In remembrance of Ron.
Celebration of life will be March 23 at 1400. Will be held at Ron Linn International AirPort.
10/25/2022
Transition
So, I had soloed in a 7AC Champ and bought my own airplane. A 1946 BC12D Taylorcraft! I needed my own airplane to build time and enjoy the marvel of flight! It was my new dream, for my future, but I had a long way to go to get hireable.
The T-Craft burned about 4 gallons an hour of 40 cent/gallon Av Gas and I flew a lot. I studied every thing I could and picked the brains of a growing list of mentors! My logbook had over 200 hours in it when I rode for my Private License. I got serious about advancing my logbook after a “new-be” Flight Instructor saw me spin down into the traffic pattern and threatened to turn me in to the FAA for it. Approaching the “down-wind” corner of the traffic pattern, 2000’ to high, I would spin down a couple turns to the correct altitude and “pop” out of the spin at Traffic Pattern Altitude, and on heading. “New-be” thought it his task to correct my entry/attitude. Jack Lenhardt offered, on my behalf, the maneuver was part of my Commercial Pilot / Certified Flight Instructor training. I offered to loosen his front teeth.
By Thanksgiving of that fall I was a CFI myself.
A local man went to a training school to drive for Grayhound bus and I bought his Piper Colt. Jack gave me an end of his display counter, at his airport, and I started a flight training school. The Piper Colt is a 2 place version of the PA22 Tripacer aimed at the trainer market Cessna had with their Cessna 150. The airplane was 5 years old and had 325 hours on the tach. Powered with a Lycoming 0235 engine, dashed at 108 hp, it made a fair trainer. Flaps would have been more “complex” but it was bullet proof! I tried to offer the Taylorcraft, as a rental, along with the PA 22-108, but it only had brakes on the left side and that put tailwheel instruction in doubt. So, the T-Craft went to Medford.
The flight school was a week end/ summer evening business but it was good to reverse the cash flow for my young family. I was building time in the time honored way and learning a lot along the way. They say “the way to learn a subject is to teach it” and I enjoyed instruction. Lenhardt’s is a crop spraying airport and that seemed to match my farm-boy background. Jack Lenhardt became a Cessna Ag Plane dealer and I got to meet a lot of the industry people there. Flying Sprayers made good sense to me. It is real hands and feet flying and I liked flying the airplane! I liked Agriculture.
The PIC logbook time had to be heavy in taildragger time and I had lots of that time. I also had a lot of time out where the envelope is sticky. Unusual attitude and mock spray passes captured my training so flying 5 foot AGL wasn’t something I had not done. Spray passes on mock fields by the hundreds were performed. But Part 137 is hard to get a foothold into! But I got my chance with Kilmer at Warden Washington. I still remember the day, “14”, of my notice to quit the Electric trade at General Foods and carried the last of my tools out to my pickup.
Sink or swim! The coin was still up in the air!
9/2/2022
Thought No. 70945A
Every discipline has its own peculiarities and until you rub up against them you don’t know they exist. Such is a sneeze to a Part 137 Pilot.
Part 137 is the FAA regulation that pertains to crop spraying. That was my career for most of my adult life. I spent my younger years “studying for the gallows” to quote Mark Twain.
So, imagine yourself flying across a field at 125 MPH +/- with your wheels 5 to 10 feet above the crop, +/_. Everything seems stable until you get this URGE to sneeze! That can be ignored with varying degrees of success but not always! This is not one of those times and you realize a sneeze is imminent! This could get awkward! There is an instant, in a full-blown sneeze, that you are not really “PIC”. There are some crops that tend to be “sticky” and bumping your gear into them can turn out badly. The wheels ever so slightly stick and the aircraft ever so slightly pitches down and the whole thing gets worse. The result becomes exponential.
So upon the impending sneeze do this – pitch the airplane up slightly and get the sneeze out of the way. There is a period where you are not in command but, better angled up than down. You won’t go very high and who will know? Reestablish with the crop and hope you don’t have a “TWO-FER” on the schedule.
And you wonder why we get the big bucks!
Ron
8/15/2022
Auld lange syne:
"Saw my old lover in the grocery store, snow was falling Christmas eve. Stood behind her in the check out line and I touched her on the sleeve."
Something, that was once something, to Dan Foglberg, but was now no more. Now a memory. A chance meeting with his past. A chance to go back to what was once. Back to when it was different than it is now. I guess I knew it was part of a stream, running toward the inevitable, but we had so much time then we didn't give it much thought. Maybe that's why the earth is round - so we can't see too far ahead. That doesn't explain looking back.
I don't have an "old lover", as Folberg, but I do drift back in the 3am hours of my day to what was. 3 am, when sleep watches you from it's perch and then relieves you from the tasks of the hours.
