Badwater Bill
January 26th 04, 03:53 AM
Okay, you guys, I've been away for awhile. I had to rejuvenate my
group list. When I last looked there was no
alt.binaries.pictures.aviation.
So, I went over there and stuffed in some jpg's for you guys to look
at. I don't think I sent any of these to Jay, but I should have.
(Maybe I did...hell, a mind is a terrible thing to waste).
It's called Lark Glider.
I didn't realize he might want everything I've owned and/or flown.
I just figured I send him the stuff I liked the best and besides, I
just don't have pictures of all of the stuff over 45 years.
In fact I was thinking today about some guy's question here about
teaching people to fly and just how long guys like Jerry Springer and
I and a few others like Bob Urban have been doing it. My first
airplane ride was in 1956 and I went nuts about flying. I lost
control at that point and I've been bit by the bug ever since.
Being a pilot isn't the best of all possible lives to live. But it's
better than setting at a desk in a building somewhere. Early in my
life I almost went to law school but the thought of setting in an
office in a large building in a major city was so applauding to me I
didn't go (I'm actually doing it now for personal reasons). I ended
up studying physics instead but a funny thing happened to me when I
got my first master's degree in 1972. I was offered a job by Boroughs
in San Diego, to make integrated circuits. It paid $14,000 a year
which was great money at that time. I took a job with the government
for $9000 a year as a GS-9 instead, because Nixon had just created EPA
and they had Huey Helicopters, and they had a three year mission doing
lake sampling all over the US.
If you look at Jay's website and he has the pictures up, you'll see
the old white Army UH-1H Huey's we had (3 of em) on floats. We flew
them around the United States for three years landing in lakes in
every single state of the union. Now, for a 23 year old kid just out
of grad-school who already had a commercial airplane license, that was
heaven. Jay may also put up a photo of a big yellow Petroleum
Helicopters helicopter I was flying in 1973 in Los Angeles. I got
reassigned for 6 months on that project because I was a pilot and a
physicist and could do the data reduction each night.
I remember the young warrant officers who had just returned from the
Viet Nam war were our pilots. They were tired as young men from that
war. All they wanted to do was screw the chicks and sleep. In the
helicopters, they'd take off, get us up and on course then say, "Hey,
kid, you fly. I'm going to sleep. Just don't pull more torque than
80% unless you need to and keep it at 100 knots with these God Damn
floats or you'll flip us over." Then ZONK...they were out and I flew
the legs to the lakes we had to sample.
We launched in the summer months at 5 a.m. when the sky was just
getting light. We'd fly until noon and another team would fly out and
meet us in an Otter on Amphib floats. I'd usually fly that Otter back
to the air base we were stationed at while the helicopter crew slept
in the back. All I really remember much about it now 30 years later
is that most of them were asleep most of the time because they chased
women all night long. The crew was a team of 23 people and there were
only two of us who were not married. Two years later they were all
divorced. I'm not kidding. All of them.
Needless to say, by the time I was 25 years old I had about 4000 hours
of Huey time. Then I came back to Vegas and was assigned to the
radiation cloud tracking team with EPA. We flew B-26's, Mohawks,
OV-10's, we had a T-34, a Hughes 269 helicopter, a Beech-D18, and two
Beech Vopar modified D-18's with the Garrett-331 turbine engines. For
about 10 years I flew a lot of that stuff and piled up another 3000
hours of airplane time, got my ATP and a lot of other ratings just
because I could.
There's a lot of stuff I didn't send Jay for his site. It's just a
pile of photos now that I'm getting to be an old man. But I can
remember certain things about every airplane or helicopter or balloon
or glider I ever flew. It's all in there and someday I might write it
all down, just for my own edification.
Anyway, I'm rambling.
Bye
BWB
group list. When I last looked there was no
alt.binaries.pictures.aviation.
So, I went over there and stuffed in some jpg's for you guys to look
at. I don't think I sent any of these to Jay, but I should have.
(Maybe I did...hell, a mind is a terrible thing to waste).
It's called Lark Glider.
I didn't realize he might want everything I've owned and/or flown.
I just figured I send him the stuff I liked the best and besides, I
just don't have pictures of all of the stuff over 45 years.
In fact I was thinking today about some guy's question here about
teaching people to fly and just how long guys like Jerry Springer and
I and a few others like Bob Urban have been doing it. My first
airplane ride was in 1956 and I went nuts about flying. I lost
control at that point and I've been bit by the bug ever since.
Being a pilot isn't the best of all possible lives to live. But it's
better than setting at a desk in a building somewhere. Early in my
life I almost went to law school but the thought of setting in an
office in a large building in a major city was so applauding to me I
didn't go (I'm actually doing it now for personal reasons). I ended
up studying physics instead but a funny thing happened to me when I
got my first master's degree in 1972. I was offered a job by Boroughs
in San Diego, to make integrated circuits. It paid $14,000 a year
which was great money at that time. I took a job with the government
for $9000 a year as a GS-9 instead, because Nixon had just created EPA
and they had Huey Helicopters, and they had a three year mission doing
lake sampling all over the US.
If you look at Jay's website and he has the pictures up, you'll see
the old white Army UH-1H Huey's we had (3 of em) on floats. We flew
them around the United States for three years landing in lakes in
every single state of the union. Now, for a 23 year old kid just out
of grad-school who already had a commercial airplane license, that was
heaven. Jay may also put up a photo of a big yellow Petroleum
Helicopters helicopter I was flying in 1973 in Los Angeles. I got
reassigned for 6 months on that project because I was a pilot and a
physicist and could do the data reduction each night.
I remember the young warrant officers who had just returned from the
Viet Nam war were our pilots. They were tired as young men from that
war. All they wanted to do was screw the chicks and sleep. In the
helicopters, they'd take off, get us up and on course then say, "Hey,
kid, you fly. I'm going to sleep. Just don't pull more torque than
80% unless you need to and keep it at 100 knots with these God Damn
floats or you'll flip us over." Then ZONK...they were out and I flew
the legs to the lakes we had to sample.
We launched in the summer months at 5 a.m. when the sky was just
getting light. We'd fly until noon and another team would fly out and
meet us in an Otter on Amphib floats. I'd usually fly that Otter back
to the air base we were stationed at while the helicopter crew slept
in the back. All I really remember much about it now 30 years later
is that most of them were asleep most of the time because they chased
women all night long. The crew was a team of 23 people and there were
only two of us who were not married. Two years later they were all
divorced. I'm not kidding. All of them.
Needless to say, by the time I was 25 years old I had about 4000 hours
of Huey time. Then I came back to Vegas and was assigned to the
radiation cloud tracking team with EPA. We flew B-26's, Mohawks,
OV-10's, we had a T-34, a Hughes 269 helicopter, a Beech-D18, and two
Beech Vopar modified D-18's with the Garrett-331 turbine engines. For
about 10 years I flew a lot of that stuff and piled up another 3000
hours of airplane time, got my ATP and a lot of other ratings just
because I could.
There's a lot of stuff I didn't send Jay for his site. It's just a
pile of photos now that I'm getting to be an old man. But I can
remember certain things about every airplane or helicopter or balloon
or glider I ever flew. It's all in there and someday I might write it
all down, just for my own edification.
Anyway, I'm rambling.
Bye
BWB