Over 50 Years of Flying...And I'm Still Here!

By Larry Mustang Lee

50 YEARS OF FLYING...AND I'M STILL HERE!

Ever hear the saying 'been there, done that'? Well that's me and flying. Inside you'll find out what techniques and philosophies I've used to keep me alive, and to be able to continue to enjoy flying, to this day! Read the lessons that helped me successfully have Air Force, Airlines,

• Language: English
• Publisher: Palmetto Publishing
• Release date: Dec 22, 2020
• ISBN: 9781649901897

Book preview

INTRODUCTION

Beginnings Section

Hello, folks, thank you for checking in to one lucky guy's life doing exactly what he grew up wanting to do. Me! Before I get into my stories, let me say there are several There I Was moments in these stories. This saying is kind of a joke we fighter pilots used to say to each other to kid around when we were talking with our hands. You see, we would be describing some flying event, and we’d put our right hand behind our left hand, pretending our hands were fighters, look at our audience, and say, There I was. Now for the purpose of my stories you are about to read, I used this saying as an alert to you readers that something is about to happen to me in my air machine that can safely be called not normal. And as fate would have it, at times, there I was moments would quickly turn into Holy Crap, Batman! moments. Keep reading; you’ll see what I mean.

After my introduction, all these stories are the result of me being a pilot. Even those stories that had nothing to do with flying specifically were the result of me being a pilot. So…

Let's start with a personal introduction. As the front says, you can call me Mustang. No, I am not the guy in the Top Gun movie. Mustang became my call sign and nickname after flying World War II P-51 Mustangs (on the front cover as I taxi out for the PA-48's first flight, which I chased in this P-51) for Piper Aircraft in the early 1980s.

Both of my parents were very influential in my becoming a pilot. Dad flew civilian aircraft his entire life and actually taught me how to fly. Many of his beliefs, which became my beliefs, are covered in section B of this book. Section B contains my thoughts on important areas concerning flying an air machine of any type.

Got ya wondering how Mom and Dad were so influential in my becoming a pilot? Sure, Dad was a pilot, but there's just a little more to it than that. Actually, one day, Mom went flying with Dad, just enjoying cruising around the area, having fun. At that time, she was pregnant—WITH ME! (For the record, I do not use this date as the start of my 50 years. That time comes a few years later.) I was told by both parents that this was the reason I became a pilot. Seems they thought I didn’t have a choice in the matter.

This true story was my answer to the question How did you get into flying? during my United Parcel Service (UPS) interview. I honestly feel my answer had a lot to do with getting hired. The ladies who asked the question sure got a good laugh out of it. Now, folks, let's be honest. Every story in this book is true as can be. When things and events like you are about to read happen to you, there's absolutely no reason to lie or exaggerate. And, you pilots, bear with me. I try to explain things so everyone can understand, not just pilots.

While my siblings and I were growing up, Dad took us to the airport to watch airplanes come and go from the Charleston International Airport. And sometimes he would take us up flying with him. One day, I went up with him by myself. I was strapped in the right seat, just looking around and watching the ground go away as we lifted off the runway and flew around. After some sightseeing, Dad looked over at me and said, Want to fly?

I answered, Yes, sir.

Dad nodded in my direction and said, Go ahead.

I reached up, grabbed the controls, and pulled them to me. I am still strapped to the seat so I couldn’t reach the controls naturally or easily for that matter. So when I say I grabbed the controls and pulled them to me, I mean I did just that, sort of aggressively. So I pulled the yoke (what flight controls are called in this type aircraft) toward me. This move is how you normally would climb to a higher altitude in airplanes. You also normally add power first before starting this climb. But I pulled the yoke to me so fast, we didn’t have a chance to add power, so as the nose of our airplane went up, we ran out of airspeed very fast—or I should say, we ran out of flying speed. Normally, adding power before a climb keeps you flying, just like you would add power climbing a hill in a car to keep from running out of speed and going backward. Our obvious problem was we were not on the ground, and when you run out of airspeed in the air, the aircraft stalls, meaning it quits flying. And it starts falling out of the sky with you in it. And while falling, the aircraft buffets and shakes uncontrollably. I had pulled the yoke too far too fast.

The buffeting and shaking were something I had never experienced before. Dad was too smooth on the controls to do such a thing. This event scared the crap out of me. Dad calmly looked my way and said, I got it. He recovered the airplane from the stall and said, Let's try this again. Unbuckle, sit up, and slide forward. I did as he said, and then he told me to go for it. I was still shaking, a little scared, and very hesitant, but I did grab the yoke with a death grip, not wanting to make this air machine do that stall thingy again. I was holding the yoke so hard my hands were shaking. Dad had me do little turns but nothing big. I just practiced holding altitude/level flight. Needless to say, my first hands-on flying experience at the ripe old age of six was a memorable one. Yes, I was only six. Turns out, this experience had a lifelong influence on my flying life though. Instructors in small aircraft have always complimented me (actually, this has happened several times) after putting me into a stall condition for training.

