FBOs

I Made It to Sixty! Well friends, the idiotic “Age Sixty” rule finally hit home in a verypersonal way a couple of weeks ago, when the calendar rolled around to my own 60th. I knewit was coming, and I’m really delighted to have survived to this point, but I guess I wasable to somehow make […]

“Afirst solo is like the birth of a baby.” The usual suspects were sitting in the Lounge discussing the fact that we areseeing more students at the airport when old Hack dropped that line on us. Itdid stop conversation for a moment. We generally enjoy the process ofchallenging oddball analogies, so we wanted to toss […]

Paul Howard Poberezny was born on September14, 1921, in Leavenworth County, Kan. The family soon relocated to the south side ofMilwaukee in a house under an airmail route. Paul grew up watching a stream of biplanesflying low and slow in all kinds of weather. As he got older, he could tell from thesounds overhead that […]

Marion Cole was born in 1924 near Peoria,Ill. He was one of nine brothers and a sister. Dad didn’t fly, but most of the brothersgot avgas in their blood early. Marion wasted no time getting his private, commercial andinstructor’s ratings, then joined his older brothers in the airshow business. Promoterswanted their money’s worth, so Marion […]

Bob Norris was born on March 20, 1955 inGermany, where his father Bill (a test pilot for the Air Force), was stationed. He learnedhow to fly in the Navy and spent the next 19 years flying fighter jets. In January of 1996he went from one doctor to another trying to find out why he was […]

Evelyn “Bobbi” Trout was born onJanuary 7, 1906, in Greenup, Ill. She saw her first airplane at age 12 and knew right awaythat she wanted to fly. In 1920, the family moved to Los Angeles and everyone worked atthe family’s “filling station.” On December 27, 1922, one of her customersoffered her a ride in his […]

WhileI was at EAA AirVenture ’99 at Oshkosh this year, I ran into a friend of minenamed W. Roger Mullins, better known as Judge Mullins. For those of you who maynot remember or know, he’s the Administrative Law Judge (ALJ) for the NationalTransportation Safety Board (NTSB) who restored Bob Hoover’s medical certificatewhen the FAA first […]

I hate what seems to be the officialFAA-approved way of handling short and soft fields, and it’s past time I yelled about it.There seems to be a good deal of confusion in the pilot ranks, and even among some CFIs,over the differences between short-field and soft-field technique, and I’dlike to comment on that, too. A […]

It’sbeen a very satisfying month in the Pilot’s Lounge. Summer is spooling down andthe temperatures are dropping, so our airplanes are actually starting to performon takeoff. Dave, tail wheel pilot, one of the Lounge regulars, and owner of aHusky, just passed his check ride for his instrument rating. Doing such a ratingin a tandem, tail […]

Wayne Handley was born March 26, 1939, in Carmel, Calif.After a career in Naval aviation, he built a successful crop dusting business in Salinas,Calif. In 1983, after years of performing for unappreciative grapes and lettuce, hedecided to enter the International Aerobatic Club competition. Finishing 20th out of 21was humbling enough to make him serious about […]