January 31, 2023 Men Who Ask for Directions

The Liberty Gazette

January 31, 2023

Ely Air Lines

By Mike Ely and Linda Street-Ely

They didn’t know the area well, but they had a map in the Curtiss Jenny, out for a little cross-country fun. Granted, it was a railroad map, but that’s what they all used back then, before aerial maps. Just follow the railroads to get from town to town and look for the water towers to verify you’re in the right place.  It was 1924, not that long after the days of wagon trains on dirt roads. Sure, Henry Ford, Louis Chevrolet, Barney Olds, and of course Fred and Augie Duesenberg were already selling horse-less carriages, but it hadn’t been that long. 

They left Houston and went west. The map showed a couple of rivers flowing through that part of Texas. Only one of them was accompanied by the symbol of a railroad track. So, on they flew, thinking they were following the right one – the river alongside the railroad – when they finally realized that something didn’t look right. These weren’t the features on the ground below that they expected to see. Then they realized that the mapmaker should have added railroad tracks to the other river, too. That’s when they learned that the Rio Grande wasn’t the only river that gave Texas train passengers a view. The Nueces did as well. And below them was Camp Wood. Of course, they don’t know that until they landed, because the map didn’t have the names of towns. 

That’s what happened to Charles Lindbergh and his friend Leon Klink. At least the men can be credited with stopping to ask for directions. That it was the town square where they stopped made for some exciting chatter in Camp Wood. 

They could have taken off the next morning, but the two young bachelors stayed another day to go to a dance. The next morning offered a favorable winds. Lindbergh wrote in his book, We, that “One of the town streets was wide enough to take off from, provided I could get a forty-four-foot wing between two telephone poles forty-six feet apart and brush through a few branches on each side of the road.” As they lifted off, just before passing said poles, “there was a rough patch on the street. One of the wheels got in a rut and I missed by three inches of the right wingtip. The pole swung the plane around and the nose crashed through the wall of a hardware store, knocking pots, pans, and pitchforks all over the interior.” The storeowner refused Lindbergh’s offer of payment – it would be great advertising, like Land here for a great deal on all your household needs!

The Texas Historical Commission granted an historical marker along Highway 55 in Camp Wood to commemorate the unplanned stop made by the man who would, just three years later, become the most famous man in the world.

For the whole story and more, get yourself the book, History Ahead; Stories beyond the Texas Roadside Markers (Texas A&M University Press), which includes a few more aviation stories.

ElyAirLines.blogspot.com

January 24, 2023 True Magic

The Liberty Gazette

January 24, 2023

Ely Air Lines

By Mike Ely and Linda Street-Ely

Canadian Melissa Findlay loves her job. She’s seen beauty some will never see: sunrises, sunsets, and northern lights from her office in the sky.

On a family vacation to Hawaii when she was a child, she saw into the flight deck of an airliner. She thought, oh, look at all the buttons! Now she knows they’re just circuit breakers, but it was enough to draw her in, the first pilot in her family. 

After high school, she pondered hotel management and tourism. Six months working at a lodge was enough. She joined Skyservice Airlines as a flight attendant and went to a local college to learn to fly. That was before the current pilot shortage, so her flight attendant experience was an advantage. Airline flying sounded glamorous, so she’d wait for an open seat. Then she worked on the ramp for Transwest Air until they offered her her first flying job, flying medevac in a King Air based in La Ronge, Saskatchewan. Way north.

There were times she wondered, “What am I doing here?” It’s hard work. Some days she thought, “I should have been a librarian.” Or, “Is it too late to do the hotel thing? Can I be a massage therapist?” When temperatures were -50, she thought, “Some people are warm in their buildings right now.” But then she’d get in the air and remember, “Oh ya, this is why I do it.”

She had her first emergency flying out of La Ronge, a chip detector light. They had to shut down an engine in flight, and she managed just fine. In her time off, she became immersed in the community and learned to make moccasins and mitts and took foraging classes. “People working up there are away from family, so you create your own,” she explains. “Potlucks, movie nights, Sunday dinners. It’s actually tough to leave in the end.”

Then she got a job as captain on a Navajo out of Stony Rapids. “That’s really north,” she laughs. “At the very top of Saskatchewan. Groceries are flown in. People from the U.S. pay tens of thousands of dollars to go fishing up there. Best fishing camps in the world. In Stony Rapids, the people are interesting, the landscape stunning, the hiking exhilarating, and the flying amazing.”