At a young age, I developed the ability to rapidly and smoothly recover with very little altitude loss. I have always had this ability to recognize and react properly when an air machine is approaching a stall condition. I feel the buffeting early on aircraft. Thanks goodness for that early training. I learned my first lesson well.

Some of you may be curious how an American who speaks only English flies around the world safely. Specifically, you have to be wondering how we communicate with all the controllers all over the world who speak all these different languages. Well, first of all, the international language in aviation is English. Who decided this, I do not know. And I never had a desire to find out. But I am certainly glad they did. To be safe all over the world, we all need to know where the others are, especially in a traffic pattern where takeoffs and landings are going on. I found that some controllers liked to talk to their fellow countrymen in their native languages. That made it tough at times—unless you happen to know how to speak their language. When dealing with those who spoke poor English, the key was always to know what to expect to come out of their mouths. It was important for us to know what they were supposed to say. For example, if we were to land on Runway zero niner (09er), you would not expect the controller to say something that sounded like something other than 09er. The international speaking technique is used by all, meaning everyone says 09er. Knowing what to expect someone to say makes all the difference in the world, especially when flying all over this world. It also helps you recognize changes like to a different runway if they don’t say what you expect. Then you just question them to make sure you are all on the same page.

As you read and share with me my flying life through this book, you’ll come across many reasons why I titled this book And I’m Still Here. You can pick up flying magazines of all types today and see where things happen in airplanes. All of these publications agree that if someone flies long enough, things are going to happen to him or her while flying. If the saying man-made things break is not true with airplanes, then I dare to say it is not true anywhere. Unfortunately, it is true…and happens while you are in the air. Many—sadly, a lot of—accidents today are caused by the misgivings of the aviators who are flying their air machines. What I mean here is some folks are not always paying proper attention to proper details while flying. The ones who do pay such attention do not normally end up in these flying magazines. As you read this book, you will come to realize both HOW and WHY I came to still be here, and decided to give this book that title.

As I explained, this book literally covers my life from birth to present. And I’m still aviating around when I get the chance. In section B of this book, I follow up my flying experiences with my beliefs on how to stay safe while enjoying flying. Technology can change for the better. But none of those nice upgrade advantages change the basics to basic flying safety. I’ll be discussing more on that subject later. For those of you new to aviation and for future pilots, section B covers types of aircraft configurations. The final section covers my personal thoughts on situations where a visual flight rules (VFR) pilot gets caught in instrument flight rules (IFR) weather conditions. This section may very well be the most important section of this book. Please do not skip it. It is important to both VFR pilots with no instrument ratings and more advanced pilots who talk with younger aviators and can share these thoughts. So now, friends, let's get started with a little growing-up life history. Enjoy.

All the way back when I was in the third grade, Mom had me start taking clarinet lessons. I heard through the grapevine that it was her attempt to keep me from playing football, a sport I favored from birth. That said, I still played football as a little guy, just not as I got bigger. Now in the fourth grade, I started taking saxophone lessons. In the fifth grade, I started alternating clarinet lessons one week and saxophone lessons the next. In the ninth grade, I made all-state band playing a baritone saxophone. Also in the ninth grade, I joined a guy named Gus Kasharpo and his other two tenor saxophone players and other band members. Gus was a fairly well-known New York musician, so he got us gigs at events like New Year's Eve parties.

At the 1967 New Year's Eve party, an older lady came up to me to give me a good-luck kiss at midnight. I retreated backward, away from her. I fell out of my chair in my attempt to avoid her. I had just turned sixteen years old and was a bashful guy. She was probably a whole thirty years old, if that. Boy, what I would do to try that scene again.

Now, also in the ninth grade, I started taking Citabria flying lessons with my dad. I’ll get more into that later. In my sophomore year of high school (tenth grade), my band director, Danny Leonard, a truly great music instructor, asked if I would play drums in the marching band while continuing to play tenor sax in his Charleston Area Youth Band Dance Band. I said, Sure, I’d love to! I love rock-and-roll music to this day and enjoy music in general. Drums were great.

That summer, a fellow musician from the same school of music asked me to join a group. He said I could play both sax and drums, just not at the same time…yuk, yuk. So I left Gus with a respectful final-show thank-you and joined this rock-and-roll world. What fun! Music had become my life. A young man in a T-shirt listening to a rock-and-roll station, got greasy hair, a greasy smile, that says this must be my destination (from Pink Houses by John Cougar). My destination? I played drums for my high school marching band, base sax for the high school concert band, tenor sax for Danny's youth dance band, and oboe for Danny's Dad's Charleston Area Youth Band, and now drums and sax for this rock-and-roll band, all at the same time while driving a school bus the second half of my sophomore year and both my junior and senior years in high school. And it's my destination? But I just couldn’t forget about flying.

