So what? So I haven’t recorded a podcast since… since… when? Please listen to others’ podcasts, and, if you happen to be in Oshkosh, drop by and see the aviation podcasters after the airshow on Friday, Aug 1st in one of the pavilion tents. I don’t think that I will be there, as I will be arriving earlier in the week and probably leaving for home before the Podapalooza. Also, having not recorded a podcast since the last Oshkosh, I feel personally unqualified to be a part of the panel.

If you are traveling to Oshkosh, and would like to say “Hi”, we will probably be in the pet section of Camp Scholler with our brown Jeep Grand Cherokee, and our new Hi-Lo trailer. Look for the license plate “P’DCAST” on the SUV.

See you there!

Len

Now that I’ve been promoted on Adam Curry’s Daily Source Code episode 727 (about 10 minutes into the show), it’s time to start producing more episodes of the FPP.

It’s going into full production, although it’s a design introduced 18 years ago, before the fall of the Soviet Union. It is going to be a direct replacement for the Sukhoi Su-24 Fencer.

And, for comparison purposes, here is the USA’s Lockheed F-22 Raptor:

You all know how much I like aviation history… especially airline history. Enjoy!

Okay, you may be able to hear our baby boy, Alan, trying to podcast from the audience. Anyway, here is the Pilotcast roundtable hangar flying from the EAA Fly In in Oshkosh, Wisconsin. See the next post for my blog entry, and photos.

You can download the mp3 file directly here:

To pilots here in North America, Oshkosh is the pilgrimage of the flier. For one week each year, around the end of July/beginning of August, Wittman Field (KOSH) in Oshkosh, Wisconsin becomes the busiest airport in the world. Here are the details of my visit:

My family drove to Bedford, Massachusetts to borrow my mother’s Class B Motorhome. It was in need of a lot of attention, as the routine maintenance had been neglected, and it had a pretty nasty water leak. We did some work on it in Mom’s driveway, and took off back home, with a quick stop to see Frank Lloyd Wright’s Falling Water house in Pennsylvania.

After returning home and working on the water problem, we sent our daughter off with some friends to Colorado (for some reason, our 15 year old didn’t want to go to the airshow), and departed the house on Tuesday, late afternoon. Tuesday night we spent freelance camping en route in the van, and Wednesday stopped in Beloit, WI to get a LP gas problem fixed and to buy a pair of new RV batteries. We arrived in Oshkosh later that afternoon. We paid our $19 per night to stay in Camp Scholler, and found a spot in the pet area. So, it was me, Inna, Alan and Sima (our Yorkie) staying in the miniature motorhome.

Thursday morning, we rose, used the community showers, and made our way out to Airventure, where we took in the static displays, and listened to separate forums hosted by Chuck Yeager and Bob Hoover. We watched the aerial shows, heard a violin concert in the Theater in the Woods, and returned to the van to a nice meal of beef stew. As with last year, we arrived in Oshkosh at about the same time that the rain did, so the shows were abbreviated.

Traveling with our 5 month old was difficult, but it seems that the EAA has families in mind. We found diaper changing stations in a couple of places, fully stocked with all sizes of disposable diapers, as well as a “Mother/Baby Hanger” where mothers and babies can do what they do, with an outdoor waiting area for the dads.

Friday, we had some more fun watching the dogs from the US Customs and Border Protection agency sniff out drugs and contraband from suitcases on stage. I watched forums on GPS and WAAS, and flying cars, while Inna watched the airshow again. Tragically, this was the afternoon when two P-51 Mustangs collided with each other on landing, killing pilot Gerald S. Beck, 58, of Wahpeton, North Dakota.

Pilotcast Podcast-Palooza

At 5:30, in the GAMA pavillion (#2) I was invited by the Pilotcast guys to join them and representatives of Uncontrolled Airspace, Airspeed Online, Ultraflight Radio, The Finer Points, the CFIcast, and the Student Pilot Flight Podlog in a round-table discussion/hangar flying talk which will be available soon on the Pilotcast site. I may also put the mp3 in the Flying Pilot podcast feed.

After this, Inna and I took a walk around all of the airplane tie-downs to see what we want to buy or build.

Saturday morning, I took a workshop in composite construction, where we took a flat square of foam, filled it in with epoxy mixed with microballoons, covered it with fiberglass cloth, and coated the whole thing with epoxy resin. Afterword, the whole thing was covered with a dacron sheet. It turned out pretty well. I was pretty tired when I attended the briefing for the fabric covering workshop, so I ended up skipping the practical portion, but learned a lot in the presentation.

World War II Bombers

In the Saturday airshow, there was a formation of WWII bombers, a B-17, a B-24, and three B-25s. Also, there was the highly anticipated demonstration of the F-22 Raptor. It astonishes me each time I see it fly straight up, run out of speed, and simply nose over and accelerate again perfectly horizontally. Oh the technology of vectored thrust!

