August 7, 2012 AirVenture Cup

The Liberty Gazette

August 7, 2012

Ely Air Lines
By Mike Ely and Linda Street-Ely

Linda: Growing up in corn country – central Indiana – I ate enough corn by the time I was five to last a life time, but my recent trip to palatial corn town Mitchell, South Dakota pretty much knocked Indiana’s reputation down a notch.

More than just a place for harvest celebration, The World’s Only Corn Palace serves as Mitchell’s convention and entertainment center. Built to demonstrate South Dakota’s healthy agricultural climate, its unique exterior includes a mural covering the entire front of the building in naturally colored corn, grains and native grasses. The design is changed every year. Inspired by lavish Moor palaces, minarets and kiosks mixed with prairie folk art make for a top tourist attraction, and have welcomed John Philip Sousa’s Band, Lawrence Welk, Jack Benny, Tennessee Ernie Ford, and every big name you can think of from 1892 to the present

Scheduling conflicts prevented Mike from joining me so my friend Yasmina was eager for the adventure: the AirVenture Cup race from Mitchell, about 400 miles east to a finish line near Oshkosh, Wisconsin arriving for the start of the 60th AirVenture, the world’s largest annual convention that attracts more than 10,000 airplanes and over a million people.

For the 15 years the AirVenture Cup race has occurred the route has been pretty much a straight line, point A to point B, with full town celebrations at both ends. As in years past, the city of Mitchell hosted an airport open house and pilots volunteered to fly 165 Young Eagle flights (free introductory flights for youngsters ages 8-17). Area media helped promote the understanding of the airport’s importance and the local radio station broadcast live from the airport the entire day, building up excitement for the race that would begin in the morning.

Young Eagle flights are often the birthplace of great stories and Mitchell was no exception. One young boy was especially eager to experience his first flight. His mom’s concern over the challenges presented by autism were quickly quieted – once he was in the cockpit and given an opportunity to touch the controls the boy who often flies Microsoft Flight Simulator “was in his element,” and the pilot said he had a good feel for how an airplane flies. Mom had never seen him so calm, happy, and focused. Her joyful tears spoke volumes.

All the activities were familiar ones we enjoy at fly-in events, but being asked to be in a parade was a new one for me. It turns out, the rodeo was the same weekend and rodeo organizers asked air race organizers to rustle up some air cowboys (and girls) for a parade flight. Twelve airplanes joined in formation over Main Street, over the Corn Palace, and an excited crowd below.

The next morning 40 airplanes planned to race from Mitchell, over Pocahontas, Iowa, an optional fuel stop, to West Bend, Wisconsin. Fellow air racers Bruce and Steve Hammer grew up on a farm in Pocahontas and on this her 90th birthday their mom would bring rhubarb pie for those stopping for fuel. After crossing the finish line we’d fly in a mass arrival to Oshkosh.

Alas, a line of thunderstorms changed the race route. As we flew north of the weather we lamented not getting our fill of Mrs. Hammer’s rhubarb pie and birthday party in Iowa. See you next week for the rest of the story.

www.ElyAirLines.blogspot.com

July 31, 2012 The Great Northwest part 6

The Liberty Gazette

July 31, 2012

Ely Air Lines
By Mike Ely and Linda Street-Ely

Mike: Cool morning air graced the patio while I watched the first rays of sun break through the marine layer that lay between us and the mainland causing the swelling Pacific Ocean to glisten and gleam like a deep blue-green jewel-speckled blanket that kept busy Los Angeles a world away. The hundred or so boats moored in sleepy Avalon Bay rocked gently in the morning breeze in calm waters. A few souls ventured into the streets below as the town began to stir from its slumber.

Linda: Perched atop a hill overlooking Avalon on Catalina Island, sits a special place reminiscent of the old Zuni Indian pueblos of Arizona and New Mexico. We spent the night in the “Vanishing American", one of 15 rooms in the Zane Grey Pueblo Hotel named after titles of books by the famous author. Our room was the namesake of one of Grey's novels published in 1924. The island’s rugged interior was once a popular place for filming Hollywood movies and it’s only a 26 mile boat or plane-ride away. In 1925 a film crew came to the island to turn the story into a motion picture. The 11 buffalo shipped over for the film were left on the island to proliferate - and proliferate they did; now numbering in the hundreds.

