We'll See

Winston Churchill is famous for many things, and one of those things was his quick wit. One of my favorite examples came after his defeat as Prime Minister following World War II. (Despite leading England from The Battle of Britain, Their Finest Hour, to eventual Victory in Europe, he was thanked for his efforts with rejection.) In the dumps, his wife apparently tried to cheer him up with a typically British, “Come on Winston. Chin up and all that. Might even be a blessing in disguise.”

He is alleged to have replied, “In which case, it is very cleverly disguised.”

I’ve had one of those “very cleverly disguised” moments with my proposed new book. After struggling for a couple of years with what exactly I wanted to write about (see my last post, “After Oshkosh"), and, having finally come up with an idea and a rough outline, I then had to decide if I really wanted to intrude upon a retirement schedule that I have grown very fond of (the best part of which is not having much of a schedule at all). I, of course, decided that I did want to—as much as I enjoy retirement I also know I need projects and a book is a good project—so I emailed my publisher with a quick summary and asked him if it sounded like something he was interested in. He promptly emailed me back saying that they weren’t doing any new aviation books, that they just couldn’t get shelf space for them anymore at the national retail level (read Barnes & Noble and Borders), and he hoped I could place it elsewhere. So, as the Brits like to say, “And Bob’s your uncle.” That’s that.

My retirement schedule is still intact, and as Mrs. Winston Churchill said, “Maybe it’s a blessing in disguise.” We’ll see. It’s still pretty cleverly disguised at this point.

After Oshkosh

I have taken a bit of a vacation from doing regular posts since my week in Oshkosh this summer. There isn’t any specific reason for that, I just had other things to do and was still sort of absorbing the experiences of Oshkosh. I also began to feel that I may have told enough ATA stories: the stories could go on for a long time, but the important ones—the ones with, what seem to me anyway, important lessons—I think have been told.

One of my first thoughts in starting this blog was that I hoped some of the articles and stories would make their way into a book. I had an idea that I might write a book in which each chapter started with a story that would set the tone and background for the subject that followed. But I found that the stories took on a life of their own and were too long to serve as introductions to chapters; I also didn’t think they warranted a book of their own. I still wanted to do a book, but I couldn’t get a good idea of what I wanted to do or how to structure it.

Then, as usually happens, a book idea came to me once I had let go of the previous idea and after the experience of Oshkosh, a part of aviation I had been away from for many years. It was centered on the idea of adapting professional aviation standards to general aviation. I sort of touched on the issue in the post “Pro-Am,” where I talked about the differences between general aviation and professional aviation, and, in a way, it is something I have been thinking about since my very first book, written back in 1983 and now out of print, Fly Like a Pro.

I‘ve got a starting outline, and how that happened is an interesting story in itself. I had tried, back before going to Oshkosh and before I had a clear idea of where I wanted to go with the book, to make up an outline, or at least a list of topics, and had really struggled with it: no coherence, just a bunch of different ideas, some that could become chapters, others that were just thoughts, and I couldn’t even get a consistent writing style in listing them. I put it away, thinking it was a start and could be improved on later after I had thought about it more.

When the idea did click in my head to specifically focus on professional standards and general aviation, I didn’t even go back to that first outline. I just sat down with a notepad and a pencil, and within 30 minutes had a pretty good outline. A good start anyway, consistent in style with each idea for a chapter of about equal importance, and fairly complete. I have thought about a few additional ideas and it still needs a lot of fleshing out before I can submit it as a proposal to my publisher, but the hard part is done. (That experience of struggling when trying to make a dead end idea work versus everything falling into place once on the right path, is so common, it is kind of a lesson in itself: When it’s right, it works, when it isn’t, it doesn’t. And you can’t force it, you have to step back and hope you can get back on a path that makes sense.)

I also quit doing regular posts partly because I think I finally got down, shortly before leaving for Oshkosh, what I think the most important lessons were from my flying career, and I have, in fact, listed those three posts on the right hand side in a section titled “Credo.” So I have a sense that I have done what I wanted to do with this blog, and probably won’t be doing any more posts on a regular basis.

If you’re used to checking here to see if I there is anything new, I thank you and I apologize for not having done anything lately to justify your interest. It’s probably not going to get any better. If my proposal is accepted, I will be tied up writing on a daily basis for six to nine months and probably won’t do any posts. The next thing I need to think about is whether I really want to do that. But I probably will.

Oshkosh, Saturday and Sunday

Saturday was another good day. Sunday has been a bit of a let down.