My old lover was my dream of, and my career with, flying airplanes for a living. I can not remember a time before I wanted to fly. My first flight: really the first time I ever touched an airplane, was at the Aurora airport. My instructor was a OLD guy, maybe 45 years old. He had flown Corsairs for the Marines in the South Pacific. The airplane was a Aeronca Champ. A two place tandem seat fabric covered airplane with a 65 hp Continental engine. The preflight was a jumble of names of components and explanation of how they worked that only part way made sense. The engine start was an example of "winding up the rubber band" but this time it made motor noises. Woody climbed into the back seat and we taxied out to the end of the runway. Power went in and we started to roll faster. The tail came up and the nose nodded and bumbled - and - WE FLEW!
That was my start and it was costing me $6/hour for the airplane and $5/hour for Woody. $11/hr was a lot for a kid with a wife who did diapers at a laundry mat. My father pointed that out to me.
Chasing ratings to a CFI and I began to reverse the cash flow. 800 hours heavy in taildraggers and maybe reckless experimenting in how things worked and I landed a seat in the Basin in a Pawnee. Came to realize this job isn't - and is - about the airplane. It is about putting the produce where it needs to be and not screwing up. It is about helping farms put profit in the bin. And you REALLY get to fly the airplane!
I miss my old lover - the work with the airplane. Across the field to the turn around. Pulling and rolling, glancing through the skylight over your shoulder as the field rotates for the next swath. The airplane is an extension of you. You and the airplane are one unit.
When it is good it is very good. I can't explain it.
I fell in love with sailboats and built 3 of them, a 10' dingy, a 27' Cascade Sloop, and my "swan" song, a 46' Cutter : Stewball. We sold Stewball to a guy in Dubai this spring. It made a grown (maybe groan) man cry!
"Stewball" was named after the Peter, Paul and Mary song about the ignored race horse. The Sloop was "Floyd Senior" named after my Dad who traded some of his dreams for our benefit, the 10' was "Denim".
My dream was to sail around the world but Georgia wouldn't go and I wouldn't go without her. Not every dream must become true. We did sail Stewball to Alaska and back and made dozens of trips up and down the Columbia and the oregon/Washington coast.
Not all must come true.
It is time to down size regarding my toys. The cars, trucks, tractors, airplanes and the toys that have come to own me must be downsized. On night at 3am I counted 41 lead/acid batteries I had to maintain That's got to be NUTS!
I tell the neighbors I'm keeping all this stuff so as to punish Georgia for all the mean things she has ever done to me! That'll show her.
So my old lover and I meet sometimes at 3am and we feel what it was like to be us - then.
"She gave a kiss to me and I unlocked, and I watched her drive away"!
ron
7/20/2022
A “Seiche” is the long-term oscillation of a fluid, such as a body of water. Energy moving outward in a pool meets a shallowing bottom and becomes a wave. That wave builds vertically until “breaking” like mini surf, and makes a mini sound where water meets shore. Millions of operations smooth and round the pebbles. Time softens the edges.
A Tsunami is a wave generated by a large event often a long way away. A Tsunami has WAY more energy and doesn’t compare with a “mini” event, but it has an interesting name. I believe it to be Japanese in origin.
The small round shoreline rocks that speak, when the small wavelets break onto them, speak of events recalled from a while ago. From something in memory. The recall of such events give voice to the 3am world. Events that are in review when sleep evades. It could have been yesterday but it was not. It was some yesterday, not just that yesterday.
Paul Theroux, in his novel “ The Mosquito Coast”, wrote about being brave at 3 am when you would be, should be, sleeping. Shakespeare alluded to “Sleep that knits up the raveled sleeve of care” but it doesn’t always work that way at 3 am.
The 3am review of life events.
My earliest memory is of my mother washing my hands in the bathroom sink at our farm on Highway 214. I was too small to reach into the sink, even standing on that little stool. As she, a woman in her early in 20’s, washed the hands of her second born son. I held my hands stiff armed over the sink and her soft hands, with warm water and soap, got my hands clean. My mom was a product of the Depression years and there were many things she had little control over but, my clean hands, was not one of those things. It was high on her list.
3am review.
My first summer out of High School I was 18 and hire-able by Birds Eye a large food producer at Woodburn Oregon. It was a step up from picking berries and beans and hauling hay for a “buck” an hour. Late in that summer I got the letter that I was accepted at OSU. I didn’t know what to expect as my High School GPA was miserable but, I had done well on the “college boards”.
Because I walked fast and responded to the requests of my superiors with “Yes Sir”, I got more responsible jobs that summer. During bean season I was assigned to work a “catwalk”. A conveyor belt 10 – 12 feet above the floor brought green beans into the building to begin the process. The “catwalk” part referred to the expanded steel walk way paralleling this green bean inflow belt. This belt had “paddles” I could adjust to feed the beans to 12 or 15 inspection belts with women sorting the beans for defects and/or stuff not green beans. More paddle shearing more beans meant more product per hour. Less shear angle meant less volume to be inspected for defects. I would watch the last woman on each inspection belt to gauge how much we could push through and still properly inspect. When she shot me “dagger” glances I knew to reduce the flow. When things were running smoothly, while working on the night shift, I would lean back on the hand rail and look out the second story window and see the night traffic on Highway 99E flowing toward Salem. Red taillights leaving, White headlights coming. And wonder if I were coming or going. My life was about to change. Georgia and I had been a couple the last two years of High School and that was about to be different. She had a scholarship to attend Portland State, I would be at Corvallis. We would be in the same, but different, worlds. The small round rocks spoke of that change about to be; Red and White on the Highway.