Mike: From our veranda I imagined watching the Chicago Cubs in spring training at the old baseball diamond in the 1920s. The 1950s through 1970s saw Grumman Goose amphibious airplanes swooping down through the canyon from the west, splashing into the protected waters of Avalon Bay, their pilots as flamboyant as any of the characters in Zane Grey’s one-hundred-plus novels. High above the natural amphitheater of Avalon stand the Wrigley Mansion and the Zane Grey Pueblo, two pillars facing each other overlooking the tourist town with breathtaking views of the rocky island and marina below.

Linda: We enjoyed an evening stroll through romantic Avalon, which we learned has a very low crime rate because, well, it’s on an island and to where would a crook escape? The lovely sunrise drew us out for more exploring and shopping but all too soon it was time to return to the Airport-In-The-Sky. The ten mile road from Avalon to the island's hill-top airport climbs steeply, switch-back upon switch-back, out of the canyon that shelters the town, up to the plateau where buffalo, wild pigs and a rare fox wander about. Desert vegetation, buffalo grass, chaparral and manzanita cover the slopes and I even spotted a few cactus and the large spikey-leaves of native yucca plants.

Mike: Before leaving we wanted photos from atop the airport's control tower, which has been on the island since it was returned to civilian operation following WWII. No real air traffic control service exists at the field; pilots maintain their own separation by radioing position calls to one another. We got some great shots, and the day was shaping up to be a very busy one as the marine layer burned off on the mainland, allowing more weekend flyers to cross the channel to the island in search of a buffalo burger or a ride to Avalon for the day.

Linda: And so off we flew, Texas bound. Over the open water we made landfall just north of San Diego then crossed some rugged mountain ranges and pointed the nose eastward and home, 1,200 miles away.

www.ElyAirLines.blogspot.com

July 24, 2012 The Great Northwest part 5

The Liberty Gazette

July 24, 2012

Ely Air Lines
By Mike Ely and Linda Street-Ely

Mike: The marine layer made its predictable appearance as we joined Red and Marilyn on a morning walk along the northern California beach. It’s part of their morning routine, making the half-mile walk down a dirt road from their home on the airstrip in Fort Bragg, along the shore for a scenic stroll and back again. The temperature rarely climbs past 75 and the mist from crashing waves refreshes sea kelp collectors and beach-going dogs taking their two-leggers for a jog. This foggy, cloudy layer comes in off the ocean and moves up through valleys and canyons of the rugged coastal range of Northern California. That day it was about a thousand feet up and maybe a few hundred feet thick, but dense. Very dense. It doesn’t burn off quickly, but it does break up inland.

Linda: After our relaxing stay with delightful friends we took off to the east with good visibility under the cloud layer. The further we flew up the valleys, the higher the clouds rose and began to fall apart, the bright afternoon sun shining behind us as we climbed out over the mountains north of Sonoma and on to Bakersfield. This was a good place to stop for the night. In the morning we’d go somewhere I’d wanted to go ever since I first heard Mike describe it – Santa Catalina Island, “the island of romance.”

Mike: Climbing above the mountain range between Bakersfield and Los Angeles we crossed it at 7,500 feet, descending back into the haze on the other side, north of the San Fernando Valley. Across the busy and complex airspace surrounding Los Angeles we flew over Los Angeles International itself, over the Palos Verde Peninsula, and then out to sea.

Linda: Mike has landed at the “Airport in the Sky” many times before, often while working as a flight instructor in Long Beach. Perched atop a 1,600-foot mountain with the terrain dropping away on all sides, this runway offers an interesting visual experience. We flew over the island’s isthmus, a narrow strip of land with a natural harbor on each side that separates the northern part of the island from the larger southern part where the runway crowns the rock. Turning south, we entered the traffic pattern and set up for landing. I had been warned that the runway will look a lot shorter than it actually is on short final; because of its slope the western third of the runway isn’t visible. On approach the sight picture is surreal. It looks like you are about to land on a very short aircraft carrier. Because of the rocky edge it is common for pilots to approach the runway too high at first.