A high school classmate was able to get his flying license, so I went up with him a few times while all this was going on. I’ll cover a little more on him later also. In both my junior and senior years with this rock-and-roll group, we backed up The Drifters in Charlotte, North Carolina. Yes, THE Drifters. Both nights, I had my eyes on this adorable young lady. She attended both years’ events.

During my senior year's Drifters event, we were getting close to finishing up, and I was on drums for this song when the Cutie came up on my left and held out her hand. I thought she was requesting a song. So I kept playing with my right hand and both feet and reached out my left hand for the note. Cutie grabbed my hand and pulled me closer. She whispered, Call me when you are done. I froze. I stopped playing and watched as Cutie walked off, smiling over her shoulder. The other band members were all looking back at me, wondering what had happened to the drums. I thought, Oh crap! Slowly, I got back in beat, barely. My mind was on the Cutie. I had had my eyes on her for two years’ events. It wasn’t difficult to remember her for sure. Miniskirts were popular those days, especially with the guys.

I called Cutie after the event, and she asked if I had noticed her friend.

Yes, of course!

Cutie asked if I thought our lead singer would come with me.

Yes, of course! Where?

We sneaked out in the band truck and met these two pretty ladies. It was great fun except for one small problem. Cutie was seventeen. I was already eighteen. Trouble could stop my whole plan if I did the wrong thing, fun or not. So I didn’t. To this day, I wish we had kept up with each other. Sure would like to see that girl again (All Summer Long by Kid Rock). Oh well, life goes on. She probably liked musicians not a-vee-a-tors (Top Gun).

Now we Charleston boys kept asking our manager, the lead and bass guitar player's dad, to get us a gig in Charleston so our friends could come watch and listen to us. Manager Dad had us traveling all up and down the East Coast, as far north as West Virginia, and all the way down into Florida. Finally, one week during practice, Dad said, Hey, guys, got you a gig in Charleston this Friday night. We thought, Cool! Where? Dad said, The Porgy and Bess on James Island.

Huh? None of us knew where this place was. I grew up on the next island south from Charleston, meaning I had to go through James Island to get anywhere and then again going back home. But I had no knowledge of a Porgy and Bess.

On that next Friday, we arrived at 8:15 p.m., early enough as always to get set up and ready to play at 9:00 p.m. As a group of young high school guys, we walked up to the club that Friday and noticed immediately that it was rockin’ inside. People seemed to be having a blast. That made us feel very good too. It seemed like we were in for some fun, carrying our instruments as we approached the door. Then we walked in. And the whole place went quiet. We all froze, stopping abruptly, running into each other like dominoes. It was an all-Black club. We were an all-White band. It was 1969 in Charleston, South Carolina. Dad Manager tells us to keep moving. We didn’t want to move—not with those looks we were getting.

After some time, Dad finally won, and we set up to play at 9:00 p.m. We started playing. Midway through our first hour, we all noticed three of the girls were tapping their feet to the beat of our music. Then those same three pulled their boyfriends to the floor and danced to our last three songs of the first hour. Those guys kept staring holes through us while they danced. We kept playing. Being just dumb ole high school guys, we didn’t always know what Manager Dad had in store for us—like this gig, for example. When we came back off our first break and found our lead singer's microphone had grown into three separate microphones, we knew what song to play, and we knew what was going to happen. We’d been here before, just not in this club. So we at least thought we knew what would happen. We start playing Get Ready by The Temptations. I’m playing sax up front, and on the second run to start this song, three Black guys come out of the side and slid their way in front of the three microphones. Their hair, their sideburns, and their beards were all died WHITE. And boy could they sing those 60's R&B songs that we played. The place erupted! I jumped back a couple of steps this situation startled me so. Everyone in the place started having a good, good time.

The band played without our three amigos between the hours of nine and ten and eleven and twelve. We played hours ten to eleven and twelve to one with our amigos. Our last hour, our Manager Dad came up and said, Guys, we have a situation here.

We thought, Oh crap. He said, The people here are so sorry about how they treated you in the beginning; they have collected enough money to pay you to play an additional hour without our three amigos. Really? Wow! We all agreed and said, Sure!

At the end of that night, many of the audience stood by the door and gave us high fives, low fives, and slaps on the back. They asked us to come back anytime. You guys are good! What a change of emotion from walking in this place for us all. This was a true story to all of how music did in fact bring races together in the sixties. Wow! What an experience! Well, we all just want to be big rock stars, living in hilltop houses driving fifteen cars, the girls come easy, the drugs come cheap, we’ll all stay skinny cause we just won’t eat (Rockstar by Nickleback).