3 Generations of Air Force Fighters

Later, the F22 was joined by a P-38 and F-86 in an Air Force Heritage formation flight.

Saturday night, we saw the 1942 John Wayne movie The Flying Tigers at the fly-in theater. Inna and I both enjoyed it, and Alan seemed to enjoy it as well, at least during the times that he was awake.

Oh, I’m not going to talk about all of the commercial displays. You can read about them in many other places, with new VLJs, (Very Light Jets), LSAs (Light Sport Aircraft), and flying cars. Just visit Airventure.org to see them for yourself. I did pick up the book about Captain Jeppessen, and will talk about him and his little black book on a future podcast.

Today we listen to a conversation that I had with my first officer on a recent flight. Todd, in his spare time, flies for an organization called “Freedom Flight” in the Dallas Fort Worth Texas region. He talks about the organization, and his flights in support of Hurricane Katrina relief.

The podcast is here:

Freedom Flight website.

I heard from my good friend, American Airlines Retired Captain John Halliday. John’s book Flying Through Midnight was released in the same general time frame as my own book, The World At My Feet.

John tells me the paperback version is starting to show up in Wal-Marts and other major outlets, and I wanted to let you know as well as give you a new link for this book. When I first mentioned Flying Through Midnight upon its release a couple of years ago, many of my readers immediately read it, then wrote to tell me how much they enjoyed it. Here is how one reader put it:

One of the best books I have ever read, and could serve as a guidebook for living. You are a philosopher, poet, humanist, and gifted writer. There were so many lessons to be learned regarding friendship, loyalty, and thinking outside the box that I read the book a second time in order the fully grasp these lessons. Who can ever forget Wiley, Jack, Charles, Ty or the Hawk, Desktop, and the Church of the Air Force. Your endless patience with Rich, your regard for Tonto, and your gift of tools to Toothless revealed your character. The way you wove the music of the day into daily events and the symbolism of the rocks was pure genius. The lyrics of those songs will forever remind me of the stories in the book. In skimming over the Mekong River on the return trip from Long Tien, I felt the sense of triumph and relief of you and the crew at having survived the impossible. Thank you for helping me to understand the role of politics in deadly conflicts. Your father's observation that you were lambs led to slaughter was right on. The news bulletin interrupting the Lawrence Welk show describing "the event" would have been unbelievable had I not just read your book of what really happens in war. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. You are truly one incredibly brave and humble American.
– Ruth Daniel

When I read Flying Through Midnight myself, I was just incredulous. I didn’t know John very well yet, and didn’t appreciate the scope of this true-life adventure. This is truly one of the most thrilling and unbelievable stories—aviation or otherwise—I’ve ever read and I am proud to call John my friend. You can find more information about it here:
My Space .

I’ve now posted the first part of “Cookie Run,” accessible through the Table Of Contents . Some of my readers who go back a few years may remember this from a previous Blog entry, and I later decided to include it in my sequel. In the very first part of this chapter I’ve described a photo mission for my airline, taken at Mt. McKinley. The photo appears among many others in The World At My Feet as well as in my Photo Gallery. The link appears in my “A Much Younger Cap’n Meryl” Album: Photos

"The World At My Feet" and "Flights of Whimsy" is now a
permanent offer in our Gift Ideas area at
fromthecockpit.com. Just $25 for both books,
shipped anywhere in the world for free for a
savings of $12.85.

This week, for some reason, as I was going through Part Two of the latest chapter to my book sequel, I stopped and really thought about my years in Alaska. I moved there in 1981 to take a flying job, my first experience with passenger jets, and didn’t move out of Alaska until five years after that flying job had terminated due to the airline going out of business. That was Wien Air Alaska, which operated B-727’s, B-737’s and a couple of DC-8’s during my time there as a pilot. It started with Noel Wien, a bush pilot, in 1927 and grew into Alaska’s premier airline. At the time of its demise, it was the oldest airline in the world, as far as I know. What a blow that was to the people of Alaska and to me as well in a very personal way. Many members of the Wien family flew for the airline, and I’m still in contact with a few of them from time to time, including Merrill Wien (one of Noel’s sons) and his son Kurt, who now flies for American. Flying with Captain Merrill Wien was one of the highlights of my career at Wien Air Alaska. He was (and is) a gentleman, as smooth a pilot as I’ve ever known, and a part of aviation history. His son, Kurt, and his wife had a baby girl awhile back and they named her “Meryl.” The name is of course for Kurt’s father, Merrill, but I was told the spelling was with my own name in mind.

Although I was initially based in Denver with United, and later in San Francisco, I could just not bear to part with this wild, wonderful and beautiful state when I was first hired by United. So I commuted, as so many pilots and flight attendants do, for more than five years after I was hired.

