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“After years of observation, it has occurred to me that, indeed, the safest way to fly is not to return to the earth with any more force than one left it.”

-Robert Firth

LEARNING TO BE A PROFESSIONAL PILOT

In 1962, I moved to Florida. Dad had rented a place on a canal in North Miami with an attached Guest room where I stayed for several months. The next door neighbors had a daughter, a lovely sexy gal who liked to wash her car in Daisy Mae cut-off jeans and loose T-shirt tops- good grief !

I signed up with Sunny South Aviation at Fort Lauderdale airport. They were located exactly where terminal four is today. My instructor, Mark Ayers, a retired navy Pilot would crank up a Cessna 150 and we would fly up to Pompano Airport, about fifteen miles north of FLL (Lauderdale) and practice flying around the pattern. After nine days and nine hours of training, on the 16^th of June 1962, I flew my first solo flight.

Forty hours later, I got my Private pilots license, then a commercial followed by my multi-engine and instrument rating. For each license, you have to take a written and oral exam and then demonstrate your proficiency in the aircraft. This took a few years during which, I taught water skiing, worked as a surveyor, delivered rental beds and TV’s to small motels, flew single engine planes across the everglades and anything else I could to make a buck to pay for the training.

They say there are two flights that any pilot will never forget- his first and his last.

I remember clearly, even today, when Mark jumped out on the east end of the runway, slamming the door and waived me off. I eased the throttle forward and took to the air. I remember looking ahead and to my left but not to the right- I didn’t want to see that he wasn’t sitting in the seat next to me.

I flew every chance I got, whenever I had the money to rent an aircraft. The process is straight forwards, fly forty hours, take the written, pass a practical and a check ride and get a private pilots license. Then fly another one hundred and sixty hours and get a commercial license followed by the instrument rating and multi engine rating, each involving a tough written and practical test followed by a flight check. After that, you’re ready to make some money as a professional pilot.

So, what does it take to be a proficient and safe pilot? First let’s define the terms. It is one thing for a pilot of a Cessna 150 to fly in his home area under VFR conditions and quite another to navigate a high performance aircraft into busy airports in bad weather.

Flying, for example, into Aspen Colorado, probably one of the nations most unforgiving high altitude airports is a lot more demanding of a pilots judgment, knowledge and skills than piloting a light single engine aircraft into Pompano airport on a sunny day in Florida. We are talking here about two different animals. One is a professional aviator and the other a weekend, fly for fun, pilot. There is no comparison.

The weekend pilot with two or three hundred hours can learn, as we all have, to be a proficient, all weather pilot but, not overnight. There is absolutely nothing that can be taught or bought that will help him except to get out there and do it. Experience is not for sale and no one has learned how to “can it.”

The process of becoming a professional pilot requires a final step. As mentioned, one has to obtain a private and then commercial license followed by the instrument and multi-engine ratings and then, finally, after logging 1200 hours, the ATP, Airline Transport License. Each requires considerable time and effort, practical and written tests have to be passed, training aircraft located and paid for and all this cannot be done overnight.

For a person to spend the time and effort to reach the point where he might be considered for a co-pilots position with a charter operator or an airline, that person has likely determined to pursue a goal of becoming a professional pilot. Once there he can begin learning what the job is really all about.

Let’s discuss what it’s not about. Flying at a professional level, is seventy percent judgment and thirty stick and rudder skills. Both the weekend pilot and the professional aviator may have the same motor skills to maneuver the aircraft but the overwhelming requirement for flying in all conditions into high density complex airspace is judgment.

Judgment is a derivative of the pilots accumulated aviation knowledge meaning his professional education, flight experience and the ability to process this against the particulars of any given situation to make a correct decision. The pilot, who after thirty or forty years of flying without incident, accident or hangar stories, is a pilot who has demonstrated a high degree of good judgment.

Safe flying, which is the end- game of all flying, begins well before any flight leaves the ground. Safe pilots don’t have financial, marital, alcohol, health or drug problems. Safe pilots are not born, they are made. After one has flown a thousand or more 200’ &1/2 mile approaches into and out of high density airports and flown ten to fifteen thousand hours with another pilot who has even greater experience, the first officer is ready to assume

command.

He is, by this time, confident of his ability and knows his aircraft. He can likely draw out the ships systems and label the various filters, pumps motors, electrical buses and can tell you the pressures, quantities, airspeeds, weights and the assorted multitude of numbers that make up the aircraft systems, performance and limitations. He can see in his mind the approach paths, taxi ways and parking aprons of dozens of airports worldwide. He has flown many times the complex approaches and departures into and from these airports and understands very well the effects of weather along his routes. He knows how to read forecasts and how to evaluate them against the performance of the aircraft and his own skills.