I finished high school in 1970 and was given a full scholarship to the University of Arizona in Tucson, Arizona, in music. But the Vietnam War was still going on, as was the draft into the US Army. I still wanted to fly even though I had no other experiences flying because of a lack of funds at that time. For those two reasons, I requested and was accepted to attend The Citadel, The Military College of South Carolina. I figured if the draft board found me in a military college with the intent to go into the Air Force, they might leave me alone. My draft number was 118. They drafted all the way into the 300s that year. And they left me alone to go into the Air Force. My plan worked! But, boy, was I into music for a long time. Thoughts like ‘the girls come easy, the drugs come cheap, we’ll all stay skinny cause we just wont eat’ from Nickleback's Rockstar is still one of my favorite songs today. Girls come easy…Drifter's concert in North Carolina my junior and senior years. Words to that song had some likeness to my past for sure. Drugs and flying don’t mix. No time in life in my humble opinion. But girls and flying certainly did. We all just want to be the girlfriend of an a-VEE-A-tor (Words from Tom Cruise's Top Gun movie). You will see.

Why did I include this music story in my flying book? Well, for one reason, even though I didn’t realize it until much later, I truly believe in my heart of hearts that playing musical instruments had something to do with making me the pilot I became. Reading music while moving fingers around made flying, reading gauges, and manipulating switches seem second nature to me. Really, it did—and still does. And you do not roughly handle musical instruments just like you should never roughly handle an airplane.

There are several items in this book where someone could say I am bragging. I am NOT a bragger, gloater, or any other adjective you could think of. I am just me. Those items in this book are simple facts. I feel the fact I was a humble individual also helped me be the pilot I became. I will say one thing though. I take flying an airplane seriously. I always believed that I could be no notice check ride any time, any day because I never flew any differently one day to the next. So let's begin…with The Beginnings, The Beginnings, Beginnings…Chicago. Sorry, I just cannot stop with the music. I love rock and roll. You’ll see the other reason I included my music upbringing in the introduction if you haven’t figured it out yet. You’ll see…

The Beginning Section

CHAPTER 1

The Beginnings, Beginnings, Beginnings

As I stated earlier, my dad flew airplanes from when he was young. He told me a story about how during his flight training, he was sent out on a solo cross-country flight to practice navigation—by himself…solo. Dad told me how he ran out of gas on this solo cross-country. He had to land in a farmer's field. Dad said the farmer was very nice, gave him some gas, and helped him start the airplane, and then Dad took off to complete his planned routing back home. Again, this happened during Dad's solo cross-country training flight. Make a note. Dad's experience comes back to haunt me. Well, kinda…

I was born in Charleston, South Carolina, and grew up on an island south of Charleston called John's Island. As mentioned earlier, while we were growing up, Dad would take the three of us to the Charleston airport to watch airplanes take off and land. I learned that the Air Force had big airplanes, and the airliners had big airplanes. I even watched our mother get on a big airliner's airplane while she worked for Sears and Roebuck. She was sent on a business trip a couple of times. Then several years later, Dad gave my brother and me golf clubs. I was thirteen years old and came to love golf. So I told my mom and dad I had decided on what I would do in life when I grew up. I told them I was going to grow up and play golf to earn just enough money to be a bum. I learned I could travel the world playing golf.

Problem with this was airplanes. They kept coming back into my head. I even had dreams about flying with the birds, jumping off the roof, and such. One day, this adult at the Muni Golf Course, where my brother and I learned how to play golf, told me I had to go to college to go into the Air Force and become a pilot. I was so, so bummed out. I hated school—or at least I have never liked being a student. So later in that same year, this thirteen-year-old told Mom and Dad that my plans had an update. I told them I was going to college and then into the Air Force. They asked me what I was going to do in the Air Force. I told them I was going to let them teach me how to fly big airplanes, and then I’d get out and get a job flying for one of those Charleston airliners…and travel the world playing golf.

As we were growing up, Dad showed us little aviation prop airplanes, big airliners, and big Air Force airplanes. Why on earth would I think of flying anything else?

In high school (well, barely high school—ninth grade), Dad started teaching me how to fly in a Citabria. I was in the Civil Air Patrol (CAP), and they owned this Citabria I trained in. We flew from the former Isle of Palms Airport, a grass strip along the inland coastal waterway. That runway is now a par-five golf hole on one of the many Isle of Palms golf courses of today. My love for golf seems to be following me. Ha!

Back before the golf course bought the airport, I learned to fly in this tail dragger with me, the student, in the front seat and the instructor in the back. Dad told me he wanted me to learn how to fly in this kind of airplane because, as he stated, If you learn in this kind of airplane, then there will never be another airplane you cannot get in and fly. Boy, was he right. I’ve tested that theory many, many times over and over.

Before my first takeoff in this Citabria, Dad explained to me something called P-factor. By definition, P-factor is the tendency for an aircraft to yaw (move) to the left because of the descending propeller blade on the right producing more