My participation in aviation has been as a recreational pilot. Primary training was
done in an L-2 Tailorcraft and Luscombe 8A with Amelia Reid at Reid Hillview
Airport in San Jose, CA, attaining my private certificate in 1967. Shortly thereafter
I acquired my first aircraft, an Ercoupe 415-C, and after a few hundred hours I
upgraded to a Piper Cherokee Arrow PA-28R-200. I was working for Hewlett-
Packard in the San Francisco Bay Area and consider myself lucky at having spent
my early years in aviation learning and flying in high density airspace.
After transferring with HP to a division in Oregon in 1973, I bought my third
aircraft, a Ted Smith Aerostar 601-P. By then I had my commercial certificate with
instrument and multi-engine ratings. I was only one of three people in the
company at the time who was permitted to fly myself on company business, and
used the Aerostar to commute back and forth to the Bay Area. When I moved
back to the Bay Area with HP in 1983, the housing market had gone crazy and the
only hangar space I could find for the aircraft was an hour and half away from my
home, across the Bay in Hayward. Increasing responsibilities with the company, a
young family and stretched finances forced me to sell the Aerostar in 1985, one of
the hardest decisions I’ve ever made, because I quit flying.
Fast forward 29 years and, when I turned 70, I decided to get back into aviation
while I still could and bought my current aircraft, a Lancair Legacy, whose
performance is very similar to the Aerostar, but is a lot less expensive to maintain.
Both aircraft were built for speed with small, highly loaded, laminar flow wings. I
turn 81 this year, have 2000 hours and hope to keep flying well into the future.