Now she’s flying cargo and calls it the Unicorn, “because who knew in aviation you could have it this good.” She doesn’t work holidays or weekends and she’s home every night. She no longer aspires to fly passenger airlines, as this job offers a wonderful work-life balance. Then again, if her employer ever gets a B757 base in Calgary, she might be interested. 

In Hawaii, you can go to the top of the volcano and see the sunrise. “It’s nice,” Melissa says, “but I’ve seen better. I’ve seen the full dance of northern lights. I can put music in my headsets and play to the waving ribbons. The true magic of the north. Yes, this is why I fly.”

ElyAirLines.blogspot.com

January 17, 2023 How Not to Plan a Writing Retreat

The Liberty Gazette

January 17, 2023

Ely Air Lines

By Mike Ely and Linda Street-Ely

Mike: In blizzard and icy conditions, we keep the Elyminator in the hangar and opt for a seat on the bus. Over Christmas break, we chose Southwest Airlines. In better flying weather, we would fly ourselves into Finger Lakes Regional or the Penn Yan airport in upstate New York. But Southwest doesn’t fly there, so we bought tickets to Syracuse and borrowed from Avis to drive west. If you followed any of the hubbub over the holidays, you might know that employees from some of the air carriers had threatened to strike during that time. Southwest was not one of those, so we thought our trip might have better luck. Unfortunately, they had somewhat of a system meltdown as flights were cancelling due to weather. It took them a few days to resuscitate their old scheduling infrastructure, but they did it. We were one of the fortunate ones in that none of our flights were affected in either direction. Sure, they have some work to do, and hopefully they won’t have a bean counter running the company ever again. Nothing against accountants, but they shouldn’t be running airlines. It’s not their forte. With a new CEO, we feel certain operations will improve dramatically, and Southwest will rise to the top again to regain the public’s “Luv.”

Linda: We had planned on having a winter writing retreat (and I wanted to make snow angels), but there’s so much to do in this part of the country that we had a hard time staying in the B&B. In a break from writing, we took a day to hike among frozen water falls at Watkins Glen State Park. Bundled in layers, we stepped gingerly across the snow and ice-covered paths surrounded with views of 19 falls that looked like opaque glass hanging from 200-foot cliffs. Summertime is peak tourist season, so we saw relatively few fellow hikers, and the air was filled with the sounds of burbling water where ice had thawed, snow-crunch footsteps, and an extra-large woodpecker whose hammering was surprisingly loud.

In the town of Watkins Glen are murals of vintage roadsters and portraits of acclaimed race drivers in honor of the city’s rich auto racing history. My dad used to talk of the famous Watkins Glen speedway when I was a child, and it was a treat to finally see it in person. 

Back at the B&B, we rested to the sounds of Canada geese honking as they flapped their wings 500 feet above the center of Seneca Lake. The house was perfectly placed on the west side of the lake with a wall-full of windows facing east. Each morning, we woke to a stunning pre-sunrise sky gracefully glowing from deep red to pink to bright orange, then yellow, casting light on rabbit footprints on the snowy deck. 

Only a bit of progress was made on a Scottish Renaissance novel and a book for flight instructors on teaching scenarios. Next time, we should plan our writing retreat at some place boring.

ElyAirLines.blogspot.com

January 10, 2023 Reflections from Hammondsport, NY

The Liberty Gazette

January 10, 2023

Ely Air Lines

By Mike Ely and Linda Street-Ely

Glenn Hammond Curtiss. Had you been born around 1880, you would have said in 1900, watch that man. He’s going places. People in his hometown liked him. After his father died, when Glenn was about five, he went about town with a screwdriver, asking merchants and homeowners if they had anything that needed fixing. The man of the house at an early age, he took care of his little sister, Rutha, who had become deaf from meningitis. He was competitive, too. The invention of the bicycle had allowed people to “move up” from four hooves to two wheels. He found like-minded men and they all raced against each other for the title of fastest cyclist. Glenn won and won and won again. He was strong, and he built good bikes. Because everyone loves a winner, everyone wanted a bike like Glenn Curtiss’. Voila! A business! Curtiss Bicycles. Hammondsport, New York (his father’s ancestors had founded the city). 