Mike: My first flight to Catalina was 35 years ago when I had maybe 75 hours in my logbook. I’d been briefed but the whole picture still took me by surprise then and I had made three landing attempts before I finally figured it all out. That first flight was in a Grumman-American Cheetah like ours. But the only time I had ever stayed on the island was as a camper. This time we were going to spend some time in a place I had long wanted to stay, the Zane Grey Pueblo Hotel. Next week we will tell you more about it. Until then, blue skies.

www.ElyAirLines.blogspot.com

July 17, 2012 The Great Northwest part 4

The Liberty Gazette

July 17, 2012

Ely Air Lines
By Mike Ely and Linda Street-Ely

Linda: Wings aloft over gently incoming tide, we soared southward, Pacific blue to our right, chiseled rock to our left. The lovely Bellingham weekend with my sister and her beau ended too soon, but as they returned to their routines and work we looked forward to vacationing over and along the west coast. Around Elliot Bay and downtown Seattle, beneath us a mountain valley dotted by lakes and streams emptying into the Columbia River, the mass of Mount St. Helens arose to the east, her cratered peak snuggled into puffy obscuration. Above the gorgeous shores of Washington and Oregon, around Portland we followed the Willamette River into Salem, stopping for a visit with Mike’s sister and mom, who are always excited to see their traveling brother/son. His pilot career has conditioned his mom to ask in every call, "Where are you now?"

Mike: Nourished by family time, an invitation to stay with friends along the coast of northern California beckoned. The small flying community at Fort Bragg endowed us with a most hospitable stay at the home of air racing pals, Red and Marilyn. Red retired from his highly successful automotive business. Marilyn volunteers for darn near everything, including historic preservation in neighboring Mendocino, which you might recognize as "Cabot Cove, Maine" from the popular television series Murder, She Wrote. According to the owners of the Victorian bed and breakfast inn portrayed as the home of lead character Jessica Fletcher (played by Angela Lansbury) nine of the 264 episodes of Murder aired from 1984 to 1996 were filmed in Mendocino. Sites throughout the town appeared in all episodes and many residents were cast as "extras". They say Ms. Lansbury commonly interacted with locals; and they’d seen Tom Bosley "sign his autograph on a Glad Bag box proudly presented by a shopper stepping out of the local grocery." Twelve years’ filming contributed to the local economy, including the 20 member Mendocino High School band, whose appearance in one segment earned enough to fund a field trip.

How could a west coast town pass as a charming northeastern village? Many of Mendocino’s early settlers were from the eastern seaboard and brought their architecture with them. Filming required less travel from Hollywood and it lent well to depicting the fictional town, changing only exterior signs on businesses. The sign at the entrance to the Hill House of Mendocino became "The Hill House of Cabot Cove" and remains today a symbol of the camaraderie of home folks and film crew. Over a dozen silent movies dating back to 1904, and many "talkies" have taken advantage of the quaint architecture and pristine coastline, among them East of Eden, The Russians are Coming, and The Summer of ’42.

Linda: Mike being from Hollywood, the west coast and film industry bring familiarity. For me, enjoyment was made possible by Monday morning’s post-race visit to Air Mods Northwest where Grumman guru Ken Blackman gave "The Elyminator" the once-over, showed us areas for speed improvement, and took our order for a new propeller, specially made. Unless we were going to do something about it there wasn’t much point in sulking over the seven one-hundredths of a mile an hour by which our new speed record was pushed to second place in the previous weekend’s race. Once the order was placed I relaxed, looking forward to vacation and another opportunity to reclaim record-holder status – maybe next weekend’s AirVenture Cup, the annual race to Oshkosh, Wisconsin.

www.ElyAirLines.blogspot.com

July 10, 2012 The Great Northwest part 3

The Liberty Gazette

July 10, 2012

Ely Air Lines
By Mike Ely and Linda Street-Ely

Mike: Seven one-hundredths of a mile an hour is a painfully small speed by which to be bested. Our pit crew and cheering squad (Linda’s sister Diane and her beau Willie) were tops, but the local Washingtonian whose airplane weighed 400 pounds less and with lots of speed modifications (some of which we have yet to acquire) flew a good race. While pals couldn’t console her, Linda channeled her frustration into "fix-it" mode. We knew the "Grumman Guru" responsible for giving that airplane its potential. Ken Blackmon lives just outside Seattle, only an hour’s flight from the race in Ephrata. Determination had a plan: speed doctor, Monday morning.

