Hello Again,
Everyone!
As I write this, there's a
lot of melting going on out there. This is from the
howmanyeth? (I lost track) snowfall this winter. A few
days ago, they were saying on the TV weather that this is
the fourth snowiest winter on record for Missouri, with a
good chance we could climb still higher up the records
ladder before we can say winter is gone and spring is
here at last. All our "snowbirds" are still
gone. Next year, I think I'll find one to hitch a ride
with and just vamoose.
Jim and Millie Tausworthe drove to Galveston to take
pictures for book covers. They report it was 80°F. while
they were there. Jim long resisted the idea of publishing
his books, but since they accomplished the first project,
they're on a roll. We can look forward to some really
good reading. They are donating twenty copies of Jim's
newest book, The Last Chase, to the Chapter for sale, and
will have them at the meeting next Saturday. Be sure and
get your copy—if not for yourself, then for gift
giving.
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Ben Hurtt holds a
copy of The 405th,
donated to the Chapter by Jim
Tausworthe. Be sure to get your copy. |
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Bob and Janet
Brantley and N988RP |
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At
the February meeting, Bob and Janet Brantley were dressed
like true EAAers should be dressed! They were wearing
matching sweatshirts with a design featuring the Falco.
Very nice looking shirts, which made for a good picture.
March
Meeting & Start of "Flying Season"
We spent some time planning the meetings schedule for the
rest of the year. Our next meeting will be at Vaughn's
hangar in Mountain View. Wouldn't it be nice to have some
sunshine? (The TV weather guys also said we haven't had a
full day of sunshine since January 11.) We will meet at
noon on Saturday, March 8. Bring a side dish or dessert,
please. Come earlier (10:00 AM) for flying Young Eagles.
Bob will be gone to California for this meeting, so I
won't have the new computer set up yet (but I will have
still have a computer and Bill's printer, I think), and
I'll be needing some help at the table to sign in the
youngsters. I'm sure it'll be a fun day.
Wright
Flyer News
The Wright flyer Wednesday work days have been weathered
out most of the time during the last month. However, work
has continued to move along slowly whenever possible in
spite of the weather. Charlie Ward brought bicycle
sprockets and chain to be used on the canard control
system — using these parts and others, the pitch
control was constructed and assembled. It works nicely.
It also looks very antique as it sports a wooden steering
wheel donated by Berlin Batesel.
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Some of the
intricatea fittings for controlling the pitch of
the canard
on the Wright Flyer replica |
The
engine was moved from Fred and Sue Kalhoefer's place to
the shop and placed on a temporary stand. The carb and
stacks have been bolted in place. Bill says we could use
a good engine man to help install the electronic
ignition.
Dave Altis has offered to do some machining for us. He
has several of the parts needed for the chain drive
system to work on right now. We appreciate Dave's offer
because Bill Ghan doesn't have the machinery required to
do this work.
The prop pylons have been constructed and installed.
Bearing and drive shafts have been temporarily installed
and tested, and they seem to be working smoothly. The
rudder bar has also been made and put on. Now the cable
fittings and pulley brackets are in progress.
All the systems relating to the engine still have to be
installed, and the nose wheel is yet to be built. We are
looking for a good front fork from a light motorcycle to
use for it. The main gear is about ready to be bungeed to
the airframe, and for this we need some good bungee cord.
All these things have to be completed before covering can
begin in late April or early May. When it comes to the
covering, Lloyd Darter has a lot of polyester covering
that cannot be heat shrunk, so if anyone is experienced
with this type of material, we could use some advice.
We're all glad to see the number of people having a part
in the project increasing.
Thinking about the propeller, Bill and Ben visited Culver
Props in Rolla. That was an exciting and interesting trip
in itself. Mr. and Mrs. Smith and Dan gave them a tour of
the shop and showed them how the prop machine works. They
discussed the Wright Brothers props, and the power
loading formulas for the much more powerful engine that
we have. They were very helpful. It was decided that it
was more practical for Bill to carve the props by hand.
Seeing this operation would make a good fly-in visit for
the Chapter sometime, though.
Bill wrote to the Smithsonian Institution for copies of
the original Wright Flyer plans, and they finally came.