There is no amount of classroom education that can instill this level of judgment in the novice pilot. Only by spending ten or fifteen years flying eighty hours a month can one develop the requisite judgment ( air sense) and knowledge to safely fly in all-weather high density conditions.

My Father learned to fly in the 1920’s. He was fourteen and ran away from home to live in a hangar at Wings Field in Camden New Jersey, just across the river from Philadelphia. Dad slept on an iron framed army cot in the back office without heat or hot water. He cleaned aircraft, pumped gas and helped the mechanic, all in exchange for an hour a week of flight training.

After a year or so he had his first license issued by the CAA, the Civil Aviation Authority and the predecessor to today’s FAA. The owner of the circus had Dad flying passengers to Atlantic City and, at times, returning at night, flying low, in light snow following the Black Horse Pike. One dark and stormy night some drunk left a bottle in the cockpit that lodged under the rudder pedal, Dad had to climb from the back to the front cockpit to get it free. He told this story to one of his fellow flying buddies when I was a kid, so I guess it was one of those things that stayed in his memory. (Wings field, circa 1930, above)

On weekends in those days many people from Philadelphia would drive to the local airports to watch the pilots and their aircraft - flying in the thirties was still new enough to be of great interest. There was some Vine street drunk, who would show up every weekend to jump from Dad’s aircraft with a pair of bat like wings and soar around for a while before opening his parachute. This was an immense crowd pleaser.

One particularly cold and bleak Sunday the ceiling was a little low and perhaps the sprits of the mad bat were reflecting the barometer or perhaps it was the spirits he consumed, who knows, anyway, the flying bat either forgot or forgot on purpose, to pull his rip cord. He hit the frozen ground at a hundred and twenty mph, hard enough to bounce twenty feet and become quite dead. The crowd got their moneys worth that weekend. The following Saturday Dad and the other pilot Tommy O’Brian, had to flip a nickel to see who would be Bat-Man. Dad won, Tommy broke his leg and become a chemical engineer. Dad went on to fly for forty years with Eastern Airlines and the rest is history as they say.

One job I had while following my Father’s footsteps, was “flogging” Florida swamp land all over the USA for a company called Gulf American Land Corporation (GALC). We traveled with a team of about ten guys from one small town to even smaller towns, staying at Mom and Dad and Dad and Lad roadside motels and the occasional Holiday Inn, hosting pre-arranged dinner parties. The company was owned by the Rosen brothers, Jack and Leonard. These guys had made a few bucks selling “Charles Antel Formula no. 9” which was some slimy sheep dip supposedly made with lanolin that was real snake oil. It was supposed to grow hair on a bowling ball and other wondrous things. The Rosen Bros. hired Harry Dempsy, a retired “carnie” to help flog this glop. Harry was as bald as a bowling ball and kept his hat on when flogging the sheep dip.

Harry used to sell “Hoosters Stomach Bitters” on the street corners of Chicago. He had a pet monkey wearing a bell boy suit with a little pill-box hat. Harry played music on a box with a crank handle and suckered the passing marks to buy this stuff. One day, a lady in a classy white dress kept trying to pet the monkey. Harry said, “lady d’monky don lik youse- so beat it” She persisted and finally the monkey, annoyed and frustrated, jumped on her head and took a huge crap- she screamed and sputtered- Harry said, “look lady- I tol youse, d’monkey didn lik youse!”

Harry had first been hired by the Rosen brothers, Leonard and Jack (Julius) who, after selling their parent’s delicatessen in Baltimore, had him reading the bible on a local radio station selling plastic covered tin 45 RPM records to little old ladies scrubbing the white steps of the Baltimore slums. These poor women would play the records to their loutish, drunken husbands to drive the devil out of the poor wretch.

This was a profitable scam until the United Council of Churches obtained an injunction and took him off the air. I guess this was considerably before the coming of age of the legalized televangelists or Harry would still be on - after all, the two Jewish boys from Baltimore were selling a lot of records.

Following the plastic records and Charles Antel scams, the Rosens and Harry drove down to Florida wondering what profitable activity they could find where they might be left alone for a few years. Naturally, they, as many crooks before, were attracted to swamp peddling. Florida land in the early sixtys could be found at incredibly cheap prices- especially if it was under water.

