Journal of a Travelling Man

By William Hulbert

I graduated from the University of Michigan and went directly into the U.S. Navy as the Korean War was still on. I served two years on a Destroyer as a Gunnery Officer. Upon discharge I went into the financial management business, where I spent most of my career. I walked out of the office at age 56, never to return and flew to Paris where I got an apartment and stayed for several months. I had been to Paris several times as a tourist, but this was an entirely new experience. I wrote about half of a political novel, but discovered that politics at home was over taking me and put it aside I have always traveled starting by going over the North Atlantic on a merchant ship carrying 750 horses to Poland at age 16. Iwent across the South Atlantic and up the West Coast of Africa at 17. I have been through the Panama Canal in both directions. When I sent up my personal information I forgot one important item. I have been married to one woman(forever young) since we were children. We have four sons which includes one set of twins.

While I grew up in Washington DC. I went to the University of Michigan for my college education. I wrote stories for the college newspaper and helped start a humor magazine. I graduated into the Korean War and ended up as the gunnery officer on a destroyer. With my love of the water, I live on the banks of the Chesapeake Bay.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Trafford Publishing
• Release date: Oct 7, 2014
• ISBN: 9781490747910

William Hulbert

I graduated from the University of Michigan and went directly into the US Navy as the Korean War was still on. I served two years on a Destroyer as a Gunnery Officer. Upon discharge, I went into the financial management business, where I spent most of my career. I walked out of the office at age 56, never to return, and flew to Paris, where I got an apartment and stayed for several months. I had been to Paris several times as a tourist, but this was an entirely new experience. I wrote about half of a political novel but discovered that politics at home was over taking me and put it aside. I have always traveled, starting by going over the North Atlantic on a merchant ship carrying 750 horses to Poland at age 16. I went across the South Atlantic and up the West Coast of Africa at seventeen. I have been through the Panama Canal in both directions. When I sent up my personal information, I forgot one important item. I have been married to one woman (forever young) since we were children. We have four sons, which includes one set of twins.

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Copyright 2014 William Hulbert.

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without the written prior permission of the author.

ISBN: 978-1-4907-4790-3 (sc)

ISBN: 978-1-4907-4792-7 (hc)

ISBN: 978-1-4907-4791-0 (e)

Library of Congress Control Number: 2014917532

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CONTENTS

On A Soft Spring Day

High Flight

La Mer, La Mer Toujours, La Mer

Paris

The Sarah Fraser

La Sabranenque

Turkey

ON A SOFT SPRING DAY

O N A SOFT SPRING DAY BEFORE THE HEAT OF SUMMER, I SET OFF ON MY bicycle from my home in Northwest Washington, D.C. through the familiar territory of Takoma Park into the lesser known countryside of Queens Chapel. In those days it was still possible to peddle from Washington out into the countryside.

I was riding my bike, because, at the age of 15, I was not eligible for a driver’s license. My destination was the small airport at Queens Chapel which was home to, perhaps, twenty small airplanes, and more importantly, it was a place where one could get instruction and learn to fly. Today, I was to get my first ride in an airplane and that ride would also be my first hour of instruction.

I had moments of doubt when I wondered if it would be frightening or whether I would be up to the task. I always came back to the same resolve. It was impossible that anything that I wanted to do so badly would be frightening or beyond my grasp. Today I would find out and I hoped it would be the start of a great adventure.

Queens Chapel was a typical country airport of the time. It was an all grass field with no paved runways. There was one large maintenance hangar which also stored a few planes. The only other building was a one room wooden shack which served as an office. There was no control tower as this was something reserved for the largest airfields which handled airliners. Indeed, there was not a radio of any kind on this field and it would be some time before I actually saw one installed in an airplane.

Leaning my bicycle against the side of the office, I went inside. Seated at the desk was a man who looked like he would be tall when he stood up. He had a weathered face which at the time, made me think he was old. Later, I would make a better guess that the face was probably the result of flying in open cockpit airplanes for many years.

He gave me a long look before speaking. He seemed to be deciding whether there was any possibility that I might actually learn to fly.

Ever been up? No sir."

Is there any particular reason you want to learn to fly?

It’s the only thing I want to do.

He nodded his head. I am sure that he had seen his share of sky struck boys and knew that there was no possibility of discouraging them. He could also remember how he felt.

Well, let’s go look at an airplane.