Linda: Re-running the race in my head, thinking of all the little things that add up: a turn not tight enough, speed lost letting the Elyminator climb, did we choose the best altitude for the winds… Mike put it behind him once he saw her – a Hollywood celebrity living in Ephrata. There was no stopping his gazing at her, filling the camera’s memory and his with face-to-face images. She was different from the others, the Consolidated PBY Catalinas, amphibious WWII patrol bombers which found peace time work dropping fire retardant on forest fires. She was a star in the movie "Always" and has retired in Ephrata, where it was filmed. Her co-star, an A-26, moved to Houston after the film, finding joy in training jet jockeys. Mike and I were in two different worlds.

Mike: I’d been looking forward to our west coast vacation which would take us border-to-border starting on the wet side of the Cascade Mountains and the north end of Puget Sound. Bellingham, Washington is home to Diane and Willie, who made the four-hour drive each way to support us at the race. Beginning turbulently the trip smoothed out with spectacular views over the Sound just north of Seattle near Whidbey Island Naval Air Station. My father’s cousin was once the Commandant there. Closing in on Bellingham, through the mist appeared the San Juan Islands which decorate Pacific Northwest bays. Beginning our decent we gently banked to the right around higher terrain where a large ridge juts out and drops nearly vertically into the waters of the Sound. In late afternoon rays breaking through the clouds the city and runway of Bellingham welcomed us.

Linda: Landing ahead of more rain we rolled the Elyminator into a hangar to begin a peaceful weekend with Diane and Willie. Grateful for the break from south Texas swelter, donning sweatshirts we strolled the quaint college town, past rocky waterfalls pushing through openings in forests of tall wintergreens, along rivers and creeks flowing into the bay, stopping to warm at local coffee shops. Along a shoreline park our excellent tour guides acquainted us with a life-size statue of a lovely woman emerging from a big rock in ballerina pose. "Grace" reaches for the sea with one arm, the other nearly touches her raised foot behind her. She balances perfectly on the other foot, bolted to her platform: a mound of waste tin from long-ago cannery operations, a creative and tasteful reminder of the potential of recycling. Amazing that it doesn’t look like tin at all, but just like a mossy rock.

Mike: Fly with us down the west coast next week. Until then, blue skies.

www.ElyAirLines.blogspot.com

July 3, 2012 The Great Northwest part 2

The Liberty Gazette

July 3, 2012

Ely Air Lines
By Mike Ely and Linda Street-Ely

Mike: Picking up where we left off last week, the post breakfast-with-my-brother flight from Boulder City, Nevada brought us to Twin Falls, Idaho for fuel. Linda appreciates the natural beauty of Twin Falls in early summer weather. She wouldn’t like it so much in the winter. But on this trip the serenity of bountiful farms slid along under our wings, though it was getting hot enough for an airplane’s climb performance to be a concern. Airplanes don’t perform equally in all conditions. When the field elevation and temperatures rise significantly, performance drops and climbing higher is noticeably affected. That’s why flying in deserts and mountainous areas requires adjustments in consideration of these factors.

Linda: Over a corner of the west side of the Rockies, northwest we flew toward Boise. Mike pointed out places from his past when he came to this part of the country regularly, such as Bogus Basin just northeast of Boise in the national forest there where he learned to snow ski. Picking out points on the ground can be more challenging in mountainous terrain than on flat lands but we had one great big landmark to follow most of the way, the Snake River. We meandered downstream from Twin Falls, following the Snake curves which form most of the Oregon-Idaho border. Through a deep canyon, earning the name Snake Grand Canyon, the river bursts out from the mountains onto the flat lands of eastern Washington near Walla Walla and joins an even bigger river, the Columbia, which winds through the Cascades near Portland, Oregon and empties into the Pacific Ocean. It was here that we experienced an unsettling interruption to our otherwise peaceful flight: a drone passing closely underneath us without warning and unknown to the Seattle Center air traffic controller providing us with information about other aircraft along our route. These things are life threatening and we do not support their use in public airspace.

