December 21, 2008
The Day dawned beautifully with a crisp, fall feeling in the Air. For Arizona in December, it was downright cold! I had an eMail message the night before from a Leisure World friend, Allan Wallace, with the terse message, "Hi---I am going flying tomorrow morning----thought you might like to go along----easy flight for breakfast-----let me know---Allan" With no hesitation I replied, "Yes! I'd love it! What time and where? Dress code?"
Some of my long term readers may remember a couple of years ago, when Allan invited me on a breakfast flight to Sedona. On that trip I was able to invite Kathy and Fred Wettig, who lived just down the hill from the Sedona Airport, to come up and have breakfast with us. It was a great trip and I reported it with pictures in the << Wettig.org >> pages. Allan's beautiful wife, Pat, joined us for the trip. On this trip to the Tucson/Marana Airport, it was just Allan and me and three of Allan's friends in their own planes. It is amazing to me how easy it is to communicate between groups, whether at home, at work, traveling by car or up in the air. I remember the rudimentary radio equipment which we used back in the dark ages circa WW II. Between the crackling and the sound level fluctuations, you were lucky to be able to know that your other pilot was even in the same sky with you! But, on this trip we were able to easily establish contact, know the location of those traveling with us and to exchange information and pleasantries while en-route.
I was taught early in my flight training, a hundred years ago, that you can tell the kind of pilot by the care that he gives his plane! I still think this is true! Allan's hangar at Falcon Field was spotless with everything in its place. These T Hangars are wonderful and provide a safe place for your plane, out of the weather and with good protection from nosy spectators (although we don't have as many of those today as we had back in the 1946 era.) I can remember the puzzle game we played each evening trying to fit wings and tails together to stack the greatest number of planes in the small hangar at my little field at Seagate. Allan's attention to details in the preflight inspection reassured me that this is a pilot I can trust. An essential part of enjoyable flying!
Oh! How things have changed! Moving a plane is a one man and a little tractor job! The little tractor attached to the nose wheel moved the plane out into the line with no trouble. The biggest trouble was getting an 84 year old passenger up onto the wing and down into the cockpit without damaging either the passenger or the plane. With the help of a rolling ladder, it was accomplished, and the only worry we had was how would we extricate this passenger from the plane! But we decided to worry about that later and taxied out to the runway for the takeoff. There was only one little 'hitch' in the preparation. It took quite a while to 'warm up' the instruments and the pumps and the fluids, so we spent a while at the end of the runway letting the engine do its thing before departure. It was cold! And then we were off into the 'Wild Blue Yonder!'
The Marana Airfield is down South at Tucson. The route just a bit Southwest from Mesa covers a lot of desert. You really don't need a map! Just follow the irrigation canal which is the most prominent landmark. It was a little like flying the railroad tracks as we used to do in the East. The desert was desolate! Scarred by the east and west flow of the wind and the little bit of water that flows here. It is crisscrossed today by the marks of the off-road vehicles that are so popular throughout the west. The air was clear and smooth until we reached the Casa Grande area where we encountered some low lying, thin clouds. It gave a beautiful picture of he hills jutting out from the misty clouds. The desert is dotted with little communities, most just a few miles from the major highways, and many of these have a small airstrip. All are larger than the little grass strips that I flew from at Carolina Skyways in Wilmington.
The instruments available to the Pilot of today are unbelievable to a WW II Pilot who has not flown since 1963! That one instrument (above) gives more good information than all of the instruments of a B-25 - and you can believe it! Something you were never quite sure of in the "Good Old Days!" Allan's plane is well equipped with GPS and Auto-pilot and other instruments that I don't even know the names of. The only fear that I would have with all of these automatic controls would be that I might forget I was the Pilot and decide to take a nap at the wrong time! But, too soon, the airfield at Marana came into view and we began the descent for breakfast. We found that Cindy and Curt Browning were already on the ground and waiting for us. Roger Whittier from Glendale was also there. The Brownings fly a green and white Beech Bonanza similar to Allan's Blue and white model. Roger was sporting a Sirius, but he is building a new experimental model in his garage at home!
We parked only a short walk from the Marana Airport Restaurant where we found a full house of mostly local folks having a nice Sunday morning Breakfast. And, it was delicious. The talk at breakfast was mostly about airplanes and how to get the most out of an engine by leaning the mixture. I have to tell you it strained my brain to go back for more than a half century to retrieve some of what Roger was explaining, but I thoroughly enjoyed it!
It was a great day for flying and for friends! Just click on the following blue line and read the description of the flight from Curt's Journal of the Day's Flight: Curt Browning's report!
And, after a beautiful Day in the Air, we were back in the shadow of the Familiar Red Mountain of Mesa.
I hope you enjoyed the trip as much as I did!
Send a message to me at MacWettig@aol.com with your comments.