Why this blog?

Why do I have a blog titled The Airplane Cockpit - Surviving the Obsession? I'm glad you asked... it is a long story, so settle in and read on.

When I was a little boy in the 1950's my father, a career military officer, used to assemble plastic model airplanes and hang them from the ceiling in my room. Most of them were biplanes from the World War I era. He did a meticulous job painting them. They looked so realistic. He even painted the tiny faces of the pilots in those planes. I remember lying on my bed and just looking at them and imagining what it would be like to fly.

My dad was an infantry officer in World War II, and though too young for service early in the war, he got into it in time for the invasion of Okinawa. He told me that on his first patrol in Okinawa his squad was ambushed by some Japanese soldiers with a machine gun. His patrol was walking single file down a path through some heavy foliage and the machine gun opened up from a curve in the path. The first guy in the patrol got hit in the binoculars that he was wearing around his neck. Everyone dived into the bushes and returned fire. They never found the guys who shot at them. The patrol had to carry the wounded man out.

After the end of the war, Dad was assigned to a military police unit in Tokyo, so he stayed there for a while. Then, he signed up for the Air Defense Artillery branch and was stationed in El Paso, Texas, at Fort Bliss, where I was born a few years later. He helped develop the Nike Ajax. He claims to have personally painted the black and white checkerboard pattern on the very first one, so they could better see it as it flew toward the target out at White Sands Missile Range in New Mexico.

Another thing he did while stationed at Fort Bliss was go in with a few other buddies and purchase a surplus L-10 Bird Dog observation plane for $400. Yep. Four hundred bucks. They all learned to fly in that. He likes to tell people that he soloed after only four hours of instruction.

Then, one time after some engine maintenance, he and the mechanic decided to take it for a test flight. The engine quit shortly after takeoff and they landed on a slope. The uphill wheel dropped into a gully or prairie dog hole or something and sheared the landing gear off on that side. The plane spun around from the impact and nearly destroyed itself before coming to a stop. Both my dad and the mechanic were fine, but the plane was a total loss. He did not go on to finish his pilot certification.

His best friend from the group who owned the plane went on to become an Army aviator. Dad continued to enjoy taking the yoke when military pilots would let him. I think it is a little sad that he limited his enjoyment of flying to simply maintaining straight and level flight while being supervised by the pilot in command. It is kind of like when a father lets his son sit in his lap and steer the car. The son thinks he is driving, but he isn't really.

Years passed, and I continued to have an interest in flying. Any time I would talk about flying lessons, Dad would tell me about his plane crash. The message was clear - it's okay to like airplanes, but if you learn to fly you will crash.

I grew up, did a stint in the Army (infantry) during Vietnam, returned home and finished a degree in mechanical engineering. I passed my Engineer-In-Training test and went to work at a power plant in Columbia, Missouri. After a few years of engineering there, my supervisor encouraged me to take the Professional Engineer test. It is a hard test. At the time, it took eight hours to take. I started studying six months ahead of time. I decided that if I passed the test I would start taking flying lessons.

I passed, but a year passed before I scraped up the courage to start flying lessons. I elected to learn to fly with Dave Bradley at Tig-Air Aviation in Boonville, Missouri. I was terrified.

I soloed after ten hours of instruction, and listened as Dad reminded me that he only needed four. But unlike him, I finished my training and became a Licensed Private Pilot in the summer of 1988.

The next few years were filled with various aviation adventures and misadventures. I will write about all of them in this blog, so stay tuned. But here is a taste... I have run out of fuel, accidentally spun an airplane, accidentally went inverted, flown into bad weather, gotten hopelessly lost, and flew back to the airstrip with my head hanging out of the window and praying that I didn't puke. Not all on the same flight, of course. But so far (knock on wood) I have not bent an airplane.

Then I got married. Even though my wife was fine with me flying, and even went flying with me from time to time, the costs of a household prevented me from continuing, and I hung up my wings. I decided that my aviation heyday was over, and I should just settle down with my family and cherish the memories.

Ten years passed. I completed a masters and doctoral program in mechanical engineering. I did work for NASA and I now design missiles in Tucson, Arizona. I work adjacent to Tucson International Airport.

My wife is a nurse practitioner, and she made sure that I visited physicians regularly to ensure that all of my biological systems were working properly. I always passed with flying colors. But one Saturday morning (January 21, 2006) I felt bad after a workout, and my wife took me next door to the emergency room of the Tucson Heart Hospital, where I commenced having a heart attack.

That did it. Obviously, I survived. But did you know that statistically there is only a 50% chance of surviving your first heart attack? When I woke up in the hospital after having the stent put in, among the first of my thoughts were that my flying days were definitely over because a heart attack invalidates anyone's medical certification.

Still, I believed I had been given a second chance at life. I started exercising every day (after three months of cardiac rehab), and I began researching nutrition. Consequently, I was successful in losing thirty pounds. I looked good and I felt good. Exercise and nutrition became a theme for living.

Then one day I found out that I could get my medical certificate back! The heart attack did not have to prevent me from flying again! I decided that I have to fly. I'm not the hottest pilot in the world by a long shot, but I have to fly. I set my mind to regaining my medical certification. Meanwhile, I started flying again with an instructor, since you don't have to have a valid medical certificate to do that.

To make a long story short, I did get my medical back. I applied to the FAA for a medical certificate. They wrote back and said to send them proof that everything they ever heard was wrong with me has been corrected. I went to four or five specialists in the process, but after four months I had a Special Issuance Third Class Medical Certificate in my hands and the flying started up again.

The current status of my flying is that last Sunday a co-worker and I went to Deer Valley Airport north of Phoenix and flew a 1973 Grumman AA-1B that we are thinking of buying. It's a nice bird. The next step is the pre-purchase inspection, which could happen next week. I think you should stick around for the ride. Thanks for checking out my blog.