(He's been working from a compilation of other pictures
and drawings so far.) He will bring them to the Chapter
meeting next Saturday so everybody will have a chance to
see them.
Ed Fillmer, the videographer, tried to call Bill to check
on how the project is coming along, but Bill wasn't home
and so found a voice mail waiting for him. They will be
in touch again soon, I'm sure.
Piloting
& Picturetaking
We have a member bio to
share with you this month. These are always a favorite
part of the newsletter, ever since Len Ahrnsbrak started
them when he was newsletter editor. Our multitalented
Henrietta Christensen, known to most of us as
"Henny," tells her story:
Henrietta
Christensen
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"I lived in Paradise. I
learned to fly as a kid.
"I stood at the very edge of the Grand
Canyon soaking in the hundred and eighty degrees
my eyes allowed me. I projected myself floating
through the canyon and wanted my sight to wrap
around to the back of my head. Mama kept pulling
me back from the edge. I really wasn't going to
jump.
"I climbed to the roof of the storage
building out back, and flung myself off into
space using a pillow case like Superman's cape,
plopping flat out into the huge snowbank below,
fully aware that the pillow case wasn't going to
do the trick, but hoping against all odds that 'I
had a plan and it just might work,' as Roy Rogers
used to say when the box office was robbed. His
plans always worked, mine didn't.
"Lured by my dad's outstretched arms and his
promise to catch me, but knowing for sure that at
the last second he wouldn't, I leaped out and
sailed over the water in the Glenwood Springs Hot
Springs Pool. I would splat gleefully onto the
warm water, sink in a mass of bubbles, and be
hoisted back to the surface by his unfailing
grip.
"Getting bucked off a horse isn't supposed
to be fun, but when this young colt would only
trot out in the pasture and that was the sum
total of the action, I would jump out into space
pretending to be tossed up and away, tumbling and
rolling on landing. My sister and other friends
would jump aboard for their turn on the only
launch pad available.
"I glued up plastic models of every airplane
I could acquire, and did an aircraft carrier with
every fighter plane on deck, wings cut off and
folded back, all lined up in neat rows. The local
creamery redeemed their milk bottle tops for
prizes, the carrier was one of the prizes, and
collecting a stack of paper tops was the only way
Mama could bribe me to drink milk. No dolls for
me, balsa wood was the toy of choice, for kites
of course. Recycled tissue paper and a growing
ball of scavenged string were prized possessions.
And that glue would actually melt plastic. Good
stuff.
"Daddy taught me at age eight or so to
develop black and white film, in the bathroom
sealed off from outside light. We worked in total
darkness, dunking film strips up and down in
fruit jars of chemicals, going from jar to jar by
feel and learning to maneuver by memory and
instinct in the dark. When the last process was
done, and the lights would come on, I would find
myself with eyes clenched shut tight, having been
mentally denying any stray light leaks around the
door. This 'surround vision' daydream situation
was only controlled by the need to be counting
mentally or out loud to time the process. All my
ducks had to be lined up in a row before we
started. Are you ready? Click.
"Soaring above the mountains in a chair
lift, yelling and singing with my buddies, we
could be at 10,000 feet in just a few minutes. We
burned tracks in the dry Aspen powder, faster and
faster. I was always hunting for the next big
bump to catapult me into the air for a brief
thrilling victory over gravity. Gravity always
won, but it was a grand way to be 'up there.' I
saved money for lift tickets at Ma Bell part
time, 'number, please.'
"I was too short to qualify for airline
stewardess. I really wanted to be a pilot. Pilots
were men. Period. Learning to fly was not even in
the realm of possibilities. I had a few
commercial flights under my belt as an adult.
Then I had a ride in a Cessna 172 that took my
breath away. My cousins in Las Vegas ferried me
over the Grand Canyon, and again I had that rush,
wanting total surround vision. And, hey, my
cousin is a woman, and by gosh, she's a pilot.
Hey, hmm, well maybe some day…
"I could only fly by proxy. I witnessed my
son solo a Cessna 150 at the Mountain Grove
Airport while he was in high school. Mystic
moment. I wanted to do that. I didn't know I
could.