Harry followed the Rosens to Florida and thus began Gulf American Land Corporation, the only accidentally semi-honest business he and the two brothers ever had. GALC eventually became a publicly traded company and, for a time, the brothers had the Florida Real Estate Commission in their pocket. Later, after reorganization in Tallahassee, things changed, and it became more difficult for the company to continue their deceptive sales practices and eventually it faded into bankruptcy in the mid seventies. Harry, by now, well into his seventies was given a life estate by the now very rich brothers Rosen as the manager of Miami’s Monkey Jungle- which somehow seemed a particularly apt reward.

The Roving sales teams had schedules that kept us on the road for two to three weeks. We drove our own cars and were paid mileage. Each of the 10 “roving teams,” had a company van and would send the junior salesman to Baltimore every month or so to pick up supplies of maps, brochures and assorted door prizes. The company ran a “boiler room” in Baltimore where thirty gals made calls to hundreds of small towns inviting the local yokels to a “Fun night” listening to a “guest speaker” tell them about exciting real estate opportunities in Florida.

Our “Guest Speaker” was a burned out life insurance salesman named Bo Bogger, Bogger had a thing for Holiday Inn cleaning women or any other “skag” that he might find. Bo was mostly drunk, uncommunicative and Reminded me of Willie Loman, the sad sack in Arthur’ Miller’s “The Death of a Salesman.” Bo had one suit and we would dress him up, switch on the yellow spot light and introduce him as “Mr. Sunshine,” our “Guest Speaker who has flown in tonight especially to meet this wonderful crowd and tell them about the wonders of Cape Coral.”

Bo somehow always shaped up and put on an amazing performance. Afterwards, before anyone could talk to him, we took him back to his room, took off his suit, and left them there to do whatever he wanted until the next day when we packed up for another town.

How on earth can you sell someone a lot in Florida that neither you nor they have never seen? Well hang on, I’ll tell you how we accomplished this magic. After serving the not so wonderful inevitable rubber chicken and peas entree we showed a twenty minute movie and started telling our guests about Cape Coral. At each of the eight or ten tables a salesmen would spend part of his evening sizing up his dinner guests and deciding who was the most likely “fish.” By the way, most of us had never ever even seen Cape Coral.

We kept them, the “mooches” from running after dinner by the promise of a door prize. We had set up a speaker phone hooked up to the “Allocation” center” in Cape Coral. Voices from our group or other teams would holler out “put a hold on lot B-444” and a disembodied voice would comeback, “OK you have c fifteen minutes on Lot B-444.” We didn’t actually sell the lots, we took “reservations” on them requiring the buyers to pay thirty bucks down and thirty a month until they had a chance to drive down to Cape Coral and see their lot. Only then did they have to make up their minds to keep it or not. We paid them ten cents a mile for the drive and gave them a free night in a Holiday Inn and a chef Boy-R- Dee pasta dinner with all the sweet ice tea they could drink. Under these conditions, who couldn’t “sell.”

In every town, I would try to rent a plane logging another hour or so, toward the two hundred hours needed for my commercial license. On the day that Kennedy was shot I was flying a Stinson Voyager. (photo above) I had the ADF tuned to a commercial station and heard the news. When I landed no one in the Alabama FBO seemed particularly concerned, one said, “well, I reckon it couldn’t have happened to a better guy”

They didn’t like Kennedy especially in the south, because he forced the blacks into the white schools destroying the quality of public education, especially in those areas where the Blacks outnumbered the whites and where the Black schools had not been able to provide as high a level of education as the White kids had. This mix of ignorant and backward Blacks with the more academically and socially advanced white kids brought classrooms nationwide to a slow crawl as teachers in public schools can only teach as fast as the slowest student can learn. With the white classrooms being suddenly flooded with thousands of blacks, the white kids were then and are still being academically shortchanged. Of course, in the south, hundreds of private schools sprung up overnight and all the White parents who could afford the tuition sent their kids to them.

One night, in “Defunct Springs” another sleepy southern town south of the Georgia line, we had our Cape Coral party at the local “country club”. This was on a nine hole golf course on what had once been pat of an old “southern plantation.” The Civil War in these parts, was still a fresh topic of conversation and a bunch of Yankee scalawag carpetbaggers like us were not really welcome. Still, the place needed the money and had to suck it up and get on with the shindig.

