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dscooperbooks

~ author D. S. Cooper

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Tag Archives: Flying

I am not D. B. Cooper

29 Saturday Apr 2017

Posted by Doug in D. S. Cooper Books, This Writer's Life

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eBooks, Flying, Self Publishing, Writing

Forty-six years ago a man calling himself Dan Cooper bought a ticket on Northwest Orient Airlines Flight 305 from Portland to Seattle for $20 cash and walked onboard a Boeing 727 with a bomb-like device in his carry-on briefcase. After takeoff he demanded that the airplane should land to be refueled for a flight to Mexico, at which time he allowed the passengers to disembark in exchange for two parachutes and $200,000 in cash. After the airplane returned to the sky, he lowered the aft boarding stairway and was never seen again.

Whether by mistake or design, it was some wag in the news media who coined an alias-within-an-alias when he gave the hijacker the familiar epithet “D. B.” Cooper.

For two decades after the hijacking, upon learning that that my name was Cooper, a new acquaintance would invariably ask, “Are you D. B. Cooper?” Or, “Any relation to D. B. Cooper?” This was all in jest, of course, since I’m five or ten years too young, one or two inches too short, and my eyes are way too blue to be DB. Not to mention, how could any of us be related to an alias? However, those little icebreakers often worked in my favor when they made it easy for me to talk with new friends, and gave them a hook to remember my name.

You might say that DB gave me the gift of gab, even if I had to start every conversation with no, I am not D. B. Cooper.

It wasn’t until five years ago that the hijacker’s faux moniker became a more serious issue for me, when I decided to self-publish my books. Early in the process,  I learned that there was a platoon of writers on Amazon Kindle and Create Space named Doug Cooper, or Douglas Cooper, or Douglas S. Cooper, or D. Scott Cooper,  ad infinitum.  In fact, the only variation of my name that wasn’t being used by another author was D. S. Cooper. So, what the heck. After all, initials worked pretty well for E. B. White, A. A. Milne, C. S. Lewis, H. P. Lovecraft and H. G. Wells.

Of course, I wasn’t counting on the sheer tonnage of words that have been churned out about DB over the years, which now take precedence over my pen name on every search engine. So, if you look online for books by D. S. Cooper you’ll have to get past a plethora of books about D. B. Cooper, of which there may be no end.  It seems that some devotees will always keep the flame for the DB myth, especially after eight-year-old Brian Ingram found fragments of twenty-dollar bills bearing the serial numbers of the Flight 305 ransom on the banks of the Columbia River, nine miles downstream from Vancouver in February of 1980. I have no idea how they got there.

Here’s the thing:  It is too late for me to change my copyrights, covers, ISBN numbers and so forth, so I guess I’ll just ride out the name confusion and keep writing as D. S. Cooper.  I’m not sure if it’s helping or hurting my book sales, but I can tell you for sure that I am not D. B. Cooper.

Since everybody of a certain age seems to have a pet theory about DB, here’s my take: The Flight 305 skyjacking was an incredibly stupid misadventure by a man who knew a little bit about a lot of things (more Cliff Clavin than James Bond) and got in way over his head. My best hope for the poor guy is that he never deployed his parachute and that he perished before impacting the brutally unforgiving terrain upstream from where those fragments of ransom money were found.  The important thing to remember is that I am NOT D. B. Cooper.

And the next time you endure TSA security screening at the airport, give a nod to good old DB, because the  Federal Aviation Administration first mandated the examination of all carry-on baggage a few days after my — I mean his — nutty stunt.

 

 

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The Flying Cars Are Coming!

13 Wednesday Jul 2016

Posted by Doug in Breakfast Flights

≈ 1 Comment

Tags

aviation, Flying, KTAN, Private Pilots, Taunton Municipal Airport

flyingcar2

The idea is ever so alluring to non-pilots; drive your airplane from home to the airport, fly to the next city airport, and then drive to your final destination. It would have to be safer, since you could land on the way and drive if the weather turned sour, and with a rocket-propelled ballistic parachute, what could go wrong?

Yet a pilot would ask, “don’t they have rental cars where you’re going? Or friends?” Or, how about all the times we’ve been offered an airport loaner car for free, with a request to bring it back in the morning? And since we can read weather forecasts before we fly, and the safety record of ballistic parachutes is a mixed bag, is it any surprise that experienced pilots are not enthusiastic about the promise of a flying car?