The next summer I worked for a concrete contractor in Silverton, Oregon. We had mix trailers, dump trucks of aggregate, and 96 lbs. bags of cement to mix into concrete on site. At the end of each day, we would return our equipment to a yard and I would stop at Kolstad’s Texico and get an Orange Soda to drink in mostly one long gulp. One day there was an older man there and he watched me and said, of my one gulp downing, “Like pouring sand down a rat hole”. I didn’t know how to take that. I know now he recognized a strapping 19-year-old workman and it was meant to be positive. At the time I was too inexperienced to recognize that. You don’t always get it right the first time!
Do over: smile and shake his hand!
I never asked my girlfriend’s father for her hand in marriage. I know now he would have given it, but my experience base at the time was too weak to realize my role. I failed to fill that gap in our relationship and then it became too late. The cost of his life style choices over-drew his accounts and he died early. When I started my business as an aerial application service the Capital Press newspaper did a page about circle irrigation in Umatilla County and included a story about my start-up venture. Hometown friends told me, too late, that at slow times in conversation, Georgia’s dad would drag out of his wallet a “dog eared” copy of that newspaper offering and show them what his son-in law was doing. Al Czarny flew in B17’s with the 8th Army Air Force during WW2. 10 men , boys really , made up the crew and they stood a good chance of getting killed. Flying out of England, climbing to almost 25,000 feet breathing with oxygen masks , wearing electric heated suits in unpressurized airplanes they lost the protection of the “Fighter Cover” before reaching the target. That left them sitting ducks for the Luftwaffe. If they made it back to England, they knew they would have to do it again, and again. It molded that generation in a way we now realize was damaging to health. His formative years, at war, embraced a life style not text book. My heroes and mentors were of that generation. We owe them for their sacrifices that insure our freedoms today.
I should have done better!
There was this brown eyed, flat bellied, pony tail haired beauty that would sit on a stump overlooking a deer run with me on cold Saturday mornings in deer hunting season. Wrapped in a sleeping bag, perched on a hill side stump that must have been 4 foot in diameter, we would watch for a deer. To get in position we had driven down into a drainage on a frozen dirt track in my dad’s 1950 2-wheel drive pickup. As the morning wore on, I sensed her waning interest, it was time to drive out. Starting up the south facing track in the pickup I found the dirt had thawed into a layer of slick mud! 4 to 5 tries failed to get us up the grade and to a better road. We were stuck in the mud! It would be hours before the mud would thaw and firm up enough to give us the traction we needed!
OUCH!
Pretty soon a Jeep appeared on the upper lip of the track and stopped and appeared to be studying our dilemma. I hiked up the mud to them and they offered to pull us out with their winch and 4-wheel drive Jeep. This was accomplished with ease and I thanked them profusely. The guy in the passenger seat asked me if my girlfriend had driven down there in the first place?
“No”, says I.
“Oh”, he says. “I didn’t think a MAN would be that dumb as to drive down there”!
OUCH!
3 am review.
ron
7/18/2022
6/25/2022
Aeronca 7AC Champion:
AKA The Champ!
My first flying lesson was in a Champ at Aurora State Airport. There were only buildings on the South East end of the runway. The Woodburn Independent newspaper had a write up about a startup flying service at the Aurora Airport that caught my eye. I had always had a hankering – NO A THRIST – to fly airplanes but had never had the opportunity, or taken it, to get involved. This was on a Friday morning and I was waiting for the payroll window to open, so I could get my pay check, so I could beat our grocery check of Thursday to the bank and not have it bounce!
So, thinking I had time to spare I drove out to the Airport and looked this flying service up. The flight Instructor was a suntanned guy with an astronaut haircut and he reeled me in for an “intro” flying lesson. Woody flew F4 Corsairs during the war and had moved up to a broke kid, with a wife and a toddler, in a 65HP Champ!
He sat me in the front seat of the tandem configured Champ and gave a BRIEF description of the elaborate panel. “You follow my orders, and repeat the orders, and we will start the engine.
O.K.
Switch off!
4 shots of primer!
Switch on, throttle cracked! (Say what)?
The engine started on about the third blade and made this marvelous chackling sound and shook like my Labrador Retriever just out of the creek. And the smell! Av gas, doped fabric, and just about the most intoxicating smell of an old airplane!
I was hooked!
We flew over the Willamette River, and the towns, and the places that I knew from living there.
I knew then, that I had been chosen, by the magic of flight. That became my dream, my passion, to fly airplanes! A young man with an unsatisfiable dream will have the energy to work two jobs, go to night school two nights a week and be responsible to a young family.
I would wish that on everyone!
ron
