs made us choose what we wanted more: a house or hangar. But the apartment has turned out really well—better than I imagined, actually—and I think we’ll be happy to live here for some time. Both my life and career have tended to go in half-decade cycles, and I suspect that in five years or so I’ll start to get the construction itch again. For the moment, it is very well scratched.

The last time I wrote about our progress, in the April 2023/Issue 936 column, we still had bare studs in the apartment and a gaping hole in the front of our hangar. Over the following months, I assembled the hydraulic door with our contractor’s help, hired a drywall company to do Sheetrock and texturing, and painted the place myself. We ordered custom cabinets and quartz countertops, which contractors had installed along with the plank flooring. I installed the tub surround, toilet, and vanity, and did all the electrical and plumbing finish work, including installing the tankless propane hot water heater.

Outside, I trenched in the gas line conduit from the propane tank and drain hoses from the downspouts and catch basins to the county-mandated stormwater dispersion trenches, which were multiday projects in their own right. I used our immensely useful Kubota BX-23S tractor/backhoe (my first brand-new vehicle) to get everything filled and graded nicely, and our concrete contractor poured the apron, stoops, and side patio. I brought in three dump trucks of gravel to build up the driveway and four of topsoil for the yard. Seeding, covering, and watering the new lawn was a major project that is ongoing given the sunny, dry weather. We did all this, by the way, while I flew a full schedule at the airline and Dawn was busy baking and selling her popular dog treats at farmers’ markets around the area.

• READ MORE: Delays, Mistakes All Part of Building a Dream Hangar

For three weeks in June and July, we received a huge help in the form of Dawn’s parents, Tom and Marg Schmitz, visiting from South Dakota. Like my own father, Tom is a retired contractor, and Marg is quite handy as well. While I was installing appliances, working outside, finishing odd jobs, and attending to various county inspections, Tom and Marg hung all the interior doors and undertook the herculean job of painting, installing, and caulking trim. I wasn’t even planning on having much trim done before we moved in, but Tom and Marg just about finished it. And then, when I learned that the county required all 4,000 square feet of siding to be stained before final inspection, our friends Brad and Amber Phillips showed up from across the country to help us knock it out in two days.

We moved in at the start of July—initially just for the Fourth of July weekend, to get Piper away from the crazy fireworks in town. We loved being up here so much—and our productivity went up so much—that we stayed for good, occupancy permit be damned. We moved all the furniture from our previous apartment one week later. There was a delay waiting on backed-up state electrical inspectors, but on July 25 we finally had our last county inspection and passed with flying colors. Dawn and I celebrated with an outrageously good glass of Balvenie PortWood 21-year-old Scotch, which I had kept on the shelf unopened for the previous nine months as a little extra motivation. The celebratory Stinson flight is waiting on my fabric repair.

So ended phase one of the project that we dreamed up on those magical starlit passages aboard Windbird and put into motion when we bought an overgrown, brambly piece of airplane heaven. Phase two—next summer’s project—will involve improved landscaping, insulating the hangar, installing a boiler for in-floor heat, and incorporating a standby generator.

A little further down the road we’ll likely install solar panels and incorporate other off-grid improvements. And, yes, at some point we’ll probably want a bit more space to accommodate our far-flung friends from around the country and globe, and we’ll build our little three-bedroom cabin in the woods. When that happens, perhaps we’ll turn the hangar apartment into a fly-in bed-and-breakfast.

For now, we’re simply enjoying living on the strip, taking a breather from our labors, and embarking on some fun adventures while we plan our next moves.

This column first appeared in the October 2023/Issue 942 of FLYING’s print edition.

The post Just Another Day in Airplane Heaven appeared first on FLYING Magazine.

It was June 9, 1944, only three days after the greatest seaborne invasion in history, and Allied troops clung to a perilously slender strip of French coastline after failing to achieve the bulk of their D-Day objectives. Fighting for their lives against a tenacious and skilled enemy that was beginning to flow into Normandy, the Allied armies were depending on air superiority to slow the stream of German reinforcements. That night, as one of five RAF heavy bombing missions against French rail centers, 108 Lancasters were scheduled to attack the railyard at Étampes, south of Paris. Six aircraft would not return. If their crews didn’t have any particular sense of impending doom, if a milk run to northern France seemed preferable to interminable hellish hours over the heart of Germany, they nevertheless set out across the English Channel with eyes wide open. In five years of war, Bomber Command had absorbed staggering losses of airplanes and men, and Squadron No. 49 had few “old hands” left from the early days.