Even if they do produce the flying car for only $280,000 (out of my league!), it might be a hard-sell to pilots, since it comes with a 100 HP ROTAX  engine subject to this manufacturer’s warning: “Never fly the aircraft equipped with this engine at locations, airspeeds, altitudes, or other circumstances from which a no-power landing cannot be made, after sudden engine stoppage.” That makes the proven and dependable 180HP IO-360 in a new Cessna 172 look pretty good, for about the same money. By the way, the Cessna has four seats and can be flown at night and in instrument conditions.

Still lusting for a flying car? Consider that after an exemption from the FAA, the folks behind one prototype tout the payload of their design as 460 pounds, which sounds ample for two people, until you consider that a full fuel load of 23 gallons cuts that useful load down to 319 pounds. Better start yourself and your flying companion on that diet! Not to mention that to a pilot’s eye, all of the flying cars look like aerodynamic nightmares. It’s no wonder that the FAA has issued a new statement which re-considers allowing 20 hour “sport” pilots to fly these machines. Cooler heads have prevailed, and the feds now say that they will determine the pilot licensing requirements after flight testing is complete, if that ever happens.

As a car, the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration has granted a 3 year “hardship” exemption to make one design road-able, with no guarantee it will be permanent.  And not that it matters to those of you ready to plunk down $280K to look super-cool while driving around town, but insurance costs are likely to be sky-high, and the miles you drive will count towards the Time Between Overhaul (TBO) for your ROTAX engine, which was never intended for stop-and-go propulsion.

There is one thing which the flying car is very good at: Raising capital investments. Their promise of a “new level of safety, convenience and freedom” is estimated to have raised at least $11.5 million towards their $10 billion goal, with $30 million in pre-orders claimed. Of course, it would be cheaper to buy one of the six 1949 Moulton Taylor Aero Cars which actually flew fairly well, but never went into full production. Because even then, like the atomic refrigerator for your mom’s kitchen, it was a nifty idea which was not very practical.

1954Aerocar_01_700
aerocar2

Finally, if you visit my home airport as a transient pilot in your new flying car, you should make advance arrangements for the car gates, because the manager may not answer his cell phone to give you a code to exit from the airport without a gate pass when you want to.  Just saying…

Happy Flying!

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Flying With The Flock

27 Monday Jun 2016

Posted by Doug in Breakfast Flights

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Tags

Amputee pilot, aviation, Flying, KTAN, Taunton Municipal Airport

Pig Roast.jpg

It’s that time of year for fly-in events, large and small. Seaplane pilots will be headed to Greenville,  Piper Cub aficionados have taken a sentimental journey to Lock Haven,  and nearly everyone will be winging to EAA AirVenture at Oshkosh.

Best of all, nearly every weekend someone will open their hangar door and invite their friends to stop by. This month we had a pig-roast at Plymouth (above), the EAA Pancake Breakfast at Cranland, and our own Taunton Pilots Association breakfast-on-the-grill at KTAN. Like a car show, we like to look at airplanes and talk to other owners and pilots about flying. (By the way, studies at leading universities have shown that one out of three of the flying stories told at these aviator conclaves may be true!)

And if the truth be known, like the old warriors at the VFW post or the ladies playing canasta every Thursday, sometimes we just like to be with our own kind.

After all, doesn’t everyone know that airports — especially municipal airports — attract posers and pretenders with their political agendas and backroom deals? But when it’s just us pilots and our friends and our airplanes, we can forget about all that self-important drama for a day. Whether we’re a millionaire in a jet, or a homebuilder in a beautiful new ship that came together in our garage, or just some old guy like me in an ordinary old Piper Cherokee,  we’re all just people who share the same sky.

Happy flying!

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Who Killed Bader Field?

13 Monday Jun 2016

Posted by Doug in Breakfast Flights

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Tags

Amputee pilot, aviation, Flying, Taunton Casino, Taunton Municipal Airport

 

Bader skyline

Bader Field used to be the Atlantic City Municipal Airport (KAIY). It’s still there in  the very shadow of the boardwalk casinos, but as an airport, Bader Field is dead. The runways are all closed and a minor league baseball stadium and concert venue dominate the grounds.

Historic Bader Field was the first place ever called an ‘air-port.’ It opened in 1910 and the Civil Air Patrol was founded there in 1941. Glenn Curtiss, Charles Lindbergh and Admiral Richard Byrd flew there, and for three decades it was the site of the Black Pilots Association and the Powder Puff Derby. The first attempt to cross the Atlantic by air (a dirigible) departed from there and during the 1960s and 70s Allegheny Commuter Airlines flew flights to Philadelphia and New York, until Atlantic City International Airport opened at the former Naval Air Station, fifteen miles away.

