Finally … My Picture in the Newspaper!

by Captain Wayne (Rusty) Baker

One day at work, I was servicing one of the airplanes, and accidentally spilled oil on the top of the engine. I tried to clean it up but wasn’t able to get it all. A day or so later, after the oil had managed to find its way through all the little crooks and crannies, there was a puddle on the ground beneath the engine cowling. Earl saw it and reamed me out a new one, in front of everyone. When Earl was angry, he was loud. He went on and on, ranting about my lack of professionalism. That cut deep. Then, he left on a trip. When he came back, I quit.

I suppose that if I had it to do over again now, I would have thought to take the cowling off the airplane and pressure wash the engine to do a more thorough job of cleaning up my mess. To tell the truth, though, I don’t know if even that would have spared me Earl’s wrath. He probably would have chewed me out for doing that, too. Earl was a good man, but once in a while he just felt the need to chew on someone, and I think maybe that was just my day to be the one on the receiving end. And now, looking back, I should not have been so thin-skinned. I should not have quit. But then, everything after that in the story of our lives would have been different.

I still had the itch to fly, so after having talked it over, Marsha and I headed south to Opa Locka, Florida in January of 1975. I began flight training for my multi-engine and Instrument Flight Instructor ratings at Burnside-Ott Aviation Training Academy. A few weeks later, having completed my training, we returned to Illinois.

I had to fly the flight instructor check ride in a complex aircraft – one with 200 HP engine, a constant speed propeller, and retractable landing gear with the FAA. That meant I was going to have to rent an airplane from Earl. Surprisingly, he agreed. I suppose that he thought my money was as good as the next guy’s, even if I was a former employee. And looking back, I suppose it was a way for us to make peace, bury the hatchet. I took the Piper Arrow to Springfield, Illinois General Aviation District Office and passed my check ride. A funny thing happened when I landed back in Olney. Earl came out on the ramp with a big smile on his face and took my picture for the newspaper! Marsha kept the write-up and made a wall plaque for me.

While I was finishing up on my CFI training and looking for another flying job, I worked on the farm for a while with my dad.  Dad was none too pleased with me for having quit working for Earl at the Olney-Noble airport. Dad and I loved one another dearly, but we were never meant to work together, especially on the farm.

As far back as I can remember, whenever farming time came around, Dad became impossible to live with. I don’t know why. He was the grouchiest person I’ve ever seen. And when Dad yelled at me, I yelled back. More than once I was ready to go toe to toe with him. My friend Joe Fisher once told me that he thought that Dad and I were going to slug it out one day when we were baling hay.

We had similar problems from time-to-time years later when I worked at our family’s hardware store. It wasn’t all Dad’s fault, although back then I always seemed to think that it was. I am glad Dad and I got along much better in his final years, although it is no doubt due to the fact that we no longer worked together.

In the spring of 1975, before the farming was done, I got a call from MaxAir in Appleton, Wisconsin. I had seen an ad for a flight instructor in Trade A Plane and applied for the job. Marsha and I hopped in Earl’s Arrow and flew up for the interview. I was offered the job at a base pay of $200 per month and an additional $9 per hour for the hours that I would fly.

MaxAir had a few active students, and several that flew only on rare occasions. Many of them had VA benefits and were able to apply them to their flying. My job, as it was explained to me, was to get on the phone during times that I was not flying and get those people to come out and start flying more. I threw myself into it. In no time at all I was busy all the time, and we had enough students working toward commercial and instrument ratings that we had to hire more instructors.

Like all flight instructors, I was looking to build time and get into flying multi-engine airplanes. MaxAir flew a Beech Baron and a Cessna 320. I couldn’t wait. Once I got my 1,200 hours – the minimum requirement for IFR air taxi pilot in command – I eagerly jumped in and flew all the Baron and 320 trips that I could. 

My first real experience with thunderstorms came on a summer’s evening. I finally had my 1,200 hours, and I was ready to fly IFR (instrument flight rules) multi-engine air taxi trips. We had a customer that wanted to be flown to Crossett, Arkansas in the Baron. I called one of my students, Pete, to see if he would like to accompany me as my copilot. Pete jumped at the chance to log some multi-engine time. When our passenger showed up, I introduced myself and Pete to him, and we talked a bit as we loaded his suitcase into the baggage compartment in the nose of the airplane. When I asked him how he was doing, he mentioned that he had taken a fall, and had cracked some ribs. The doctors had taped him up and told him to take it easy for a few weeks to allow time to heal.

The first part of the trip was uneventful, pleasant. It wasn’t until we were in the northern Arkansas area that things started going badly for us. There was a squall line preceding a fast-moving cold front blocking our path. Unfortunately, the Baron was not equipped with weather radar. Had it been, I would have seen what I was up against, and I am sure that I would not have opted to go on. I was planning, naively it turned out, to obtain assistance from Memphis Center in the form of radar vectors to keep me out of the weather. I soon learned that we were flying too low for radar coverage in that remote part of the country.

There was still time to divert to another airport, wait it out overnight, and then deliver our passenger to Crossett the next morning. But, no. I was a professional pilot. I did this for a living. I would stick my nose in it and see how bad it was. I thought that it was expected of me.

We got the living snot kicked out of us. Updrafts. Downdrafts. The airplane rolled violently to the left, and I had to apply full right aileron to prevent us from going inverted. Then, it went the other way, and I had to apply full left aileron. No doubt I was over controlling, but I want to tell you, I was scared out of my wits. To make matters worse, we encountered hail. It sounded like a thousand jackhammers were pounding on the airplane. To this day it amazes me that the only damage was a lot of paint being stripped off the nose of the Baron. No dents. No busted windows. 

I should give credit to our passenger on that flight. His only comment after we landed in Crossett was that his ribs were sure hurting while we were getting bounced around.

Some things that I have since learned in my years as a pilot: Everybody expects you to get them where they want to go, on time. Everybody expects you to be able to fly in any and all kinds of weather. Until you punch into a thunderstorm and scare the bejeesus out of them. Then, all of a sudden, it isn’t so important that they get there right away. Oh, and one other thing: One “Oh shit!” cancels a thousand “Attaboy!’s”.

It is said that there are old pilots, and there are bold pilots, but there are no old, bold pilots. In time, I would learn to apply these lessons and actually say “no” on some occasions when I felt that I was being asked to push my limitations. This is a direct result of becoming an old pilot who learned from my bold mistakes – the same identical mistakes that have killed many other pilots, yet somehow did not claim my life.