Seventy-nine years later, I happened upon the grave of Bell and four of his crew on a sunny spring afternoon. Set on the modern edge of an ancient Norman town, Bayeux War Cemetery isn’t as pastoral or as beautifully sited as the other Commonwealth, American, or even German cemeteries, but, shaded by blooming chestnut trees and neatly tended with a variety of plants and flowers, it very much has the atmosphere of an English public garden. White marble gravestones evenly spaced in neat rows contain regimental insignia, crosses, crescents, and Stars of David, as well as personal inscriptions from family members.

Amid the geometric perfection, there are several headstones that stick out for being immediately adjacent, with multiple names inscribed. These are all aircrew, and Lancaster ND533 has the greatest number buried together. Flying Officer Bryan E. Bell is joined in death by air gunner F/O Hilary D. Clark, 28; wireless operator/gunner Sgt. John Holden, 21; navigator F/O Duncan MacFadyen, 28, of the Royal Australian Air Force; and air gunner Sergeant Joseph J. Reed, 23. I wondered what happened to the two others and snapped a photo for research.

I had to come to Normandy to tour the landing beaches and battlefields with my father, three brothers, and history aficionado Uncle Mickey. We had enough time to explore many of the sites of lesser-known actions, such as La Fière Bridge, Le Mesnil-Patry, Villers-Bocage, and Hill 112. A lot of the focus on “Operation Overlord” is centered on the landing beaches—bloody Omaha above all—but even there fewer than 1,000 men lost their lives against some 40,000 Americans, British, and Canadians in the furious 10-week Battle of Normandy that followed. When you visit the area, much of it surprisingly little changed since 1944, you understand why. It is a close terrain of hills, vales, and dense hedgerows that strongly favors defense. The Germans made the most of it, fighting skillfully and bravely—fanatically in the case of the Waffen-SS—despite being greatly outnumbered and underestimated by the Allies as “boys and old men.”

The Germans were also aided by technically superior equipment, particularly the Panther and Tiger tanks that took a fearsome toll on the Allies’ relatively light Shermans, Cromwells, and Churchills. This advantage was greatly blunted by the combination of Allied air superiority and Adolf Hitler’s military ineptitude and insistence on total control. The Allies had successfully duped Hitler into thinking Normandy was a feint—that the main invasion would come across the Pas-de-Calais—and he refused to release many of the Panzer divisions that would have posed a major threat to the operation. When they were shifted southwest, slowly and piecemeal, the Allies’ destruction of the French rail network forced the German reinforcements onto the roads, where they were hounded endlessly by the P-47s and P-38s of the U.S. 9th Tactical Air Command and the Hawker Typhoons of the RAF’s 2nd Tactical Air Force. This strategy—the “Transportation Plan”—was what brought Lancaster ND533 to the rail yard at Étampes on the night of June 9 to 10.

This attack was a minor footnote in the annals of Bomber Command, which by this time was regularly mounting night attacks of 500 to 1,000 aircraft deep into Germany. The surviving records indicate the bomber stream formed and crossed into France over Dieppe at 11:15 p.m., and opposition on the inbound leg was light. The preceding de Havilland Mosquito path-finders successfully located and marked the target, and the bombing run commenced. The initial wave of bombers were on target, but then the bomb line started to wander, resulting in the destruction of some 400 civilian homes. Lancasters orbited while the “Master of Ceremonies” sorted things out, and German defenses were fully alerted by the time ND533 turned for home just after midnight. Awaiting in the darkness was the Ju-88R piloted by Hauptmann (Captain) Heinz-Horst Hißbach of Nachtjagdgeschwader 2 (2nd Night Fighter Wing). The night fighters and the flak of the Germans’ formidable FLAK-36 88 mm anti-aircraft cannon were the twin scourges of Bomber Command, and together with a third enemy, the weather, ensured a staggering 44 percent of RAF bomber crews from 1939-1945 lost their lives in the fight. Hißbach was a skilled pilot who would go on to command NJG 2 and amass 30 claimed kills before being killed himself in the final month of the war while strafing an Allied column. His fighter was equipped with a FuG-202 Lichtenstein UHF radar set, so it is likely that the crew of ND533 had no idea he was there until it was too late. At 12:38 a.m., Hißbach attacked the Lancaster with cannon fire, and it was shortly thereafter seen dropping out of the bomber stream in flames. Several villagers in the vicinity of Rosay-sur-Lieure were awake and observed the Lancaster crashing 2 kilometers north of town. They arrived the next morning, sifted through the wreckage, and collected six bodies for burial. Five of these were eventually exhumed and transferred to Bayeux War Cemetery; the sixth, flight engineer Sergeant Sidney C. Holmes, 28, is buried in nearby Marissel French National Cemetery.