Bader_NJ_86Jun_Dash7

The airport was 68 years old and operating smoothly when it saw a dramatic increase in charter flights as the first boardwalk casino opened in 1978, less than five miles away. Four engine airplanes carrying 40 passengers were shoe-horned onto the 2,948 foot runway by Resorts International, and in one year (2001) Bader saw 10,683 takeoffs and landings. In 1986 Atlantic City received a grant for improvements from the FAA, along with an obligation to operate the airport for 20 years. But only four years later in 1990, the city appealed to U. S. Senator Frank Lautenberg for legislation that would remove that grant obligation so that the airport could be closed due to ‘unsafe levels of air traffic.’ Others say that the land had become too valuable and a proposal to build 4000 time share condominiums on the airport’s 143 acres was the reason, but in any event Lautenberg’s legislation failed and Bader Field remained opened, even as the city stopped properly maintaining the facilities.

Then in 1996, without consulting the FAA, the city began constructing Sandcastle Stadium near Runway 29/11 on the airport property. A court battle ensued, but after a settlement the stadium opened in 1998. By 2006 less than a dozen aircraft were based at Bader Field,  and transient airplanes accounted for nearly all of the air traffic there.

On May 15, 2005 a Cessna Citation jet bound for the casinos attempted to land at Bader with a 10 knot tailwind. The jet  overran the end of the runway and splashed into the Intracoastal Waterway. All aboard were rescued by a passing boater, but the jet’s right engine was never shut down, and the Citation’s wet and  wild gyrations after all hands abandoned ship were caught on camera. The accident is still a popular video on You Tube.

It’s too late to save Bader Field, which Atlantic City closed as soon as the grant assurances expired, ninety-six years after it opened. But a Casino is being built a few miles away from my home airport, and many of the pilots and aircraft owners here fear that our community airport could repeat Bader’s sad history if we don’t learn from it. Unfortunately, there are some futurists here in Taunton who espouse only tremendous benefits and opportunities from ‘the whole new era’ of the casino. Some of them seem to be putting personal gain ahead of what is best for our airport, for there is certainly money to be made from ‘expansion’  when the gaming industry comes to town.

And to those who say that extending our runway at Taunton to 4,000 feet would never allow jets into our little airport, please consider that after the jet crash at Bader Field, the NTSB found an airport diagram on the control yoke directly in front of the pilot which read “airport closed to jet traffic.”

Proving once again that if you build it they will come.

 

 

 

 

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A Whole New Error?

08 Wednesday Jun 2016

Posted by Doug in Breakfast Flights

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Tags

Amputee pilot, aviation, Flying, Taunton Casino, Taunton Municipal Airport

setp“Further evidence of the trend to turboprop aircraft replacing piston power.”

That’s what one of my home airport’s commissioners recently said about this picture; a brilliant prediction since the headline hyping Cessna’s new turbo-prop airplane read “proof of a growing trend in aviation,” and many of the popular aviation magazines have been telling us as much for years. Yes, the single-engine turbines are coming!

This commissioner’s business must be doing very well if he is going to buy into a seven-figure turboprop. More power to him. I like the turbines, and I’ll never pass on the chance to fly aboard one of them and see what these remarkable machines can do. The power and sophisticated gadgetry in the panel is amazing! For sure, I’d love to own and fly a sleek new TBM 900, but my 1964 Cherokee 180 is the best that I can do right now, and it serves my flying needs perfectly. It’s also safe to say that not many of the pilots at Taunton Municipal Airport will be trading in their Pipers and Cessnas for turboprops any time soon, no matter what the industry gurus divine in their crystal balls. When our airplanes finally wear out, it’s much more likely we’ll be building and flying Van’s RVs, Zeniths and other homebuilt ships at a fraction of the cost.

I think that this local fascination with the presumed future of aviation is really about Taunton’s nascent casino, which is being built less than three miles from our airport. You’ve seen the gaming industry commercials, with the beautiful young couples spinning the roulette wheel to a jazzy guitar riff, dressed to the nines for drinking and dining and going to shows. Those commercials are a far cry from reality, but there’s no doubt that in addition to the multi-million dollar airplanes, “a whole new era” at Taunton would see more Polo, Ralph Lauren and European sports cars around the flight line, in contrast to the pickup truck and dungaree look which we currently enjoy.