It was that time of day when the pine trees were beginning to blend into the night sky. I was at the kitchen door while the “guest Speaker’ was droning on. A wagon pulled by a real honest- to-God jackass drove up with a black family who had been invited to the dinner party. They were dressed in their “Sunday best” - the two little girls in freshly ironed dresses with ribbons in their short pigtails. The man, I would have guessed to be in his early fifties, climbed down and said- “ Sur w’all hea’ fo da Cape Co-ral diner”

Just then, the manager tapped me on the shoulder and said “ Pssst! Hey bud, ifin these darkies come in here, Im’ gonna shut off the power” I said, “look, they were invited and this is still the USA even if you think it’s the CSA and they’re coming in.” He glared at me but since I was a lot taller, a lot bigger, and sounded like I meant it, he backed down. I had however figured out that it wouldn’t be too smart to seat the black family in the dining room with this crowd of southern die-hards. It would have probably caused a mass exodus if not a full fledged riot. I asked the black guy if he wouldn’t mind eating in the kitchen. He had overhead the conversation and said “OK.” We found them a small table and the cooks and kitchen staff, all black themselves, were great. I came back after the movie and asked him how the dinner was, he looked up with some chicken bones in his short beard and said, “tastes like more” I felt better and so did they.

The company phone room callers were supposed to try to identify blacks and not invite them. They had a special code for Blacks, “ XX” that they used to refer to them by and marked this next to their names in the phone books so other operators wouldn’t call. Every town we went through we picked up a phone book and mailed it back to the boiler room. The supervisors would tear the pages out, handing each caller a wad. With all the calls going out to the same town from twenty or thirty phones, it didn’t take long to find fifty couples who wanted a free chicken dinner. Still, a lot of blacks did get invited and some even wanted to buy. We had to just tell them that Cape Coral was a segregated community- in those days- that’s how it was. (My aircraft in the sixties, right)

After a year or so of traveling with the roving teams and after a few months of selling as a “tough closer” at Cape Coral’s famous “Rotunda,” I found a way to fly and make a buck at the same time. I joined a flying club that had a lovely yellow and white Cessna 182, N-2277X. Gulf American had a broker program that allowed me to use my real estate and pilots licenses at the same time. I could pick up clients, drive them to the airport and load them on the 182 for the forty five minute flight - including an aerial tour of the property. On the ground, I would meet one of the “Closers,” introduce him to the clients and hang around for a few hours while he verbally beat the living hell out of them trying to sell them a lot.

Amazingly, many people bought. I got paid forty five bucks for the flight and twenty- five percent of the commission. I would fly them back to the east coast, drive them to their hotel get up the next day and do it again. It didn’t take long before I had my two hundred hours and the commercial license. My check ride was with M.E. Caplin, one of Fort Lauderdale’s oldest FAA inspectors. I received my commercial rating on May 12, 1964.

Once, I had to fly back across the glades at night. I remember being worried about flying the Cessna 82 across the dark everglades with no lights on the ground, menacing clouds and distant flashes of lightening. Probably, I could have (should have) just cancelled and told the passengers that we would have to stay until morning but, I didn’t. We headed across at 1500’ and, within minutes, the lights of Fort Myers were behind us. All I could see out front was the dim reflection of the panel lights. I didn’t have an instrument rating but I thought, with, my hundred and fifty hours of experience, I could handle it. The air was hot, wet and bumpy. One of the passengers sitting in the back seat got sick and yipped her spaghetti down the back of my neck – the smell was horrible. I had to hang on and get these people home. I got a little vertigo and was sweating- trying to believe the instruments. Finally, I could see the glow of Immokalee and got my balance back- after another twenty minutes, I picked up the lights of the east coast and we were OK, The passengers never knew how scared I felt and how close a thing this was.

I had to get the instrument rating. I remember meeting my cash hungry instructor many times at nine or ten at night, after we both worked a full day, and off we would go, flying over the dark everglades in the 182. I practiced holding patterns, turns and stalls on instruments and all manner of approaches. I had passed the written exam and, on the big day, just five months after earning my commercial, I arranged a check ride with Bill Conrad, who by that time must have been pushing seventy. Bill was well over six and a half with huge Brezhnev eyebrows. He was permanently bent over and for me and most of his students, very intimidating. Bill almost had a rating in every aircraft that ever flew. His license read like pages of an accordion. On October 10, 1964, while Fort Lauderdale airport was the center of a national fly-in, I earned my instrument rating and had the multi-engine rating to go.

I took the multi-engine lessons in a Piper Apache, this little jewel has two 150 HP four cylinder engines and almost will fly on one of them. I rented the aircraft from a FBO at North Perry airport and the tower operator, Mr. Delgado, who also a experienced instructor, had me fly approaches and landings with simulated engine failures over and over, until he thought I was ready. Caplin also gave me this rating and, in 1964, I was finally ready to fly into commercial aviation.