The fate of the seventh crew member is interesting and quite sad. Bomb aimer F/O Philip D. Hemmens of Essex, 21, successfully bailed out of ND533 before it crashed. This was much rarer in Lancasters than other types because of the small size and placement of the escape hatch. Hemmens was sheltered by a local member of the French resistance, Huguette Verhague, along with four other airmen but was betrayed by a German collaborator and handed over to the Gestapo in Paris on August 9, only two weeks before liberation. With the collapse of the German front, 168 Allied airmen, including Hemmens, were shipped east to the notorious Buchenwald concentration camp on August 15 through 20. For two months they experienced a small sample of the horrors the Nazi regime was inflicting on Jews, Roma, homosexuals, the disabled, political prisoners, and other “undesirables.” Eventually, the airmen were transferred to a regular POW camp, but it came too late for Hemmens. He died on September 27 owing to medical neglect after seven days of rheumatic fever and sepsis stemming from injuries sustained during the bailout. His remains were never recovered.

• READ MORE: Downed WWII Lancaster Bomber Raised from Sea Floor

Having learned something about the crew of ND533, I decided to find the crash site and was able to do so the morning before I flew back to the States. It rests just inside a small wood surrounded by rolling farmland, a few kilometers west of the picturesque half-timbered village of Lyons-la-Forêt. A short path leads to a granite plaque with a French inscription erected in 2010 to replace the simple wooden cross the villagers had placed on the site in 1944. Two of the Merlin engines were also excavated—their craters are still visible. This is a peaceful, shaded place filled with birdsong. After a week spent visiting places where men fought, suffered, and died in the struggle to free Europe from the grip of fascism—and where even more died in the service of the Nazi regime—this is a place for quiet reflection.

We are nearing 80 years since the end of the cataclysm of World War II, and only a handful of those veterans are still with us. I fear the conflict—and its sources and lasting repercussions—is becoming increasingly abstract, something that happened long ago to grainy people in black-and-white films. As a pilot, pondering the fate of individuals like Bryan Bell and the young airmen of ND533 helps make the cost of WWII relatable. The war in Ukraine shows that propaganda, dictatorship, and aggressive militarism remain a threat even today. Many recent events demonstrate the renewed temptations of political extremism, intolerance, and demonization of “the other.” In such times, it is important to remember the high price paid by so many the last time such feverish currents ran rampant, and for each of us to vow to do whatever we can to prevent their reoccurrence.

This article first appeared in the August 2023/Issue 940 print edition of FLYING.

The post Mission to Étampes appeared first on FLYING Magazine.

When Dawn and I bought our previous airplane, a 1953 Piper Pacer, we vowed to fly it at least ten hours a month, and indeed we clocked some 220 hours over 18 months of ownership. This time around, I’ve only flown our Stinson 40 hours since buying it in August. This is partly because Pacific Northwest winters, while much milder than in Minnesota, offer far fewer days that are flyable in a strictly VFR airplane. Secondly, I’ve been quite busy finishing our hangar apartment and that’s taken up the vast majority of my time when I’m not flying for work.

Still, I know there is nothing worse for an airplane—or a pilot!—than sitting on the ground, and so I’ve tried to take the Stinson for at least a short flight once every week or two to get the oil up to temp. Unfortunately for the last month it has been imprisoned in its hangar by an impressively solid 44-by-15-foot Higher Power hydraulic door frame, which we assembled and hoisted into place before we had power in the hangar to actually open it. The electrician finally showed up only yesterday after several weeks’ delay. In the interim, we have had some beautiful VFR days that hint at the coming of spring, and I’ve been rather frustrated at my inability to take my flightless bird aloft.

