“A fool and his money are soon flying more aircraft than he can handle.”
That one brings back a memory of a flight with mortician I knew. He was the only mortician in town, and therefore wealthy, and he had bought a Beech Bonanza, known as a “Dr. Killer” because physicians often bought them, because they could, but didn’t have time to learn to fly them, and sometimes died as a result.
The Bonanza was about as close to a WWII fighter plane as a civil aircraft could be in those days — fast, powerful, sensitive. The flight with the mortician was fine — I got the aerial photos I wanted. Then we landed. Hard. At the moment when he should have cut the power gradually and let the aircraft flare onto the runway, he just chopped the power — from about 50 feet above runway and the aircraft dropped like a stone. Wham! It survived. The Bonanza was tough. I never flew with that guy again.
The Beech T-34 was based on the Bonanza airframe. It was a T-34B that I was in in 1962 when it crashed in a mountain wilderness in New Mexico. Most of aircraft was turned into a what looked like a loose wad of yellow aluminum foil, but the pilot and I survived. Like the Bonanza, the Mentor was a tough airplane. This quote appropriately describes my “landing”: in that T-34 Mentor:
“A ‘good’ landing is one from which you can walk away. A ‘great’ landing is one after which they can use the plane again.”
Here’s more:
“There are old pilots and there are bold pilots. However, there are no old, bold pilots.”
“The only mystery in life is why the kamikaze pilots wore helmets.”
– Al McGuire
“If black boxes survive air crashes, why don’t they make the whole plane out of that stuff?”
“Both optimists and pessimists contribute to our society. The optimist invents the airplane and the pessimist the parachute.” – Gil Stern
“The propeller is just a big fan in front of the plane used to keep the pilot cool. When it stops, you can actually watch the pilot start sweating.”
“If you push the stick forward, the houses get bigger. If you pull the stick back, they get smaller. That is, unless you keep pulling the stick all the way back, then they get bigger again.”
“Flying isn’t dangerous. Crashing is what’s dangerous.”
“Every takeoff is optional. Every landing is mandatory.”
“Flying is learning how to throw yourself at the ground and miss.”
Most of these quotes weren’t attributed. Let me know if you know the source of any of them.
Bob
