Where We Came From. Who We Are. Part III

I picked up my charter in Sault Ste Marie MI bound for Cairo IL, a ling leg to the south.

Sometimes engineers don't talk much, and marine engineers even less. Buried in lap tops, hard copies and tables their flight passes quickly. Mine less so.

Time to think.

A long time back I mentioned that I had won a Cub J-3 from a guy in a poker game. And I mentioned, actually issued a warning would be closer, not to play cards against me for money. Before I even knew the term, I had a gambler in Las Vegas (yeah, I won there too, but not against the house) that I had less "tells' than anyone she had ever seen, except herself.

Anyway, I had won the Cub only to find out it wasn't flyable. It had a blown engine and would have to be disassembled, trucked to some site for repairs and then have a new certificate of airworthiness issued. Harrison (my motorcycle racing buddy) and I went down to Stanaford and picked up the airplane after taking it apart over a few weekends, loaded it onto a hay wagon and off we went to the Skelton Airport near Beckley WV.

Skelton was a true coal camp. The tipple was just off to one side of the town and the overhead transfer for the loaded coal jimmies ran right over the houses and the highway. The entire 1/2 mile run for the loaded jimmies was over a crude but heavy steel net, designed to stop slate, coal and the rare jimmy from falling onto a house or the highway, killing anyone unlucky enough to be underneath at the time. This was West Virginia coal country at it's grim and gritty worst. All that is gone now, replaced by a shopping mall, cheap junk food eateries and a movie theater or two.

The airport was for there for the use and enjoyment of anyone lucky, and rich, enough to be able to actually own--or at least rent--an airplane. I was neither lucky enough or rich enough by a long shot.

During my junior year in Woodrow Wilson High, Beckley, I had landed a part time job at the Skelton Airport doing whatever scut work that was needed. Wash airplanes, help push them wherever needed, drive the Jeep donkey, haul trash, grease and oil. You name it. But I did have a job at an airport and now I had an airplane. Or more properly Harrison & I had an airplane, and all we had to do was to make it work again.

Harrison was a pretty good wrench when it came to bike engines. We a 250cc Puch (Pook) and a 200cc Zundapp that could outrace the usual Harleys in woods runs, especially in mud or on tight turns. The Harley guys hated it. Harrison wrenched. Hard. I rode. Fast.

Harrison took a close look at the 65 hp Continental and pronounced it as nothing more than a larger bike engine and would "see what he could do" to get a little more power out of it while he was working it over. You need to understand here. Our corner of the coal fields was not exactly mainstream America when it came to things like FAA inspectors, certified flight instructors and authorized airframe & engine mechanics. If you could get it into the air and you didn't kill any one (except yourself) you were pretty much on your own back then. This was 1963 remember.

I had gotten hold a copy of Stick & Rudder. I guess I kind of "liberated" it from the local library but it hadn't been checked out in nearly 5 years. I needed it worse than the library and everybody else at the airport already knew how to fly and didn't need it at all. I memorized every page of that book and actually still have it, oil and blood stains included.

Harrison wrenched while I was working on and around airplanes. We raced bikes on the weekends and when there was time I went to classes at West Virginia Tech, Montgomery WV, the (then) best civil/mining engineering school mom, dad, and I could afford.

It took us about a year to get the Cub ready and checked out. Then came the day we needed to find a flight instructor.

I mentioned above that things were a little different back then in southwest WV. No one looked too closely at things like certificates, printed authorizations and the like. If you didn't kill anyone except yourself, whatever you did was pretty much alright.

Do you remember--or have you ever heard of--a thing called the GI Bill of Rights? By 1965 the "GI Bill" was responsible for the tremendous lead the US had in the any number fields. We turned out engineers, scientists, doctors, you name it, almost by the ton, all largely paid for by the US Government. All you need to qualify was to have been a member of our armed forces and you could go to college almost for free. Doctor Ben Hillman had been a P-51 fighter pilot during WW II. He was now a DVM--a veterinary doctor--and the owner of a brand new Mooney M20A. And he agreed to be our flight instructor.