Yes, I have been flying the Boeing 737 plenty—a bit more than I’d like, actually. And I’ll admit, there have been periods of my life where airline flying scratched that itch I’ve had since childhood. It just doesn’t quite do the trick right now. This probably seems absurd to the multitude of young pilots just beginning their careers, casting about for any bit of flight time they can snag and dreaming of the prospect of getting their hands on anything that burns jet-A. I know this; I was that kid once. To me, it doesn’t seem so long ago.

When I started flying in 1994, I had just turned thirteen. Age and finances dictated that flight lessons were a once-a-month event, and I remember the intense yearning that accompanied each ground-bound interval. I thought about flying, talked about flying, literally dreamed about flying as I mowed lawns, shoveled driveways, and did odd jobs to scratch together the $58 that would buy an hour of dual in the Cessna 150. Every once in a while I came up short, and then there was an excruciating two-month flightless gap—and one of eleven weeks in which I tearfully contemplated quitting. As I got older and found steady work, though, the lessons became more frequent, especially in the run-up to my 16th and 17th birthdays. Nothing made me happier than being able to fly most every week. It was in this frame of mind that I chose to pursue a flying career.

At eighteen, I headed to the University of North Dakota and, unleashed by my sudden freedom to amass eye-watering student loans, seldom went three days without flying. I was in hog heaven for the first year or so. But I still remember the first time I woke up and realized, with a groan, that I had a flight scheduled for that morning. A lightbulb went off: So this is what it means to be a professional pilot. You don’t always want to fly, and you do it anyway. That realization was punctuated during my first summer of flight instructing in Southern California when I flew 400 hours in three months and had only a few days off.

Continuing to instruct during my senior year at UND, my logbook records a ten-day flightless gap from September 7 to 17, 2001. It seemed much longer, and flying felt very different thereafter. I knew that my career had just taken a drastic turn, and I steeled myself for an extended grind. In the two years after graduation, while instructing and flying Part 135 cargo, the only time I went more than two days without flying was a nine-day pause for my wedding and honeymoon. Freight dogging, in particular, was incredibly tough—in retrospect, the hardest and most dangerous flying I ever did. And yet my overarching memory of that period was how flying became completely commonplace: It was just what I did. Fascination was replaced by familiarity. I didn’t lose my love of flight, but its nature changed markedly. If taking wing no longer made my heart flutter, I found joy and comfort in looking down upon the unsuspecting world from my daily perch, and being truly and utterly at home.

Now being ground-bound held no measure of yearn- ing for me, for I always knew that I’d return to my home in the air soon enough. At the regional airlines, I bid schedules that created flightless gaps of weeks or even a month, the better to accommodate terrestrial pursuits like backcountry camping, motorcycling, and international travel. I got back into general aviation, started flying old taildraggers, and rediscovered the sort of flight that still makes my heart go pitter-patter (sea- planes, gliders, and skydiving do the trick, too). When I was diagnosed with Crohn’s Disease and was grounded from flying airliners while awaiting a special issuance medical, sport pilot rules still allowed me to fly a Piper J-3 Cub, which was a great comfort as I pondered the possibility of a life in which the sky was no longer home. My return to the flight deck after four months’ absence was a joyful affair, and I vowed never to take my privileged position for granted again.

And then, after I’d been hired at my current airline, Dawn and I decided to sell our home and the Pacer, buy a 42-foot sailboat, and run away to sea. I transferred to a highly seasonal fleet and base that allowed me to take lots of time off during the cruising season, and for the first time since I was 13, I voluntarily ventured no higher than sea level for months at a time. Bearded and shirtless, I’d look up from tropical anchorages to spy an airliner flying far overhead, and it’d seem like a relic from another lifetime. Every eight weeks or so I’d endure a brutal shave and dig my mildew-spotted uniform out of the hanging locker, and then I’d commute up to Atlanta to reacquaint myself with the pleasures of flying the Boeing 757. It was always slightly unsettling at first, but by leg two it would be like I’d never left.

