My logbook starts early on a Saturday morning on the last day of July 1971, the year I graduated from high school.\u00a0 I had been driving around out in the country looking for an old man named Charlie and he lived and worked at his private airport.\u00a0 The guys in the airplane propeller overhaul shop where I worked talked of Charlie with both respect and disdain.\u00a0 Those who liked him respected him; those who did not know him or disliked him, well, as always, you get the picture.\u00a0 Charlie is, in many ways, responsible for me sitting here and writing these pages today.\u00a0 He was the one person who virtually launched me into my flying career.<\/p>\n
Charlie\u2019s concept of teaching student pilots how to fly was strong and solid.\u00a0 I remember him talking about teaching the rudiments of flying first, not dealing with radios, control towers, and Air Traffic Control (ATC).\u00a0 After the student pilot knew how to fly<\/em>, then he would introduce all that other \u201cstuff.\u201d\u00a0 To Charlie, the idea of the student learning how to fly was the most important.\u00a0 Of course, Charlie believed there was only one way to teach pilots how to fly: that was with airplanes with tailwheels.\u00a0 And the finest airplane for this job, according to him, was the J-3 Cub.\u00a0 All these years later, I have to agree.<\/p>\n That first morning I met Charlie, I was 18 and he was 71.\u00a0 It was a few minutes before eight in the morning when I drove up to his house.\u00a0 It seemed remotely abandoned.\u00a0 It was very quiet.\u00a0 The air was still and cool from the night before and it was easy to hear birds across the fields as well as the cattle farther away in the pastures.\u00a0 I felt intrusive on this scene as I got out of my mom\u2019s car and started looking around the hangars.<\/p>\n In the hangars, I found one of the J-3?s I would later spend considerable time flying.\u00a0 I walked around the Cub looking her over from spinner to rudder.\u00a0 She seemed dainty and frail.\u00a0 This was the first time I had actually seen a Piper Cub up close.\u00a0 I could not believe this aerial contraption actually flew, much less carried two people aloft.\u00a0 After inspecting the airplane, I started to realize why many called them called \u201ckites\u201d in the First World War.\u00a0 It seemed to me the fabric was ready to come off the frame at the mere suggestion.<\/p>\n Placing my hand on the craft and feeling the fuselage while moving forward, I looked inside marveling at the simplicity of the Cub\u2019s cockpit.\u00a0 When I stuck my head inside, I smelled for the first time in my life, a smell I would come to cherish forever: it was the smell of an airplane!<\/p>\n Now airplane smell, mind you, is something totally different from say, new car smell.\u00a0 New car smell disappears after a short while, but airplane smell becomes more pronounced with age.\u00a0 The scent of which I speak is a special odor, a smell of which all older airplane pilots are familiar.\u00a0 It is the scent of leather and aviation gas mixed with the smell of the aircraft \u201cdope\u201d used in building the old airplanes of steel tube, wood, and fabric.\u00a0 it is a wonderful smell and there is no other smell like it in the world.<\/p>\n In the years since first meeting the old Cub, I have flown a lot of airplanes.\u00a0 Some of the airplanes, like the Cub, were made of wood and fabric and smelled similar.\u00a0 I also learned these \u201ckites\u201d were stronger than most modern aircraft of today.\u00a0 New airplanes have little character compared to the old airplanes.<\/p>\n And they don\u2019t have \u201creal airplane\u201d smell of those old taildraggers.<\/p>\n -30-<\/p>\n \u00a9 2010 J. Clark<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" My logbook starts early on a Saturday morning on the last day of July 1971, the year I graduated from high school.\u00a0 I had been driving around out in the country looking for an old man named Charlie and he … Continue reading