High school
was a real drag for me. I’m lucky I actually graduated at all in 1965. Only
years later did I recognize that this was a bad mistake. I had no intentions of
going to college after graduation. This was at the start of the Viet Nam War so
if you weren’t in college or married then you were heading for the army via the
draft and the jungle soon afterwards. My parents were of course concerned and
convinced me that I needed to do some type of training and suggested I may want
to go to Spartan’s School of Aeronautics in Tulsa, OK and train to be an
aircraft mechanic. This was perfect for me since I had loved airplanes since I
was in grade school. At 14 years old I actually rode my scooter to a local
airport and paid a guy to take me flying for the first time without my folks
even knowing! I did get my draft notice but joined the Air Force and got a
deferment to go to Spartan’s first. I completed Spartans in 1967 with a Federal
Aviation Administration (FAA) Airframe and Powerplant (A&P) license.
I got out of
the Air Force in 1976 after 9 years. I had been an Avionics repairman for 4 years
and then cross trained to be an Air Traffic Controller the last 5 years. I got
out so I could go to work for the FAA as a controller before I reached the 31
age limit for controllers. Along the way I got a private then commercial
pilot’s license plus an instrument license. I eventually had a pocket full of
FAA licenses. This is all important later.
When I got
notified that the FAA was hiring me I immediately bought a single engine
airplane I had found. I paid $3500 for a 1946 Cessna 120 single engine, high
wing, fabric covered wing, tail dragger airplane that had no electrical system
or flaps. This is about as basic an airplane as you can find. It had an 85 hp
engine and could carry 2 people, some gas and very little else. Because it had
no electrical system it had to be hand propped to start and had no lights or
radios. Because I flew mostly solo I had to hand prop this thing alone without
it running over me and making a mess all over the ground. I would tie the tail
down to a stake with a slip knot and run the end of the rope to the cockpit
where I could pull it to release the tail. I would turn on the ignition
(Magnetos), prime the engine, set the throttle and then go out front to prop
the engine. No way to set the brakes and chocks were just too much problem.
When the engine fired it would immediately jump forward about a foot until the
rope on the tail took hold. It was always an exciting operation.
My first FAA
job was at a place called Burns Flat, OK working the tower at a closed Air
Force Base (Clinton Sherman AFB). It was used for training by both the USAF
(from Altus, OK) and the FAA (from OK
City) because it was in the middle of nowhere. We had a 13,000 ft runway used
by B-52s in the old days but no other air traffic so the USAF and FAA planes
had it to themselves. Why this is important is because the first 6 months I had
to attend the FAA academy in OK City before reporting to Burns Flat. I put my
airplane in a huge (but old) hanger at Burns Flat (BF) thinking it would be
protected from the elements while I was at the academy (WRONG!!!!).
I received a
call from the airport manager (he and I never got along after this) saying a
tornado had torn off part of the hanger roof and some of it fell on my plane! I
was not a highly paid Government employee so I did not have insurance on this
plane at the time. I drove back to BF and found my airplane with the cockpit
smashed in and severe damage to both wings. A 4X8 sheet of wood had dropped
onto the cockpit and bent down the main wing carry through spar before it then
dropped on both wings bending the internal structure and ripping the fabric
off. The airplane was a mess and looked totaled to me. I immediately got into
it with the airport manager saying he was paying for this but he disagreed
saying the hanger rental agreement relieved them of liability. The only reason he even tried to appease me
was I was eventually going to be an Air Traffic Controller at his airport and
knew that could be a problem in the future. We finally settled on that I could
have free hanger space while I rebuilt the airplane. This took almost a year to
accomplish. Because I had an A&P license plus had avionic training in the
USAF I did all the work myself. The pictures below show the damage to the
airplane and some different stages of its rebuild. The engine also had low
compression on one cylinder so I also did a top overhaul which resulted in
replacing all the cylinders and associated hardware. I also added a battery and
an electric starter with their support structure while I had it torn apart.
This was all
accomplished while I worked as a controller on the same airport. I got hooked
up with a local airplane mechanic shop and he let me use a lot of his tools and
helped with the things I was a little hesitant to do myself (painting the
airplane for one). A good friend also helped (Charlie) and you will see him in
some of the pics. We eventually found Charlie a plane disassembled in a barn
and had to do some major work to get it flying but that’s another story.
You must
remember that this plane had been crushed in areas that are critical to the
structural integrity of the airplane. The whole overhead cockpit had to be
rebuilt from parts I found on other wrecked airplanes. One pic shows me taking
off the main cockpit spar from a wrecked fuselage. I had to rebuild one door
post that supported the whole wing and landing gear. I could not get to the
inside of these components so had to use bolts where there were originally
rivets. An FAA authorized inspector had to inspect this pretty thoroughly
because it was not original design. It passed!
On the day
of the first flight as I taxied to the end of that 13,000 ft runway all I could
think of was all the different areas I had been working on this plane; the
engine was rebuilt, the wings were rebuilt, the main fuselage structure was
rebuilt, I had some new electrical systems installed (starter and battery). Any
one of these items would have been a major undertaking but I did them all at
one time. Although this plane can take off in less than 500 ft I wanted all
that 13,000 ft of concrete ahead of me because I planned on flying at 10 feet
the whole length and shake everything with the controls to see if anything fell
off. I figured a crash from 10 ft at about 80 mph would be better than the
alternative.
As I lifted
off I leveled the nose at 10 ft and really did go wild on the controls. Just as
the plane went off the ground I clearly remember thinking” I don’t remember
tightening those main wing attachment bolts!!!). I must have because it all
held together. At the end of the runway I started climbing and made several
touch and go landings before going back to the hanger where all my friends had
been watching. They all had big grins and asked why the plane was convulsing
during take-off. I just said it was a little turbulence.