That’s what it feels like right now, as our roaring Stinson lifts from the grass and claws its way above the towering firs, revealing a striking panorama: the tree- lined, deep-blue ribbon of Hood Canal, backed by the snow-blanketed breadth of the jagged Olympics. It’s been eight weeks, but Dawn and I and our faithful old Stinson are comfortably back in our home element. The Franklin growls steadily as we gain altitude, and the full glory of our adopted corner of the world—snow-capped volca- noes, rolling hills, an intricate maze of saltwater coves and passages, sleepy fishing villages, gleaming steel cities, and—over it all—a dark-green carpet of giant firs and cedars—unveils itself before our eyes. This, too, is home. Here I am content. Here, with my adventurous wife by my side and with a good old airplane in which to explore our fascinating world, my wandering heart is full.

This column first appeared in the June 2023/Issue 938 print edition of FLYING.

The post A Flightless Bird Returns to the Skies appeared first on FLYING Magazine.

Piper has led an exceptionally charmed, adventurous dog’s life by air and sea in his eight years with us. We acquired our first airplane, a 1953 Piper Pacer, while the canine Piper was but eight weeks old. A fortnight later, he had his first airplane ride in my brother Steve’s lap. He bore it well enough, but followed up by puking all over my truck’s back seat. His stomach soon became acclimated to flight, and various aerial adventures followed over Piper’s first two years of life.

But then we sold the airplane, our house, and everything Piper had hitherto known, and decamped to a 42-foot sailboat named Windbird, on which we subsequently lived for nearly five years and sailed over 12,000 nm throughout the Bahamas, Caribbean, and U.S. East Coast. To this new, rather jarringly different lifestyle, Piper adapted admirably well. He quickly learned to negotiate our steep companionway ladder, found his sea legs on oceanic passages, and soon discovered a clear delight in dinghy rides and beach outings. His gregarious personality won him friends among island dogs, locals, and sailors from Nantucket to Grenada. Piper’s seaborne life inspired Dawn to start a nautical-themed dog treat company (“Ruff Seas Treats”) soon after our return to land.

Alas, Piper’s nautical exploits have come to an end, but lately, his aerial adventures have resumed where they left off in 2016. The apparent dog-friendliness of our 1946 Stinson 108 was one of the factors that attracted us to it. The cabin is agreeably utilitarian, not unlike the interior of our Nissan Xterra SUV. The rear seat makes a perfect perch for Piper to watch the landscape pass by, and it’s easily removable for expeditions requiring a dog bed and camping equipment.

Piper’s first GA flight in six years was an admittedly shaky affair. We quickly figured out it was the noise that was bothering him, as the Stinson is even louder than our Pacer was. We ordered Piper a pair of Mutt Muffs (safeandsoundpets.com), and after a bit of getting used to them, they seemed to greatly alleviate his aerial jitters. After a few successful shorter flights, it was time to plan our first extended trip in the Stinson over Labor Day weekend.

Our initial itinerary was a camping tour of the Cascades’ mountain landing strips, from Lake Chelan (Stehekin State, 6S9) to Rimrock Lake (Tieton State, 4S6) to Ranger Creek (21W). This was prevented by a renewed outbreak of forest fires, with accompanying smoke and TFRs. In fact, the smoke was thick enough to keep us strictly local for the first few days of Labor Day weekend.

But then, on Labor Day itself, the skies cleared between us and the coast, making a day trip to Copalis State an enticing option. I’d heard Copalis was a neat place to fly, but before buying the Stinson a month prior, I couldn’t take the Cherokee I was renting and didn’t want to abuse my neighbor Ken’s generosity in lending me his SuperCub. As a sailor, I am fully aware of the destructiveness of saltwater. If I’m going to land on an ocean beach, it’s going to be in my own airplane (with a good hose-down to follow). I now had a few hours in the Stinson, and was feeling pretty good about my landings. I reasoned that I could go take a look and drag the beach and only land if I was comfortable. The last question was one of tides, for Copalis is only usable at half-tide or lower, and best if still falling. The ideal three-hour period started around noon on Labor Day. It was settled.