Dr. Ben had a fairly dramatic take off procedure he used whenever anyone was watching. He'd line up on the runway center line, set the parking brake and run the engine up to just short of the redline. He'd then release the brakes, hold a fair amount of down elevator to keep the airplane firmly nailed to the ground and run down the strip until well over the minimum takeoff speed, simultaneously neutralize the elevators and retract the gear. The airplane would scream down the strip about 4 feet above the ground, riding on the compressed cushion of air under the wings and then pull up into as a steep a climb as the Mooney could muster. Doc said this was how you got off the ground as quickly as possible when the Messerschmidts were breathing down your neck with guns blazing. I guess he knew whereof he spoke too.

Anyway, to make things shorter, Doc taught me to fly. I had read "Stick & Rudder" so thoroughly that I was almost ready to solo after only three or four lessons. I just needed to learn close coordination of the controls and spend hours (and hours) on navigation--the math part--and I soloed after only a few lessons. Harrison? Doc tried. He really tried. I tried. And Harrison tried too. But any time he got into the cockpit he got deathly air sick whenever he was more than 10 feet off the ground. He was OK as a passenger, but never got a pilots ticket, and never would.

I was on my way, for better or worse. And sometimes the worse was a lot worse. I never went back to college. My feet had grown wings.

Where We Came From. Who We Are. Part II

Saranac Lake NY to Potomac Field, Friendly MD.

Funny, what can remind you of the past. Walk into some room and hear a tune and you're back in high school. Fly into an airport and you're back to the day you made an important hire...

GVA was going pretty well by now. Joyce and I had been running the charter service more or less on our own--only two part time pilots and one full timer who also wrenched things when necessary--and things were necessary a lot at times. We had a Beech Baron and a different Cessna Skylane from before. The "Skylame" had been replaced by a more trustworthy Skylane. I had even begun to wonder how a used (very used) King Air might fit our flying service.

We still lived in the 35ft travel trailer on our 15 acres of land near Renick, 12 miles from the airport. But we had started construction on a real home. Brick ranch, 3 bedrooms and a basement. We even had a computer (Commodore 64 and MSDOS operating system) and dial-up internet so we could connect to needed FAA and other aviation sites. And there were dang few of those. We had kept our old Chevy Suburban (towed the travel trailer over 100K miles) as a crew car and now had a large monthly payment on a used Mercedes. We were making it even if I still had to stay at the office at LWB a lot of nights just to keep up with things there. Joyce wanted to quit working at the office and so we began our search for a "Girl Friday". A Jill of all Trades so to speak.

Do you know how hard it is to find people who are genuinely interested in any job? We ran through the entire list. One woman said she knew how to type, turns out she was taking the forms and files home at night for her (high school) daughter to type. We still have our old IBM Selectric typewriter somewhere in the dead storage space we rent I think.

Then there was "Tattoo Sally". I don't remember if that was her actual name, but that's what we all called her. No, she wasn't a former circus tattoo'ed lady, but that's what she looked like. Now-a-days every second person is covered with "tats", back then not so much. Definitely not the image a respectable charter service wanted to portray.

Then we ran through the ones who drank, wanted to sleep (why do they call in sleep, no one actually sleeps) with the entire town of Lewisburg, the ones who simply showed up for work, found out the job actually was work, and a lot of it, and just never came back and...well, you get the idea.

And just when we were beginning to think we would never find a good, trustworthy employee we received a phone call. "Hi, I'm in Friendly MD and just saw your ad in "Flying Magazine". Is the job still open?" 'Yes, it is. Can you give me some of your qualifications?' "Do you mind if we discuss that face to face? I can be there in under two hours if you would like, what's the weather at LWB look like?' So, in a nut shell, I gave her a wx briefing and told her where the GVA FBO was located.

"Super, see you shortly. Please have a line marshal waiting. I'll be in the red Mooney 201." And she hung up the phone. At first I was a little surprised at the way the lady handled the phone conversation. Not a lot of asking and hesitancy and no uncertainty at all. Odd.

