if he ever did.
There‘s no air conditioning in the DC-3 and at low altitudes the rough air, humidity and heat all contribute to a very unpleasant ride for the passengers. They get sick and we would open the cockpit windows to let the stink out. The DC-3 is un-pressurized and pilots open the sliding windows just like a car, to let fresh air in and cabin air out. We often flew back to Miami’s Opa Loca airport at night. Imagine how much fun this was, picking your way through monster storms, flying through the rain towards those areas with the least amount of lightening. Armando showed me a good trick- tune both of the ADF’s to frequencies between 1400 and 1900 kc and the needles tend to point to the areas with the strongest electrical discharge- I guess it worked because I’m here.
After flying the DC-3 for some time and finally logging the required twelve hundred hours, I got my type rating and the ATP, Airline Transport License, which is the PhD of pilot’s licenses. The year was 1965. Tony Sanson was my instructor. We flew the plane for the rating because there is not and never was a simulator built for the DC-3’s. We took off from Opa Loca in the afternoon and flew up to 5000’ west over the everglades, near where TNT (the training airport) is located which, in those days, didn’t exist. (DC-3 COCKPIT, LEFT)
At that time, one of the required maneuvers for a rating was the “canyon approach” This is where the pilot, wearing a cumbersome plastic hood, so he can’t “peek” flies on instruments over a radio beacon (imagined or real) and descends for sixty seconds to a pre-determined altitude, makes a procedure turn and flies inbound on the same bearing for a minute, letting down to minimums and then, with no airport in sight, executes a missed approach which is a climbing turn back to the reciprocal of the inbound heading. The approach is supposed to simulate a flight into an airport located in a valley between mountains or in a canyon. The instructor pulls one of the engines in one of the turns and the pilot has to go through the engine shut down litany while still flying the approach solely by reference to instruments. I still remember the call outs. “Mixtures rich, props up, power up, flaps up, positive rate, gear up. “ dead foot, dead engine, feather, confirm feather, check for fire, engine shut down check list, complete.” After this last command, the non-flying pilot whips out the check list and helps securing the engine. Of course, we didn’t really shut down the engine in training- We used what they call “min-thrust” a reduced power setting that simulates the feel of the aircraft on one engine. In the DC-3 this is about 15” of MP (manifold pressure) and 1500 RPM.
Gulf American Land Corporation folded in the late 70s but not before becoming a real airline called Modern Air transport which had belonged to a guy named Becker who had based his commercial certificate in Trenton NJ. Gulf American had the money and bought the company, moving it to Florida along with a few old DC-7’s and a lot of unhappy union pilots. Modern survived the demise of Gulf American, moving up to jets with the Convair 990 which was a terrible choice, having four big engines and only 144 seats. The company eventually ceased operations in Germany after a few years of flying vacation charters for LTU and other European Tour Operators.
One of the 990’s was flown into the ground in Mexico with considerable loss of life. Jeff Avery was the Captain. I had flown with Jeff in the DC-3’s and remember how nervous he would get when the weather turned nasty. This was the first time in my flying career when I knew crew members involved in a fatal accident. I thought about it a lot. Today, we call this kind of accident “controlled flight into terrain” and have recently mandated a system to prevent these kinds of accidents called TAWS, or “Terrain Awareness Warning System.” Of course, the system is years too late to save hundreds of passengers and crews but, there you are- to get a traffic light some kid has to be flattened.
Follows a poem I wrote some years back about the DC-3. This one has been around the world and published in numerous magazines and on several web sites. I include it for the readers to garner some idea of the respect and love we pilots have for the old bird.
CHAPTER 5
NORTH CENTRAL
“Some newspapers have an adversarial approach to the Boeing Company that actually nauseates me and I've stopped reading them. I spent fifteen years on the Boeing crash investigation committee, and I learned first hand the difference between what gets reported in the paper and what the facts are. I concluded that there was almost no relationship between what was written there and the facts, and it kind of made me nervous about reading anything else. I just quit taking the papers.”
— Granville "Granny" Frazier, The Boeing Company.
The DC-3 was my first type rating- I passed on the first ride- Tony, my IP, did a great job and so did I. I remember feeling great. Soon after, I got a call from Red Wallis, the Chief Pilot at North Central Airlines in Minnesota. He offered me a job and I took it. This was in 1965 and the frozen north was very different from Florida by a long shot- twelve feet of snow for months at a time!
When I got to Minneapolis’s and checked in with Captain Wallis. I had a warm weather type rating and very little money. He paid for a motel for month and loaned me a company car. There were only six of us in the class. Our class room was an old school house near the Minneapolis airport not too much different from the one in Island Heights. I felt right at home-except for the snow which was something you just don’t see much of in Florida!
The North Central instrument instruction was interesting- a “link Trainer” located in the dusty dim basement of a local high school. This is a little miniature aircraft designed by Ed Link, who, in the thirties, operated a flying school. Because of the economic depression at that time, flying lessons were too expensive for most people. Link got the idea to shorten the lessons by using a ground trainer. His father ran a factory where organs and pianos were made. He got the idea to use the suction vacuum techniques of these instruments for the construction of an aviation trainer. The vacuum pump and bellows could be used for simulating the pitching, turning and banking of an aircraft.
Link constructed a machine, more or less resembling an aircraft, which could imitate its movements around its three axes. In the beginning, the trainer was meant for instruction only of visual flight. Link used it in his flying school but it raised no demands from other schools, although he did sell some of his trainers to amusement parks. Nevertheless, he continued improving them by adding instruments for blind flying.
Because many accidents occurred during the nightly Mail flights, the American Army Air force took over these flights from the many private operators in 1934. Utterly failing by the way, and having even more accidents. The importance of flying instruments during night flights and in clouds became evident. Link got his first order for the trainer. The benefits of the Link trainer had become clear.
Interestingly, the second customer for the Link trainer was the Japanese Imperial Navy in 1935. Many Japanese pilots were trained in these and used their skills and knowledge fighting the American planes in WW-II. At the end of the thirties, a number of airline companies, including the Dutch KLM, and many air forces used the Link. During WW-II half a million pilots got their flying training in the Link trainers.
When I finished training, Captain Wallis offered me a deal on a used uniform, a Jacket, two pair of pants, overcoat and hat for twenty bucks. What a bargain- you could hardly notice the missing