Mike: Here and there along our route were areas temporarily restricted for flight where aerial slurry tankers battled forest fires, and where the pall of smoke hanging in the air made an otherwise clear weather day rather hazy.

Linda: Finally reaching Ephrata, Washington for the Great Northwest Air Race our group of piston-powered aircraft was outnumbered by gliders and their pilots who had come for the Great Northwest’s soaring competition. Aerobatic competitors were there too, practicing for a contest to be held after our race.

In the racing league we compete by class, and for this race our class had the most entries: 10. By all accounts we were favored to win but were upstaged by a local airplane weighing 400 pounds less than ours and with lots of speed modifications, some of which we have yet to do. The pilot flew a good race, staying on our "six o’clock" around the entire 170 mile course. Crossing the finish line 20 seconds ahead of him, we smashed our speed record that Mike set at Carbondale, Illinois just a week before by more than a mile an hour. But the other pilot was able to squeeze just enough more out of his airplane to break our new record by a mere .07 mph. That’s right, the difference between first place and first loser was just seven one-hundredths of a mile-an-hour.

Mike: Linda took the defeat pretty well, though determination set in. We’ll talk about that next week.

www.ElyAirLines.blogspot.com

June 26, 2012 The Great Northwest

The Liberty Gazette

June 26, 2012

Ely Air Lines
By Mike Ely and Linda Street-Ely

Mike: This year the Sport Air Racing League is sanctioning three races in the Pacific Northwest, giving us ample opportunities for scenic trips. The Great Northwest Air Race in Ephrata, Washington would bring us close enough to visit one of Linda’s sisters in Bellingham, and my mom and sister in Salem, Oregon. Rounding the southern end of the Rocky Mountains, circumnavigating thunderstorms and forest fires, we didn’t get as far the first day as we’d hoped due to a vacuum pump failure, which affects a couple of instruments. But good fortune was with us over Midland. There happens to be an aircraft mechanic there and he happened to have a vacuum pump. The two-hour delay was just short enough that we were able to get back in the sky before a big dark storm moved in. A hotel in Safford, Arizona would get our business that night, because we couldn’t quite make it to my brother’s house in Boulder City, Nevada. But we did stop in for a quick visit the next morning before continuing north through the Basin and Range region along the Nevada-Utah line, a tailwind scooting us by "Area 51" on the left and the legendary Bonneville Salt Flats on the right. Linda was amazed with the beauty of our next fuel stop, Twin Falls, Idaho, a farming community that from the air looks like a landscape artist’s dream.

Linda: Boulder City to Twin Falls was my leg to fly. Soon after departure our flight provided excellent views of Hoover Dam, Lake Mead, the Salt Flats, and Wheeler Peak as we flew by Great Basin National Park. But before this leg was over we encountered considerable turbulence in the mountains. So much so I had to throttle back because strong bumpiness can be bad for the airframe. Updrafts sent us climbing unintentionally, then downdrafts answered with equal force. We got the little Cheetah up to almost 13,000 feet and the new engine performed exceptionally well. Climbing over mountain ridges we darted left and right to avoid building thunderstorms, and when we could finally see flat land ahead I felt some relief from the work it had been keeping the airplane shiny-side-up. The small hill between us and the Twin Falls airport eclipsed the view of the runway, but we knew it was there, just beyond the hill. I couldn’t help but chuckle when a pilot a few miles ahead of us radioed the Twin Falls tower and explained he would circle back around because he’d flown over it without seeing it. Must have been that hill.

Mike likes mountains and desert; I like farmland, and this trip offers dazzling scenery of both. Twin Falls is home to that part of the Snake River where Evil Knievel did one of his stunts many years ago in a rocket-powered motorcycle. The river’s carvings into the earth have created a spectacular image. Twin Falls is indeed a pretty place – the kind that could make a writer conjure up an dramatic tale, or a painter sit for hours on the hills to try and capture it’s striking beauty.

Mike: Catch up with us here next week, and we’ll share more about the ups and downs of our journey west. Until then, blue skies.
www.ElyAirLines.blogspot.com

June 19, 2012 Rocket Man part 3

The Liberty Gazette

June 19, 2012

Ely Air Lines
By Mike Ely and Linda Street-Ely

Mike: The Commemorative Air Force took note of Mark Frederick, the highly skilled airplane guy we’ve been telling you about when once upon a time the piston rings in the B-25 "Devil Dog" were put in upside down, and nobody knew what was wrong with the airplane. Mark knew, and now as Chief Maintenance Officer and pilot of that B-25 he travels the country doing air shows, which allows him to meet lots of interesting people.

