AlexPeterson
Well Known Member
This is kind of a fun thread - maybe should be moved out of temp? [ed. Done. Thanks for the heads up Alex! v/r,dr]
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Was your instructor Richard Ensign? He used to instruct at Hemet, and gave me instruction at Slylark (Elsinore) where I used to tow and give orientation flights for the club.
-Marc
My first solo was also at KLGB in August of 1988. I learned at Eagle Aviation.
This is kind of a fun thread - maybe should be moved out of temp? [ed. Done. Thanks for the heads up Alex! v/r,dr]
First solo was 3 Oct 1969 at Keesler AFB aero club, Capt. R.L. Sutton was my instructor.
Every Friday I would give blood to the bank near the main gate and receive $15, this paid for 1 hour of flight. $10 for the plane and $5 for the instructor.
First solo was 3 Oct 1969 at Keesler AFB aero club, Capt. R.L. Sutton was my instructor.
Every Friday I would give blood to the bank near the main gate and receive $15, this paid for 1 hour of flight. $10 for the plane and $5 for the instructor.
My first flight lesson was also out of Keesler AFB in Sept 1975, and that Cessna 150 was $11.50 per hour, and $6.30 for the instructor which was this retired AF pilot.
My last take off and landing that I made, do to Corona-19 was as a captain in an Airbus 320 into and out of Keesler AFB in April. Bringing in ?Pingers? from Lackland AFB to start tech school. They normally brought them by buses, but if they drove through the state of Louisiana, they would have to put them into quarantine for 14 days, and that was not going to work as they needed them to start tech school the next day. Back to Bus flying next month.
45 years and 22,000 hours later, they are all good memories.
Brian
This post from Mel made me think about my home base.
My training and solo was out of this strip https://papapetaluma.org/about-the-airport/ in 1979. "The Sky Ranch had a gravel runway 1800 feet long by 30 feet wide." By then it had been paved but only out to a width of 25 feet... and even at that the edges were eroded back to 20 feet by the time I started training there. There was a farm fence on one end and a road with power lines at the other. The runway was 1800' long and the turnoff was 3/4 down the runway. We were trained to make that turnoff, it led straight to the gas station type fuel pump.
You think all of this is normal.... until at around 10 hours we head out of our training area and go here https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Naval_Auxiliary_Landing_Field_Santa_Rosa This field is 7000' long by 150' wide. For me then, it was hard to land on. Go figure. The instructors at that airport would not let their students land in Petaluma.
My little strip was "normal" to us students and all that were based there. And that included a guy with a P-51. This guy always made the first turnoff. Remember the road at the end of the run way.... Driving in for a lesson one day, I looked down the runway just in time to see the P-51 lift off!! With the sun hitting the face of the prop, it looked (the disc) as wide as the runway.
Learn to fly from a small strip and you will never regret it.
Hickam AFB / Honolulu International in 1989 via the Hickam AFB Flying Club which no longer exists. Long solo cross country was from Honolulu to Kona International. That's a lot of water (150 nm) to cross in a 150. On the longest overwater leg (~60 nm), somewhere past Kaho'Olawe, I lost sight of land for what seemed like an eternity.