Sad News: Michael Masterov

On Jun 26, 12:10 am, Journeyman wrote:
Long-time poster Michael (thisoldairplane.com) died yesterday, June 24
in Berrien County, Michigan when his motorcycle was hit by someone who
apparently ran a stop sign.

I became an avid reader of the rec.aviation.* groups in the summer of
2002, when I decided to learn to fly. Among the many valuable regular
contributors to the group, I soon felt that one stood out.

Over the next year or so, I meticuously crawled through the usenet
archives to absorb all of the knowledge and experience Michael shared
with us all. I believe I can safely say that I have read every single
post by Michael since he started posting back in 1993 or 1994.

In the spring of 2005, when I had something like 200 hours, I wrote to
Michael to ask if he would consider taking me on for two weeks of
intensive multiengine training. He was flattered that a pilot would
want to come all the way from Sweden to train with him (he’d already
had some students travel several hundred miles, but this was a new one
for him).

My two weeks in Houston with Michael were truly a great experience. We
flew twice during the weekends and every weekday evening, after
Michael’s day at work. Then we would get a beer (or cider) from the
fridge in Michael’s hanger and have a good time talking about
aviation.

The training Michael provided me with was nothing short of
spectacular.

We did a VMC demo on my third flight. Michael had me slow down to well
below redline, after which he cut an engine. I reacted instinctively
by pushing the power lever on the good engine to the stops. The
airplane immediately started a spin entry. This was the only time
during my stay that Michael touched the controls. If he hadn’t
recovered right away we would have died. I understand quite a lot of
Twin Comanches were lost this way in the early days.

On the next flight I was treated to my first engine failure after take
off, at 50 feet. Michael was silent during the whole pattern to
landing. I was sweating, but I managed to recover from my errors and
get us back to the airport. Michael’s instructional philosophy was
always to force a student to operate in task saturation a fair portion
of the time and let the student make errors in critical flight
situations and learn from it.

Towards the end of my stay, we did a couple of Angel Flights (Michael
graciously offered me those flights for just the cost of the gas,
saying that he would have done the flights anyway and that those
flights were easy on the engines). On the way out, with the patient in
the back, Michael would teach me CRM concepts, while putting me
through LOFT training on the return leg. One night, coming back from
Fort Worth Meacham, Michael unexpectedly cut an engine on short final
to Weiser’s runway 27. Despite doing everything by the book I had a
hell of a time getting the twin stopped on the 3400 ft runway. I swear
there was less than 10 feet of runway left before we came to a halt.
Michael was unphased, and told me his plan was to cut the mixtures and
steer us off towards the grass if he had felt I was losing it.

While we were having our usual beer, I told Michael he may want to
check the brakes, as I recalled I had had some difficulty holding the
airplane still during the run up at Fort Worth Meacham. “**** me,
there IS no brake”, he exclaimed after having had a look. It turned
out the brake was completely dead on one side. We had landed at
10:40PM, so it was probably well after 11PM by now, and Michael was
going to work the next day. Despite the late hour he would not leave
before fixing the problem. I got a very valuable lesson in airplane
maintenance that night, as Michael showed me how to disassemble the
brake assembly, replace the brake pads, manufacture a spacer that
turned out to be needed, do some safety wiring, and bleed the brakes.
Michael was quite proud that his low time student had been up to
handling a night single engine landing with one brake inoperative on a
poorly lit 3400 x 40 ft runway.

There were so many more things Michael taught me in the short time I
was there. Short and soft field landings at the soaring club of
Houston in the Tripacer, the basics of instrument flying (after a
couple of hours of good progress he had me try a CAT II single engine
landing under the hood, but that really proved to be too much of a
challenge for me), formation flying in the Twin with his friend Jim as
lead, and much, much more.

We stayed in touch regularly after I left. When I encountered an
aviation matter I didn't fully understand, I knew I could always turn
to Michael for an in depth explanation. I would write to Michael after
my trips throughout Europe and get some invaluable feedback that
invariably helped me to progress as a pilot.

In September of last year I was delighted to have the occasion to give
something back to Michael. He was in Paris on business for three
weeks, and I invited him to Sweden over a weekend. I knew he had
always wanted to fly a Slingsby T31 (an open cockpit wooden glider),
and there just happened to be one at one of the glider clubs where I
towed. I arranged a flight for him, as well as flights in several
other European designs that I knew he would never have the opportunity
to fly in the US.

I was demonstrating one of those airplanes, a KZ III taildragger, to
him before I would let him fly it. I had been tought to fly the KZ III
quite slowly on final, at 80 km/h or just over 40 kt, which
necessitated a rather abrupt flare at the last moment. I hadn’t done
too many landings myself after getting checked out and hadn’t really
reflected much on the appropriateness of the technique. It is an
indication of Michael’s skill level, that he could _feel_ I was doing
something wrong jus by sitting along in the right seat on his first
ever flight on the type. He suggested I increase the speed on final to
100 km/h and it was amazing how much easier it was to land that way.

Tomorrow I would have been heading to Michigan for four weeks of
training towards the instrument rating with Michael. Michael was an
instrument pilot above all, and I was looking forward to getting what
I knew would be the very best instrument training available to
anybody.

I was devastated by the terrible news Stephanie brought me yesterday.
I lost a dear friend and an exceptional mentor. Michael was the
aviator I will always strive to be.

/Thomas

Before reluctantly concluding that we couldn't swing the expense of
travel and the new much greater distance this year, I'd hoped to make
it the one in which I stayed up all night. Did it the very first year
I attended P'ville, laughing and talking and smoking and examining
whatever seemed like the great issues of the time and original humor,
late into the night with Michael and Highflyer. The hours were wee
indeed when I went off to roll up in my tent, but those two were still
at it, and repeated the all-night discourse on the first night of
every subsequent annual gathering.
To traditions, great and small,
and friends who share.

Stella