Some of the most avid pilots at Taunton smell plenty of jet fuel when they’re working, flying Boeings 737s, Air Force C-130s and Citation jets, but they keep their personal airplanes at our community airport for the “grass roots” experience of barbeque grills and carefree kids on bikes and J-3 Cubs in the pattern. It would be a shame to lose that to some up-tight commercial airport to serve the casino.

It’s not that I don’t want aviation to progress. There’s plenty of room for the new turbines, as long as they don’t build their corporate hangars on the grass/gravel crosswind runway that our tail-draggers and classic airplanes often use. Real progress would be getting self-serve fuel and removing the old phone poles and downed tree branches laying around. Real progress would be improving access to our airport so that anyone interested in flying airplanes could get through the fences and join the fun.  And don’t forget that New Bedford already has two long runways, instrument approaches, jet fuel and glitzy facilities for the high-rollers, all within fifteen miles of Taunton.

 

 

 

 

 

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Night Flight

14 Saturday Nov 2015

Posted by Doug in D. S. Cooper Books, This Writer's Life

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Tags

Amazon Kindle, Chappaquiddick Incident, Flying, Old Cape Cod, Writing

Billy Coates

After a few glimpses of lights on the island and a few minutes of dead reckoning, he turned east and descended through the clouds and into the mist until the rotating beacon of Katama Airport came into view.

Billy Coates came over the beach at ninety miles per hour, seventy-five feet over the dunes. He pulled the throttles back and turned slightly to get the runway directly under the beams of his landing lights. When he was just above the grass, he held the nose up and gave a shot of power to slow his glide.

Touchdown.

The grass runway was smooth and groomed and he rolled easily to the dark restaurant at the far end. When he turned around and cut the engines, a car which had been parked nearby with the lights off pulled alongside his wing.

Three men got out of the car. Two of them wore dark suits with narrow ties. The middle man of the trio was stumbling and the other two in suits held him up as they approached the right wing.

Billy never got out of the airplane. By the time he opened the door the men were up on the wing and shoving their charge into the back seat. Under the glow of the cabin dome light, Billy saw a good looking young man with a prominent brow and flowing hair.

The senator, he immediately knew. He’d never met the man, but everybody had seen him and the other members of the famous family around Cape Cod.

So that’s what this is about, Billy thought. The party must have gotten a little out of hand.

One of the men settled into the back seat with the senator while the other took the right seat up front.

“I’m Billy Coates.” He offered his hand to the middle-aged man at his side.

“Okay, let’s go,” the man said, ignoring Billy’s hand without introducing himself.

“Yeah,” Billy drawled as he recovered his hand. “Fasten your seatbelts, please.”

Billy started the engines and lined up with the runway. There wasn’t much wind, so he’d takeoff over the water. When he turned around to check on his important passenger, he saw the other man in the back seat putting a black pill into the senator’s mouth.

“How about we get a seatbelt around the senator?” Billy tried to be diplomatic.

“How about you just fly the damn airplane, kid. We’re fine back here.”

Yeah, Billy thought. If this takeoff goes wrong and we crash into the ocean, the seatbelts won’t make much difference. We’re dead either way, you arrogant prick.

He pushed the throttles forward and the Apache jostled along the grass runway. The dark ocean ahead offered no discernable horizon so Billy relied on the instruments right away, trusting the fates of all aboard to the spring-loaded needles and wobbly old gyroscopes of the gauges on his panel. By the time he had the airplane turned back towards Falmouth, they were above the haze and the clouds. The moon, when it rose above the cumulus, was new. Only a sliver of the orb was illuminated.

The man in the right seat leaned towards Billy to be heard over the engines.

“Where is Falmouth?”

“About ten miles on the nose,” Billy said.

“You’d better know what you’re doing,” the man growled.

“Yeah. You’ve got that right.”

Or what? Billy thought. You should have though of that before you got into my airplane on a foggy night and started issuing demands.

Billy caught a glimpse of the lighthouse at Nobska Point through the broken clouds and he pushed the nose down as he turned along the coast south of Falmouth. The lights of houses and roads vanished and then reappeared in patchy fog. The landing gear came down after he turned inland over Waquoit Bay and crossed Route 28. Then he turned left and pulled the throttles halfway back when the church steeple was under his left wing.

The runway lights at the far end came into view first, but its near end was masked by trees until the Apache was skimming over the branches.