He swung his feet out from behind the desk and stood up. He was, indeed, tall. Following him through the door we walked a few steps to a high wing airplane. It was yellow and I would later learn that it was Cub yellow. It was a Piper J-3 Cub which was on its way to becoming a classic. Most people my age who learned to fly took their first lessons in a J-3. This design had come out of the 1930s which meant that it had a frame of chromoly tubing which had been welded into the shape of the fuselage and then covered with cotton cloth. The cloth was then painted with a dope to draw the fabric tight. The dope also added strength to the material and made it water proof.

The Cub seated two people in tandem. The instructor takes the front seat with the student pilot in the seat behind him. There is only one control panel and that faces the person occupying the front seat. As a student pilot I would occasionally need to see the dials and gauges, but to do that I would have to poke my head to one side of the other to see around the instructor. This meant that on take-off the back-seat pilot had a hard time seeing but the view opened up when the tail came up just before the wheels left the ground.

It had what was then called conventional gear, meaning that it had two main wheels in front and a tail wheel at the very rear of the fuselage. This arrangement caused the airplane to sit tail low. When seated in the plane before take-off, there was a definite sense of looking uphill. Later, when nose wheels came into popular use, pilots would refer to these conventional gear airplanes as tail draggers.

One does not board a Cub through a door. The entrance consists of a lower panel that is hinged to fold down and an upper panel that folded up to a clip on the underside of the wing. This airplane did not have the upper panel.

This meant that we would be flying with an open window. It did not strike me as strange as I had never flown in anything and I had nothing to compare it to. When we did get around to flying, I discovered that I liked the open experience.

My instructor and I shared the same first name—Bill—although I do not remember ever calling him by that name. Bill pointed to a stirrup-like step on the outside and told me to put my right foot in it and then pull myself up to the opening and lower myself into the back seat. It is a maneuver which requires some strength and agility, but they were my strong points in those days. Once in, he reached in and showed me how to fasten the seat belt. He then pointed to a switch mounted near my left knee which was marked Off L R Both. It was the Magneto switch. The L and R stood for left and right.

He said, I am going to pull the prop through a couple of times, and then I am going to say ‘contact. When I say contact you move the switch to Both. He then showed me how the switch worked by moving it to Both ‘When you move it to Both, shout contact."

He looked at me, and I nodded my understanding. We were doing this because this airplane, like most others of the times, did not have an electrical system. It did not have lights, radios or an electric starter. It was started by propping.

With that, Bill went around to the front and placed both hands on the propeller and rotated it about three times. Looking around the engine cowling, he hollered contact! I moved the mag switch to Both and shouted ’contact! This time he was less casual when he put his hands on the prop. He did not wrap his fingers around the edge, but simply laid his fingers on the prop to achieve a friction hold, raised his right foot off of the ground, and in one motion, kicked his foot back, pulled down hard on the prop, and at the same time pushed himself backward and away from the propeller. The engine responded by firing on the first pull. I was to learn that this was not always the case. Propping an airplane was simply one more skill that every aviator had to learn at this time.

Bill, in spite of his considerable height, swung into the front seat with an easy, practiced move, and fastened his seat belt. He advanced the throttle and we began to move at a walking pace. First the nose swung right and then left. He explained that he was ‘S’ turning so that he could see directly ahead. Stopping short of the runway, he put his foot on the tiny brakes and advanced the throttle and checked the magnetos by moving the switch to the L and then the R points. Going back to Both, he then pulled up a stemmed control labeled Carb Heat.

Apparently satisfied, he applied throttle and lined up the Cub with the runway. Looking over his shoulder at me, he said, "Put your feet on the peddles, and your right hand on the stick LIGHTLY, and feel what I am doing on takeoff. I nodded wordlessly. The rudder pedals were a tight fit between his seat and the side of the plane. I had large feet, even then. I grasped the stick as lightly as possible, and had only a second before power was applied, and we were rolling. I felt, sensed really, a very slight forward motion of the stick, and the immediate response of the tail coming up, and in an instant we were level, and I could see the outside world straight ahead. It was a much more comfortable view. There was a moment more of the slight bumping of the wheels over the grass, and then smooth flight. We were airborne.

The Cub is known as a short field airplane, meaning that it gets up quickly and it seems to levitate more than climb. I was looking at the ground falling away, and seeing the long view, and it was exhilarating. Bill shouted over his shoulder, Try to remember where the field is.

As we climbed, we also banked slightly and turned to leave the immediate area of the airport, so that we could practice air work. Bill leveled the Cub at 2500 feet. Pulling back the throttle so that he could be heard, he said,

Take the controls and try to fly straight and level. Look at the wings and try to keep them level with the horizon.