Mark: I was at Dyess Air Force Base for an air show. It was really hot. I was wiping off oil when over my shoulder I see a guy walking over with a cane coming straight at me. He reaches out and touches "Devil Dog" – like a tombstone. I came to learn that this man had been interred by the enemy in World War II at about the age of 10 or 12. His dad would send him out with white wash telling him to paint the rocks a certain way. He remembers looking up every time these blue B-25s flew over but didn’t learn until years later when one of the pilots who had flown them returned and explained that the rocks gave course, direction and distance to the targets. Aborigines found out where enemies were and helped the American pilots. Then he said to me, "These blue airplanes saved my life."

Linda: Nobody warned him about the stories he’d hear. While standing in front of the airplane at Oshkosh last year, a man came up and said, "I used to fly these things." When Mark asked, "How’d that go," the man shook his head, "It didn’t end well. We hit the water about a mile and a half from the beach." This was the co-pilot and he and the pilot survived but not the rest of the crew. He declined Mark’s offer of a ride; the memory was harsh.

Then there was the man who was shot down so many times over the water that the military had him come teach how to ditch B-25s. And the time in Ohio at the 100 year anniversary of the Wright Brothers, when an elderly man accompanied by his son approached "Devil Dog" with great purpose. A nearby fellow crewmember pulled out a camera and started recording: this guy had been on the island of Corsica in World War II. "He’d flown all the B-25s," says Mark, "and the one with the cannon in front was his favorite."

Mark has this kind of "sixth sense" about the WWII era, the airplanes and their pilots, which brings a unique depth to meeting the few veterans left. It’s more than gratitude. "They’d lost a lot of bombardiers," says Mark as he reflects on his visit with the old pilot in Ohio. "A World War II re-enactor reached out to him, helping him re-live some life-changing moments, and his son was there hearing it for the first time."

Don’t even try to get that lump out of your throat.

Mike: Of course Mark is taking the B-25 to Oshkosh next month for the world’s largest fly-in. But this year, on the way, he’s hoping to convince the crew, and other warbirds, to join in the AirVenture Cup race. "Yes," says Mark, "I’m trying to race a B-25. I don’t know if anyone has ever done that."

www.ElyAirLines.blogspot.com

June 12, 2012 Rocket Man part 2

The Liberty Gazette

June 12, 2012

Ely Air Lines
By Mike Ely and Linda Street-Ely

Mike: Hope you caught last week’s edition of Ely Air Lines. We’re on part two of a series on the Fredericks – Cheryl and Mark, a/k/a "Rocket Man."

Building his reputation as an expert airplane builder, Mark and his "Team Rocket" saw sales of the quick-build F1 Rocket soar to 175 to date. Mark doesn’t just build, fly, and teach in airplanes, he races them too. For years the world’s second largest fly-in, Sun n’ Fun, held each spring in Lakeland, Florida hosted an arrival race called the Sun 100. Mark, having finished his first airplane, an RV4, headed to the Sunshine State and entered the 1992 race.

Racing can be addictive. The Fredericks continued to participate in the annual event, racing Mark’s latest airplane at the time, until organizers ceased hosting the race. Somewhere in the middle of the life of the Sun 100 Mark hosted a race closer to home, the Texas 100, at the 1996 Georgetown Air Show. He designed the 100 mile three-turn-point race in the same format as the Sun 100, but designing it didn’t make him immune to navigational mistakes – he went off in the wrong direction in his own race! Mark laughs remembering, "The first four airplanes off the ground followed me because they figured I knew where I was going. The fifth guy said something on the radio and then I noticed things I expected to see on the ground were not where they were supposed to be." He got back on course, and the race became a hit.

Linda: By 2006 Team Rocket had been formed, kits had been sold and built and there were enough Rockets flying to host a gathering, so the race became known as the Rocket 100. That led to the birth of the Sport Air Racing League, now in its sixth season and enjoying incredible growth and acclaim nationwide.