Billy pulled the throttles all the way back and dropped the airplane onto the narrow airstrip. He had them stopped before they rolled past the hangar, just beyond mid-field. He pulled up to the office and there was a sudden silence when he shut down the engines.

“Let me get that,” Billy said when the man in the right seat hastily tugged at the door latch. He had almost broken the handle before Billy reached past him and easily released the door. Then the three passengers hustled out of the airplane.

A black Cadillac appeared from out of the shadows and the senator was shoved into the back seat. Billy was left standing next to the Apache at the deserted airport. Fog was rolling in over the trees.

“Remember our deal.” The man pointed at Billy as he got into the front seat of the Caddy. “This never happened.”

I don’t remember agreeing to that, Billy mused.

“Yeah. So who do I invoice for this flight?”

“It’s all set. You’ll be taken care of.”

I’ve heard that before, Billy thought. Most of us write our own checks, but the really rich guys have aides who never seem to get around to paying the bills.

And good luck getting in touch with these guys after their tail lights disappeared down the gravel road through the pines.

Excerpted from the novella  FLIGHT FROM KATAMA by D. S. Cooper

Read the eBook for $0.99 at http://amazon.com/dp/B00QKOJBR8

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Hangar Flying

14 Monday Sep 2015

Posted by Doug in Breakfast Flights

≈ 1 Comment

Tags

Amputee pilot, aviation, Flying, Taunton Municipal Airport

Hangar Flying

So, yet another Sunday morning of poor flying weather, with marginal VFR conditions over Taunton but lower clouds all around. Oh well, that’s New England!

Luckily the Taunton Pilots Association had planned their first monthly hangar breakfast for this week. It was a shame that friends could not fly in to join us, but we’ll hope for better weather next time.

Frank, Al, Steve and Nina did the setup and cooking. Luckily we didn’t run out of food! We’ll have more “vittles” (as Frank says) on hand next month.

HONORED GUEST

We were fortunate to have TPA Life Member Sue King in attendance at breakfast, even though she had to drive from the summer cottage on the Cape to be with us. Her family started our airport over ninety years ago, and where we were standing in the hanger was once the King Dairy Farm. Ironically, she couldn’t get through the gate without one of us “newcomers” going out to let her in, since for reasons none of us can fathom, management does not allow the gate access codes to work on the weekends!

LOW CEILINGS STRIKE AGAIN!

Also in attendance was Almost-a-Private-Pilot Max Frattasio, age 17, who completed the oral exam and pattern work of his private pilot check-ride this week. When the examiner asked him about starting out on the cross country phase, Max wisely replied that the 1,400 foot ceiling was a bit too low to venture to New Haven. So hopefully, he will complete the cross-county and air-work requirements to obtain his private pilot certificate before our next breakfast flight.

Happy Flying!

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Flying Uncontrolled

07 Monday Sep 2015

Posted by Doug in Breakfast Flights

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Tags

Amputee pilot, aviation, Flying, Taunton Municipal Airport

crosswind entry

Our breakfast flights often take us to non-towered airports.

That was the case this week, when we flew to Plymouth for breakfast at Plane Jane’s. It happened to be some the finest flying weather of the year, so the traffic pattern was full of airplanes and the radio chatter was intense.

Now, we can safely land a lot of airplanes in short order, such as for the pancake breakfasts at Cranland, which might attract 30 ships as soon as the grille warms up.  But two airplanes occupying the same airspace at the same time is always a concern, especially since our fields of view are limited by cowlings, wings and cabin floors.

Communication is helpful. Courtesy is helpful. Rude (and often erroneous) comments on the radio are counter-productive. So maybe the most important thing we need to control when flying at an “uncontrolled airport” is the transmit button under our thumb.

Happy flying!

Gerry and Rich

Being and old guy who never flew for a living, one of the things I really enjoy about flying is watching young pilots come into their own.

So I flew to the Vineyard on Saturday for dinner with two Taunton pilots who flew to Oshkosh with me in my Skylane in 2009 (Gerry also made the trip in 2007 and 2008). At the time they had newly minted instrument ratings, and they got to use them on those trips! Both went on to fly Cessna 402s for Cape Air and now they’re both Pilatus PC-12 captains for a fractional ownership operation. Which means multiple legs on most days, in all sorts of weather and a lot of experience with advanced avionics and systems.

So well done, Gerry and Richard!

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Pilots – A Tough Crowd

30 Sunday Aug 2015

Posted by Doug in Breakfast Flights

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Tags

Amputee pilot, aviation, Flying, Taunton Municipal Airport, Writing

Pilots

Some pilots are a little too quick to criticize their fellow aviators.