Technology moved fast, too, but Glenn kept pace. He didn’t invent the motorcycle, but he bought a V-8 engine and mounted it on his bicycle. He set a speed record with it in 1907. 136 miles an hour. “The fastest man on earth,” they called him.

Glenn met the most beautiful woman ever, Lena Pearl Neff, a local gal, and asked her parents for her hand in marriage. Her mother wasn’t sure, but her father could tell. He’s going places.

Business was good, and despite personal tragedies, including the death of their first son at 11 months, he and Lena carried on. Together. He was curious and smart. He solved problems. He made things work. After his first flight in a powered balloon, he said, “I think I can make it go faster.” 

He also cared deeply about people. It is, therefore, no surprise that his business grew. Everybody liked Glenn. Everybody, that is, except Orville and Wilbur. They did not like the competition as the world raced to be the first to build an aeroplane that would carry people. Even the French were nicer to Glenn Curtiss than the Wright boys of Ohio. They were smug with their wing-warping idea and interconnected rudder. They’d found a way to steer a glider and accused him of patent infringement.

Warping wings? He could do better than that. He made ailerons. But those Wrights ran crying to a judge and put Glenn out of business for a time. Around 300 employees out of work. That’s when Henry Ford stepped in. “Let me know when you need me,” he offered. He disliked those boys from Ohio. Ford told him to make the controls work independently (not interconnected) and funded the legal team to fight the potential monopoly from an overly broad patent. 

All U.S. patents were invalidated during WWI, and Curtiss-built aircraft became the only U.S. aircraft to see service in the war. There’s a lesson in this: Don’t be greedy. Ironic karma will get you.

ElyAirLines.blogspot.com

January 3, 2023 It's a Wonderful Life

The Liberty Gazette

January 3, 2023

Ely Air Lines

By Mike Ely and Linda Street-Ely

Mike: We braced against the icy blast, mucking through snow on a bridge in Seneca Falls at 9:00 PM Christmas Eve. I wondered why the water below wasn’t churning like the scene in Frank Capra’s “It’s a Wonderful Life.” But then, that was probably done in a Hollywood studio tank. We could have encountered the ghost of George Bailey or clockmaker Clarence P. Odbody, AS2 (Angel, Second Class), but we didn’t. The temperature was 12 degrees, but the wind chill was -5. Not much different than when we left Liberty early that morning. 

Seneca Falls was the fictitious town of Bedford Falls in the 1946 Christmas tale. Little did we know when planning the trip that a winter storm would sweep the U.S. But then, that’s what adventure is all about. Besides, this meant a white Christmas. 

The B&B we picked for our winter writing retreat was just down the road in Penn Yan (home to Penn Yan Aero, aircraft engine overhauler). The idea was to break from routine in an environment that evokes creativity. After scanning possibilities around the globe, we chose a sweet little cottage overlooking Seneca Lake in the Finger Lakes region. This is mostly a summer resort area, but it’s magnificent in winter as well.

We knew however, that we probably wouldn’t make it here in our airplane due to low freezing levels. The Elyminator doesn’t have a de-icing system. We were a little concerned as the cold weather approached Liberty. Airports across the country were closing, there was a threat of airline strikes, and so many flights were cancelled. We were fortunate, but the airport scene was nothing less than chaos.

Linda: There are no direct flights from Houston to Syracuse, and we’re lucky we didn’t get stuck in Orlando like so many people did. I got a kick out of the lady who joined our row of seats. She was going to visit her daughter for Christmas and loved that I gave up the window seat to her. She was glued to the glass and kept taking pictures. I didn’t figure her for a pilot but thought I’d open the door to the topic, just to see. 

“Great views!” I said. She agreed wholeheartedly. I pointed toward the flight deck. “Second only to the one up front.” Her response would tell me if she was an aviatrix.

Her facial expression was one of yearning. Wishing. Love from afar. “I can’t even imagine what it’s like,” she replied, “the whole country, right there in front of you. I can’t imagine.” She looked back out the window with great admiration. I was right. Not a pilot. But clearly, she loves flying. I didn’t mention being one; I just wanted to hear what she had to say. Her love of flight made me happy.

There’s so much to do in the Finger Lakes region, home to over 150 wineries, amazing hiking and scenery, and lots more for us to tell you about next week. Happy New Year!

ElyAirLines.blogspot.com