Before we went, I watched YouTube videos of Copalis landings. The “runway” changes and is very loosely marked, but the approved landing area is at least easy to find thanks to a nearby inlet and a permanent windsock. Approaching from the northeast, we spotted it easily, even before seeing the airplanes on the ground. Next, I made a low pass. The retreating tide had left a distinct strip of dark, moist-but-not-wet sand. I decided to make a wheel landing on my next approach, reasoning that if the sand was softer than expected, I would have the energy to either go around or just add power and “drag” the strip with my mains before coming around for another try. I needn’t have worried; the sand was more akin to concrete than our grass airstrip, and the landing was a complete non-event.

As soon as we shut down and extracted Piper from the back seat, he tore off down the beach at a gallop, chasing seabirds with tongue flying and a grin on his face. The beach is still very much his happy place. One of the other pilots had brought along two large German Shepherds in his Cessna 210, and Piper soon made new friends. The 210 pilot left the dogs with his girlfriend and took the airplane for a few circuits, practicing soft-field takeoffs and landings. His technique was excellent, though I winced every time he retracted the landing gear—I think I would have left it down until I had a chance to hose it off. Soon a Carbon Cub approached from the north, inquiring on the radio about runway conditions. I got a good chuckle out of a Centurion driver convincing a CubCrafters guy that his airplane could handle the beach.

Our little gaggle of airplanes attracted quite a bit of attention from holiday beachgoers. Copalis State has been an FAA-approved airport (summer months only) for many years, but quite a few onlookers didn’t know about it and, intrigued, came over to look at the airplanes and talk to the pilots. Our Stinson’s blue-and-neon-green paint scheme (chosen by the previous owner) garnered particularly appreciative comments from the Seahawks faithful. Personally, I think our colors will look great for search and rescue responders if they ever have cause to come looking for me.

• READ MORE: FLYING’s Top Ten Summer Cross-Country Destinations

A few hours after our arrival, the sun was starting to dip and the distant surf had reversed its retreat. Piper was resting in the cool sand after a couple hours of running his little heart out. It was time to go. We all loaded up, taxied to the south end of the beach, made sure beachgoers were clear, and took off. I couldn’t resist another low approach to show off our pretty Stinson, then climbed toward the Olympic Mountains and our home strip, 45 minutes away. Piper slept in the back seat, no doubt dreaming about chasing seagulls. Dawn squeezed my arm and rested her head on my shoulder as the slanting sun turned the smoky skies golden. Our outing to the beach was a small trip early in our ownership of the Stinson. But it was a nice preview of the adventures this classic taildragger will open up to us—and our pooch—as we explore our adopted home state and surrounding area in the coming years.

This article was originally published in the May 2023 Issue 937 of FLYING.

The post Life’s a Beach…When You Fly Into One appeared first on FLYING Magazine.

“Sorry guys, time to get back,” I announce as I bank towards the Kitsap Peninsula. Hooky is over—time to get back to work. Our scenic tour was a pleasant and well-earned break.

Dad and Mom (Dave and Sue Weigel) are here from Minnesota to help work on our rather delayed hangar/apartment project while my wife Dawn is away on a humanitarian trip to Thailand. I last wrote about the development of our grass-strip aviation homestead six months ago, just before breaking ground. At the time I said, “We should have a good watertight shell by mid-September, and then we plan to finish out the living quarters in October and November. I sincerely hope we are all moved in by Christmas, perhaps even Thanksgiving.” Now I shake my head in bemusement: “Oh, you sweet summer child!” At this point, I shall be ecstatic to move in before July.

I hired local contractors to build the pole barn, pour the slab, and dig the septic system, but I am coordinating the whole thing and finishing out the living quarters myself. This is, admittedly, a poor use of my time from a financial standpoint. It would be much more efficient to pick up overtime flying and leave construction to the pros. But my years of sailing and maintaining Windbird in remote tropical locales gave me a sort of ornery DIY ethos that says, “Yeah, I don’t know what I’m doing, and I know I’ll make mistakes—and I don’t care, because I’ll learn from them.” I regard my active role in the creation of our homestead as a sort of finishing school to acquire some of the more practical skills I missed out on whilst building my flying career. Delays and mistakes are just the price of admission.