An hour and a half later a red Mooney 201 lands, I do the marshaling duties and out climbs a woman who introduces herself as Rosalind MacReady. We go inside the office and begin the interview. Which seems to turn out more of a her interviewing me session. One thing I did come away with was that she used to fly KC-135 tankers for the U.S. Government. Not the USAF, the U.S. Government. I didn't ask further. She didn't volunteer further.

And work? Damn woman seemed to do everything and be everywhere. The papers were up to date, the forms always ready. The flight plans always filed. Joyce was able to stay home and take care of things there. I was able to concentrate on my part of the job and even do some of the charter flights. Suddenly it seemed we were moving forward instead of just trying to keep our heads above water.

Oh, and one more thing. Rosalind didn't like to be called Rosalind, she preferred "Bunny". I'm sure you remember Bunny.

Where We Came From. Who We Are. Part I

Everything old is new again. Humm..words from a song that fit here. It was just a routine flight today, up to Saranac Lake NY, way up in the Adirondacks for a software developer and team. A routine ride from Franklin VA in one of our King Airs. But not too long ago it was anything but routine for me--and GVA...

In 1983 Joyce & I had gathered up what courage we could muster, held our collective breaths (and noses), signed for an absolutely huge bank loan and incorporated a small (very small) charter air carrier service called Greenbrier Virtual Aviation. Home base at the new Greenbrier Valley Airport--the old field near the Greenbrier Resort finally had been closed, replaced by a badly needed new facility. Think DC-3's weaving down between hills in fog & rain to land at the old field.

We couldn't mortgage the house as part of the loan collateral, we didn't have a house. We were living in a rather small (35') travel trailer parked on property we had bought in Renick, about 12 miles from the airport. We did manage to secure part of the loan using the land as collateral. I had some money from other sources (more on that later) and so we were off. We had a pretty good Beech Baron and a tired Cessna 182 Skylane that we usually referred to as "the Skylame. Most of our charters --and at first there were darn few charters--were hunters, fisherman and the occasional farmer wanting an aerial photograph of his acreage.

Joyce took care of the office paperwork, phone calls, scheduling, and heading off the FAA. Oh yes, and trying to find the money to pay the fuel bills and repair costs, there were a lot of those. I was the "highly trained and courteous" flight staff.

We had gotten a charter for some guy selling something called a lap top computer. He had been at a show/demo at the Greenbrier Resort and needed to be in Franklin VA for a demo for the Department of the Navy. So I fueled up the Baron and off we went to Franklin VA. And there my part in things should have ended.

I was cooling my heels at Franklin Muni and almost ready to head home empty--no pax, no cargo, no nuthin' when the guy called the FBO and asked if I was still around. The nice FBO lady said I was just getting ready to leave, handed me the phone and walked away politely. The guy needed to go to Saranac Lake NY (never been there in my life) and was I interested in the charter? His planned carrier had cancelled his flight, they found a job that paid more and left the salesman high & dry. Another small, one or two plane operation like GVA, I suppose.

Was I ready to go to NY? You bet I was!! I called Joyce, told her to cancel plans for supper and I'd be home tomorrow unless something more turned up. I bought charts, maps, and approach plates on my bent and bloody credit card, filed a flight plan for upstate NY, convinced the ground service crew to waive the landing fee and fueled up the Baron.

We were off!! At least my charter was, if not GVA itself. We were off as filed for a routine flight up to the Adirondacks, making a little money and hopefully I'd be able to find a charter of some nature back to WV or somewhere close. I spent the next two nights hanging out at Saranac Lake. They let me sleep in the back of the FBO a couple of days (things were different back then) before I found some freight going in my general direction. But GVA had been there when needed, and delivered the goods.

My salesman friend? He stayed with Gavilan for a time, always using GVA for his charter carrier. As he rose in the business he directed that GVA be his division's carrier of choice. He later moved to another computer manufacturer and took us along as his East Coast Carrier. His new employer was an up & coming outfit known as Apple. Humm...it doesn't seem all that long as I remember it, but was 1983, 32 years ago. Today GVA flew a routine charter. Up to Saranac Lake for a team from Apple in a reasonably recent King Air with full luxury cabin and the latest panel. Everything old is new again I guess.