Luckily, our group isn’t that way. I was reminded of that when we flew to the Vineyard’s main airport for breakfast this morning.

It’s the time of year where some of the guys had “family stuff” to do, so we met at Taunton with 8 airplanes and headed across Buzzards Bay with 5. After about 20 minutes of flying, the tower controller did his usual great work getting us sequenced for landing between Cape Air flights and jet traffic, despite the haze.

Over omelets and home fries, somehow the subject of our conversation turned to the many foibles and escapades of one former member of the group, who apparently lost his medical and gave up flying. It was gentle ribbing, really, and several of his ground loops and unplanned adventures were related as funny stories. (I got it! I got it! … Aw shit.)

When we get started on those hangar stories, nobody is safe. But more often than not, we enjoy some self deprecation and say,  “I’ve done worse than that!”

Not all pilots are that generous. Some inexperienced aviators can’t resist critiquing someone else’s less than perfect landing, even when theirs are nothing to write home about. But somewhere around the time an airman checks out in a variety of airplanes and gets a few advanced ratings, and then starts flying tail wheels or aerobatics or seaplanes, a mind-shift may occur. After that, we’re all just doing the best we can and enjoying this great sport called flying.

Of course, there’s always an exception, and in this case it would be the old curmudgeon who taught Wilbur and Orville to fly and never caught a wingtip in the grass or busted an assigned altitude. So we all just smile and ignore those blowhards, even if they really are as great as they believe themselves to be.

I remember one bad landing a few years ago, when a friend who is a very fine pilot bounced a heavy landing in his airplane, with full fuel and six of us onboard. There happened to be a flock of charter jet crews standing around in their Ray Bans and gold stripes to witness the “arrival,” and my friend was mortified to have to walk past the professionals to get to the restaurant, with all of us still laughing.

“Are you kidding?” I suggested. “Those jet guys wish they were flying their own airplane with a few buddies, so they could get out laughing after a terrible landing, without worrying about losing their jobs!”

It’s all in your perspective.

Happy Flying!

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America’s No Fly Zones

16 Sunday Aug 2015

Posted by Doug in Breakfast Flights

≈ 1 Comment

Tags

Amputee pilot, Flying, Presidential Vacations, Taunton Municipal Airport

pic

This is the time of year when we really appreciate flying our airplanes to the Cape and Islands.

Sadly, there hasn’t been much enthusiasm for flying in Southern New England lately, even though August has brought some great weather, with relatively calm winds and abundant sunshine. This is because President Obama is vacationing on the Vineyard … again.

From Friday August 7th, until Sunday August 23rd, a 30 mile “Temporary Flight Restriction” has been set up around the island. Any unauthorized flight in this zone will result in swift and severe action against the pilot by the United States Secret Service … again.

To be fair, it is possible to do some limited flying during the TFR. I flew my Cherokee into the outer ring to visit a friend in Falmouth yesterday, and the FAA made it easy. All I had to do was to file (but not necessarily open) a VFR flight plan, get a discrete transponder code, and stay in radio contact with Cape Approach and Departure. The controllers were friendly and helpful, but there were certainly Secret Service agents looking over their shoulders watching for one misstep, one wrong turn, one wingtip brushing the forbidden zone of the 10 mile inner ring, which would result in unleashing the hounds.

It isn’t fun flying when you know that you could loose your license for 90 or 180 days at any moment. Not to mention submitting to detention and an ardent Secret Service interrogation, where your personal political views may be considered “motive” for disrupting the chief executive’s serenity.

Of course, 9-11 is the reason why presidential vacations cost the taxpayers millions (billions?) of dollars in travel costs and security. The exact dollar amount is “classified” and obscured in dozens of bureaucratic accounting streams, but an island boondoggle certainly adds more to the national debt than a few weeks at Camp David.

So if you want to take off from an obscure grass airstrip around here (there are many) in your J-3 Cub or Ultralight, forget about it. If you run a flight school or a skydiving operation, suck it up. And if you make it to Edgartown or Vineyard Haven only to discover that blocks of streets are barricaded and shut down because the Pres went into town for an ice cream cone, take heart: He will soon be back among his billionaire buddies, golfing and brainstorming for new ways to make life better for the hard working middle class.

Okay, that was a cheap shot.

But what does it say about America when our leader may take such extraordinary measures to seal off and claim one of the most beautiful and desirable locales in the nation as his private and exclusive domain … again?

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