Saturday was good for lots of reasons--good weather, a productive hour and a half at the Authors' Corner, another great airshow and lots more walking around--but Saturday was also good because Tom Jacobs, an ATA First Officer and International pilot who used to fly with me a lot on the Hawaiian turns, showed up at the Authors' Corner, with his father, an aeronautical engineer. And I also meet up with another old friend from ATA, Bill Leeds, Lt. Col. AF (Ret.) and a fellow L-1011 and later 757 captain in San Francisco. Bill had major heart surgery three years ago and was looking great. Also, funny and charming as ever. It was great to catch up with these old friends and introduce them to my family.

Sunday was a let down because Sunday seems to be "Get out of town" day. I got to the airport just after 9am, and probably half of the aircraft were gone already, and most of the rest left before the airshow which started early, 2pm. It was still a nice way to finish up--no crowds with a nice cool breeze. I walked all the way down to the end of runway 36 and discovered a separate area for ultralights with its own grass strip. Even on the last day you can find new things.

The highlight of the airshow today was the Aeroshell three ship acrobatic team of T-6s'. (The T-6, or SNJ for the Navy, "Harvard" for Canada, was the most common primary trainer in WWII and there are still a lot around.) These guys were real pros and I always find acrobatics with more than one aircraft so much more interesting than single ship demonstratinons. The single ships can do more extreme maneuvers because they don't have to worry about aircraft around them, but I find them to be a little repetitious after a while. But three aircraft doing complex formation flying is always thrilling.

The photo about shows the team diving straight down into a three way split at the bottom. Pretty impressive.

Oshkosh, Friday

We got a late start Friday (birthday party the night before plus some people still on California time), but made up for it after that. I gave the new arrivals an orientation tour--the show is so big, you hardly know where to start otherwise. Most of us toured a restored Piedmont Airlines DC-3 (photo above) which was flown in by the Carolina Air Museum. They asked for a dollar donation, "To help pay for the 800 gallons of gas we'll need to get back." A really nice restoration.

Then we picked our spots for the air show which was highlighted by a limited demonstration flight of the F-22 Raptor, the newest air superiority fighter. The F-22 does everything the F-15 does, except faster, slower, tighter, and stealthier. The demonstration was limited because Oshkosh doesn't have a big enough "box"--protected airspace--for a full demo, but it was still very impressive. On takeoff, it points straight up for two thousand feet or so, until it comes to what seems like a complete stop, then, incredibly, pitches straight ahead to level flight and accelerates away, a sort of upside down L pattern. If you don't know airplanes, it's kind of a "so what." If you do, you can't believe your eyes.

Then there was a "Warbirds on Review" show, a series of fly-bys and overhead formation passes for every kind of warbird, from L-19 Birddogs to B-24 bombers, with lots of ground pyrotechnics to simulate an airfield under attack. Very impressive. All the kids watched with their hands over their ears, but I noticed that during an kind of lull in the action, they all had little model airplanes in their hands which they ran around with shooting their brothers' and sisters' airplanes down.

The only hitch in the day was a line of thunderstorms that went through that, fortunately, missed the airfield but threatened to cancel the show. I even saw some nasty looking stuff coming out of the bottom of one, scratchy patches of clouds swirling in circles, but nothing developed. When we got back to the house though, the outdoor umbrella was on the ground and turned out to have a broken strut. The neighbor said there was only one big gust, but it was enough to launch it 15 feet or so. So I owe the owner a new umbrella. It was worth it.

Oshkosh, Wednesday and Thursday

Wednesday was an off day--Rusty and I played golf with another friend, Ron Galbraith, a retired Denver Center controller and Master Certified Flight Instructor. (There are only 600 MCFIs' in the country, versus something like 90,000 CFIs'.) He is also a 4 handicap golfer (that's very, very good) and was very patient with us.

Thursday started off with the Master Instructors' Breakfast, which I was lucky enough to attend as Rusty's (see "Prelude to Oshkosh) guest. The Acting FAA Administrator, Bobby Sturgell, talked and handed out some awards, as did Hal Shever, founder and CEO of Sporty's Pilot Shop and an Aviation Hall of Fame honoree. Sporty's is a major sponsor of EAA.

After that I checked out the retail exhibitors--four huge hangars full--wandered around the outdoor exhibitors, which are mostly aircraft manufacturers, and then went to Authors' Corner. There was more traffic today, and I sold a few books. An ATA pilot, Loren Madison, stopped by and reminded me of a trip we did together on the 1011 to Edinburgh and what a good time we had. He also caught me up on some people we knew in common at ATA's. So all in all that was a very successful hour and a quarter.

Thursday was also my wife's birthday and we had a great time that evening with both daughters here, Hilary and Nicole, Hilary's boyfriend Matt, and Rusty. Thursday was the best day so far.