Gingerly, I held the stick, and then put my feet on the rudders. My take was that the stick would be more sensitive than the rudders. I reminded myself not to take a death grip but to continue to hold lightly and make small movements. The wings stayed level with the horizon.

You are holding a little back stick and the nose is up. Let the nose come down.

This was my first lesson at handling motion in three dimensions. I over- corrected, and started us downhill. I could detect that much myself, and brought the stick back with exaggerated delicacy. The nose came right to the horizon, but now the right wing was low. This was trickier than I had imagined.

Once everything was in alignment, I took my hand off of the stick to see what it would do on its own. It flew quite nicely, thank you. Well, nicely for ten seconds or so, and then it needed a little help. Bill apparently liked what he saw, and pulled the throttle back so that he could give me a new instruction, which was to try a gentle right turn. I started to move the stick right, and he moved his hand back and tapped my right foot. I used my right foot to push on the pedal while holding right stick and looking at the horizon to keep the nose on the line.

Seemingly satisfied, he held up both hands with the right hand low and the left hand high, and then moved them to level. I complied by moving the stick left and pushing on the left pedal. And, we were level. This was not easy for me, but I had the sense that I would be able to do it. Later, when I learned to drive a car I found that I had to learn every move, and to think about it each time I made the move. In time I could automatically complete the gear shift or the turn without thinking about it. With flying, I was still in the ‘thinking about it’ stage. We continued with more turns and the time flew by. Once again Bill pulled back the throttle, and said, Do you know where the field is?

With all of the turns and my fierce concentration on the controls, I had lost any idea of direction. I felt foolish. He took over the controls and rolled into a firm bank, and then straightened out. Shouting out, he said, Do you see those two oil storage tanks? I nodded my head. That’s where we’re going.

Once pointed at the tanks, Bill raised both of his hands to shoulder level which was our agreed-upon signal that I should take over the controls. I took control, and worked at keeping the nose aligned. I had a vague memory of seeing these gigantic landmarks on takeoff, but my mind was taking in everything in the long view and those things nearby were quickly forgotten once they were out of sight. I made a mental note, that this would be the last time I would forget about the tanks. They were large and could be seen for miles. It occurred to me that these airplanes had to be directed and not just flown.

As we approached the tanks, Bill held up his hands and I took over control. I flew until the airport was in sight, and then felt him shake the stick. I released control and watched as he pulled back on the power and started a descending turn to move us into the landing pattern.

At this airport the pattern that pilots are obligated to follow was 700 feet above the ground. It is a three sided rectangle which consists of a downwind leg paralleling the runway, followed by a base leg turning towards the runway and then the final approach leg aligned with the runway. The last two legs are descending. At the end of the final approach leg you should be directly above the runway threshold and coming back on the stick to start the round off process.

When done right with this airplane, the nose should be raised up so that on touch down, the front wheels–the mains–and the tail wheel contact the runway simultaneously as the airplane gets below flight speed and stalls.

It sounds simple enough, but it is the most difficult maneuver that the novice airman has to master. It is something like trying to park a car at 50 miles an hour, and in three dimensions. One of the biggest challenges one has to deal with is depth perception. If the plane loses flying speed—what is called a stall in aeronautic terms and it is, say, three feet too high, it drops in like a manhole cover. If the nose is not high enough, the front wheels hit by themselves, and a gigantic bounce occurs. The plane can then porpoise in a series of bounces while the pilot tries to get it right. Sometimes, it means applying the power and getting back in the air to try it again. This brings about considerable pressure to get it right. It is axiomatic that all pilots on the ground who watch other pilots land unconsciously grade those landings. Typical comment: "I would grade that one about a 9–on the Richter scale.

I knew that Bill would get it right, and he did. We fluttered to the slowest possible speed, and then the wheels touched the ground with the slightest thump. I really wanted to get to that point. Later, I learned that even that was not enough. One must be able to do the same thing in all wind conditions.

After tying the airplane down, we went into the office, and Bill took a brand new log book from the shelf and made the first entry. I had just logged my first hour. He showed me what each line of the log should contain and charged me with the duty of keeping a correct log. While receiving dual instruction, I would make the entries and he would sign them. He told me to think about the entry before I made it so that there would be no cross outs or erasures, and that if I had any questions, I was to ask him before I made the entry.

He checked his calendar for the coming