"Then I found out I could. A long flight in
the Archer while Darter napped had me hooked. It
was a 'coming home.' I liked seeing the world
from up there. 'Surround vision.' On another
flight in a 172 while Lloyd napped, I hadn't the
foggiest notion how to stay at the same
elevation, or get home, or restart the thing if
it quit or he turned it off, which he did in the
150 during the first lesson. Egad, there was so
much to do and I learned so slow! He got out of
the 150 much sooner than I wanted, ordering me to
go solo. In 1990, at age 47, I became a real
pilot. Humph.
"After the license, I was piled into the
Aeronca Chief with Jerry Smith. We were in there
for a really long time, through wind and rain and
snow and good days, on grass at Johnston's Nest
and Gaston's. The big barrier to my progress was
the real thing, the asphalt runway, but after
about 40-gazillion hours Jerry finally gave up,
got out and left me alone.
"Jerry would continue to plague me, though.
Instrument training came next in the Cherokee
180. By golly, now you've taken away my surround
vision, and why would I want to fly if I can't
have surround vision? Because, ordered Darter,
you're going to work for a living. Commercial
training at the same time. I'm too old for all of
this at once. Humph.
"I had already made a few flights with
Lloyd's friend George Houston, running his
cameras and shooting the contract photos for
Arkansas. They had cooked up plans for me to join
his fleet of one, a Cessna 205. So the Cessna 175
joined the ranks, acquired on an
instrument/commercial cross country flight to
Decatur, Alabama. I miraculously passed the
instrument and commercial rides in Mountain Home,
Arkansas in the spring of 1992, flying Dwight
Sutterfield's Bonanza for the complex part. The
next day our little fleet was in Arkansas
shooting pictures. I was a real
photographer/pilot. Humph.
"Somewhere along the way, Lloyd had stuffed
me and some pillows into the Champette, and I
became a test pilot. It's only got one seat, and
is so easy and fun to fly. I had become a real
taildragger pilot. Humph.
"I cried when the rocket launched Neil
Armstrong to his walk on the moon in 1969, I
wanted to go along. I helped Jerry Smith gather
thunderstorm and lightning data for Stormscope,
and flew the Rockies a little bit in the Baron. I
logged an unofficial ten minutes in the left seat
of a DC3 in Iowa. As a passenger I landed at
10,000 feet on a slopey mountain airstrip in a
Cessna 180, had joyrides in the Avid and
Bumblebug and Luscombes. I watched my daughter
and son both get their flight ratings. Mystic
moments.
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| The
"unofficial 10 minutes" in a
DC3. |
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Henny with
one of several fabulous cameras
she uses in her work. Here she takes
pictures
at the Chapter Christmas dinner. |
"I
had to be dragged by the hair out of the Eye-Max
Theater at the Smithsonian after seeing the Blue
Planet. I had found 'surround vision' and I
didn't want it to end. As a new pilot in 1993, I
stood dumbstruck at Kitty Hawk. Ten years later,
I want to take the first flight in Bill Ghan's
Wright Flyer, for just a few feet of being 'up
there.'
"I learned to fly as a kid. I've lived in
Paradise ever since."
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Thank you,
Henny, for telling your story. I can't help but
note how many of our members started out young
with this nagging urge to get up high in the air,
one way or another—the urge that leads to
becoming a pilot. Wouldn't it be neat if the very
first thing our parents taught us was to fly?!
Sort of like fledgling purple martins… Our
son, Craig, passed his FAA written test a couple
of weeks ago, and is getting ready for his
private checkride in, guess what, a Tomahawk.
Buzz Thunderbee commiserated with him as he
prepared for the test (Buzz often heads to
Florida in the wintertime, which is where Craig
lives.)
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Buzz Thunderbee by Squawk
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I
too, used to be in love with kite flying. My dad and I
would go up on a hilltop and fly a kite into the clouds
where we could no longer see it. It was great fun to see
how we could steer it from down on the ground, and
amazing how hard that kite could pull when we wanted to
haul it down in the late afternoon.
The
Cookbook & Cooking for the Meeting
Sharon Vaughn is still accepting recipes for the
cookbook, so if you run across a good one stuck in a
drawer that you forgot about, send it to her. And Mike
adds that the men who can and like to cook are welcome to
bring side dishes next Saturday, too. See you all then.
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