Meanwhile, in 2003, Mark started testing his skill at the famed Reno Air Races. "It’s very different," he says of closed-course oval air racing. "I call it uncooperative formation flying; it’s the strangest thing to fly formation with guys who don’t want to fly formation. You still have to be predictable, but it’s incredibly exciting." The strategy is intriguing. Flying down "The Valley of Speed" they’re really moving fast and that’s where airplanes that are faster in a straight line will do well. Others, like Mark’s airplane, are faster in the turns, which are hard to find at high bank angles so they use objects on the ground to aim for the right spot: "There was a desk on the ground and some discussion about which side of the desk to fly on. It turned out we were supposed to fly right over it, then point toward a corner in the fence. The hawk on Pylon 7 seemed to enjoy watching us whiz by."

Fellow air racer Tom Martin says this sport is like golf: you’re racing against others, but the main thing you’re doing is improving your score each time. Mark loves the camaraderie and says, "I don’t have to be the fastest, but if an F1, one of my airplanes is, that’s just as good."

The Commemorative Air Force took note of this highly skilled airplane guy and asked him to join as Chief Maintenance Officer and pilot of the B-25, "Devil Dog." We’ll pick up there next week.

www.ElyAirLines.blogspot.com

June 5, 2012 Rocket Man part 1

The Liberty Gazette

June 5, 2012

Ely Air Lines
By Mike Ely and Linda Street-Ely

Linda: We spent some time recently at the world headquarters of Team Rocket, the company that developed the F-1 Rocket, a very fast two-seat experimental airplane. The F in F-1 stands for Frederick, as in Mark and Cheryl Frederick, who live on their air strip they’ve named Macho Grande.

Mark was born with airplane-shaped genes, his earliest memories are of sitting on his dad’s lap in a Champ in their hometown in Ohio. Two uncles flew in the service, one flying "the Hump" and the other in a C47, and by age six he knew nearly every airplane that existed. So while it might have been only natural Mark would grow up to be such a highly sought-after airplane builder, he says it was really never planned that way. As a young adult Mark moved to Texas taking a job in sales, but he’d always wanted to build things, so when the sales job didn’t work out he went to a cabinet shop to see if they needed any help. The boss said if he had a tape measure he could start in the morning. Unfortunately, his 10’ tape measure wasn’t quite what the boss had in mind, so with a 25’ tape came, "It’s coming out of your paycheck." Fortunately, though, Mark did well. Within six months he was running a crew and had a company truck.

Mike: The back injury that ended a budding cabinet-making career freed him up to go in to aviation full time. His father, a dentist, suggested he start a flight school – that’s when the Kitty Hill Flight School, in Leander opened. The school did well, but with tough economic times the flight training business slowed. He’d long admired a great-uncle, whom he’d only met once at an airshow in Marion, Ohio, who had built a biplane; and found inspiration in the stories he’d heard of women building airplanes during World War II. Surely if these people could do it, so could he. Working with Formica is a lot like working with aluminum, and he’d worked with miles of Formica in the cabinet business. So he began with a kit, to build a small experimental airplane called a Van’s RV-4. One day Rob Vajdos, one of the foremost experts on Stearmans, stopped in at Kitty Hill for fuel. Impressed with Mark’s work, that one chance meeting led to Rob asking Mark to help a friend build his RV-4, which led to another, and another. Somewhere in that chain Mark’s dedication to perfection and great rapport with customers got him noticed by world record holder Bruce Bohannon, who asked him to build an airplane that would break all records in the "time-to-climb" category. The deal was sponsored by Exxon from 1999-2006, and the "Flyin’ Tiger" built by Mark Frederick, is still a world record holder.

Mark was also building the Harmon Rocket for people who had bought kits from John Harmon. After building somewhere between 11-15 airplanes, making notes about the process and how to improve it, he realized customers needed an assembly manual. That idea sparked the formation of Team Rocket, now with 175 quick-build kits sold. In fact, when the manufacturing firm asked how many he wanted to build, Mark says he thought he was sticking his neck on the line to say 50. But 48 sold the first year as word continued to spread about Mark Frederick, a/k/a "Rocket Man," bringing air racing into his future. We’ll pick up there next week.
www.ElyAirLines.blogspot.com