The first of these occurred before we even broke ground. Working with an electrician and the power company, I trenched in power and water alongside our driveway, which turned out to be a bit too close to the hangar’s left rear to set the corner pole. Some mistakes by the electrician meant it was late August before the trench passed inspection and was backfilled. With the pole barn delayed, the contractor moved on to another job, and we went on the back-burner. In early September, they set the poles, but it was another few weeks before the concrete was delivered and the footings inspected. Framing didn’t start until October 5. 

We had a fantastically warm and dry autumn, and I hoped we could still get the pole barn dried in before the rains came. The framing started quickly at first. My brother Steve flew out, and we assisted the contractors as they nailed on girts, framed doors and windows, and set trusses the second week of October. The purlins, however, took a ridiculous two weeks as several people on the contractor’s small crew quit and others took sick days. I stewed while the framework sat abandoned in perfect construction weather. On days when the contractor’s most reliable employee, JD, showed up alone, I donned my carpenter’s belt and hopped in the lift with him. Othertimes Dawn became an unpaid member of the crew—the first time they could recall an owner’s wife swinging a hammer. At least the septic people showed up and quickly finished the septic tank and drainfield installation.

In mid-October, Dawn and I installed 2-inch foam board around the perimeter, had fill delivered, rented a skid-steer and plate compactor, and brought the floor level up to grade. I excavated trenches for power, water, and plumbing, and we installed power service conduit from the remote meter base into the hangar. I hired a plumber and helped him rough in the plumbing groundwork. Finally, on November 1, soon after the rains finally started, the contractor installed the roof’s steel. Dawn and I spent one frantic week clearing out mud, bringing in more dry fill, compacting it, installing vapor barrier and foam board, and tying in rebar 24 inches on center. That weekend, we installed 3,000 feet of PEX tubing for in-floor heating. Our hard work paid off. On November 18, we had cold but dry weather, and the concrete contractor poured the slab.

Steve flew back out, along with our retired contractor father, in early December. We framed in the living quarters and installed T1-11 siding on the exterior walls, and this went amazingly quickly. Dad and Steve brought Minnesota weather with them as 10 inches of picturesque snow buried the airstrip (and prevented Stinson joyrides), but the lack of rain made for good working weather. I flew the rest of December and early January—and Dawn and I visited Minnesota for Christmas and sailed in the Caribbean over New Year’s—but we found time to wire the hangar and annex, and the plumber finished his rough-in.

Now, in late January, Dad has returned, and this time he brought Mom with him. Despite Dad’s years in construction, it is Mom’s first time working on a job site. She proves immensely useful, and I enjoy working with both of my parents. We finish various framing and electrical odds and ends, trim the exterior in rough-sawn cedar, and install the ductless mini-split heating system. We pass the electrical inspection during their visit and the framing inspection soon after. Meanwhile, the contractors installed the fascia and roof trim and fabricated the gutters and downspouts. Suddenly the hangar is looking a lot like a finished building, at least on the outside.

During my parents’ visit, we take delivery of the long-awaited Higher Power hydraulic hangar door, which will be 44 feet by 15 feet when assembled, but is currently a 5,200-pound bundled Erector set. That’ll be a major project for early March. I’m hiring pros to do the insulation and drywall, and Dawn and I will pick up the living quarters project in April with paint and flooring. We might finish up in May. I’m not losing sleep over the delays. We’re taking each step as it comes, learning a ton, and enjoying the time spent at the airstrip. And giving the Stinson some winter exercise whenever the weather allows.

Such as this clear and cold Sunday, the finest of the winter. The sun has dipped behind the gorgeously backlit Olympic Mountains as we approach the airstrip, plunging the thick forest into gloom. I key the mic seven times and the undulating turf runway is outlined in twinkling white lights. I ease the throttle back and spiral down toward the crease in the forest that denotes the threshold, slip over the final bushes, and flare to a soft landing on the grass. Presently, I turn onto a side taxiway, and a neat wooden hangar appears out of a small clearing. It’s just like I imagined it less than a year ago, and now it’s reality. There’s a lot of work left to accomplish in our labor of love, but this already feels like coming home.

This article was originally published in the April 2023, Issue 936 of  FLYING.

The post Delays, Mistakes All Part of Building a Dream Hangar appeared first on FLYING Magazine.