A few years after I started to fly for United, I was in Anchorage on some days off. I was in the living room of a friend’s home and standing at a large picture window. Suddenly, I saw a large cloud of gray/black smoke materialize in the distance. It looked like a nuclear bomb had been dropped. I turned on the news and discovered it was Mount Redoubt, about 150 miles from Anchorage. Unbeknownst to me until then, Mount Redoubt was a volcano and it was erupting.

I had flown right by this volcano for months during times of furlough (there were many) at Wien. I had been hired as the Chief Pilot for the Nondalton Indian Tribe and their new air taxi service (about which I wrote a little in my first book, The World At My Feet). In fact, I passed Mount Redoubt almost daily on my flights back and forth to Anchorage. Often there was a cloud near the top, but there are often little clouds around mountains and I thought nothing of it. That was no cloud but rather steam from an angry, boiling interior I never suspected looking at its serene, snow-capped exterior.

As I watched the cloud of volcanic ash grow and grow and start to spread, I didn’t think about anything but the fact that I had never seen a volcano erupt before, and had never thought I would (other than one on the Big Island of Hawaii). However, as the cloud quickly blew toward Anchorage, I knew I had a problem. Flights into and out of Anchorage were quickly being cancelled and it was already too late to get out. I was stuck behind this wall of volcanic ash for the next week or so. I called United and surprisingly, their attitude was that it wasn’t my fault a volcano had erupted. They were very laid back about it and told me to just let them know whenever I made it back.

KLM Royal Dutch Airlines also knew it had a problem. One of their B-747’s, inbound to Anchorage, had experienced engine failure in all four of its engines in the volcanic ash cloud. Fortunately, just above 13,000 feet, the crew successfully restarted all the engines, but not before $80 Million of damage had been done to the plane. I was one of several pilots invited to Anchorage International Airport afterward to view the damage and learn from it. The whole airplane looked like it had been sandblasted, which basically it was. What a terrifying freefall for all on board in mountainous territory. You can read more about it here: http://pubs.usgs.gov/fs/fs030-97 . Volcanic ash avoidance by aircraft has been vastly improved since this and other incidents.

Living in Alaska was always interesting, to say the least. I’ll write a little more about it in the coming weeks. In the meantime, you’ll find Part Two of Keep Your Pants On, Please! here along with all previous installments Table Of Contents.

First, a reminder that you may send your aviation questions to me at support@fromthecockpit.com with "Aviation Question" in the subject. Be sure to check out this week's Ask Cap'n Meryl question & answer about: You Dirty "Rat"

This week’s chapter, entitled “Keep Your Pants On, Please!” may be recognized by some who have been reading my blog for a couple of years. It was first published in March, 2005, in response to several inquiries regarding funny incidents that happened during my flying career.

Published in two parts as always, keep in mind the funniest sections are in the next installment. All chapters of my sequel may be found here as they are published:Table Of Contents .

Stories like this really take me back. When I first moved to Alaska, people who had been there for awhile told me people either love it or hate it almost immediately. I had no doubt whatsoever that I would love it, and I did.

I remember first learning about Alaska after the huge 9.2 earthquake there on Good Friday of 1964. I was in elementary school at the time and thought (other than that whole earthquake thing) it sounded like the most wonderful place, and that I would like to live there sometime. I was just sure I’d wind up there at some point.

My wish came true and I did live in Alaska for a period of ten years, moving there in 1981 to fly for Wien Air Alaska, and commuting from San Francisco for another five years after I was hired by United.

During my time there, I flew the B-727 and B-737 for Wien Air Alaska, but was often laid off for stretches of months at a time. During one of those breaks I was hired as Chief Pilot for the Nondalton Indian Tribe, whose Chief, “Jim,” thought it was just “way cool” to have a female pilot in charge. I thought it was pretty cool, too, and wrote a little about it in my first book (Chapter 25 – “Wing Walker”).

Colorado, where I now live, is a lovely state, but Alaska holds a special place in my memory and in my heart both from a career and personal standpoint. It’s where I got “up close and personal” with a moose or two, stood under Northern Lights so brilliant winter nights sometimes turned into day, stood on the north shore of the state in oil camps with nothing but the endless white arctic plain in sight, flew by steaming volcanoes, petted a friendly Beluga whale from a jetty right in Anchorage Harbor, stopped my car on the way home from the airport once to let a hot air balloon bounce right in front of me on the street and become airborne again, and had countless other wondrous experiences.

It’s why I’ve included so much about it in Part Two of “The World At My Feet.”

"The World At My Feet" and "Flights of Whimsy" is now a
permanent offer in our Gift Ideas area at
fromthecockpit.com. Just $25 for both books,
shipped anywhere in the world for free for a
savings of $12.85.
Click here: Gift Ideas

And with that,
Until Next Time,
Maintain Airspeed,

Cap'n Meryl