February 26, 2019 DK

The Liberty Gazette

February 26, 2019

Ely Air Lines
By Mike Ely and Linda Street-Ely

Mike: Although David Daniel Kaminsky was the class clown, important things mattered. Since he quit school, he had to find another venue for his love of entertaining. He held a few misfit jobs on his way to the stage, like watching over a dentist’s office during the lunch hour. He was fired when his employer returned to find him using his drill on office woodwork.

But the real calling he felt ever since he was just a boy was to make people laugh, to calm their fears, to give them an escape to happiness, if only for a little while. He would change his Jewish name to Danny Kaye, but he refused to get the nose job the studio asked him to have.

The success of Danny Kaye is too long a list for this space. Besides being an Academy Award winner, he was a chef, a spokesman for UNICEF, a huge baseball fan, and an avid golfer. That is, until he learned to fly. From that moment on, golf didn’t rank. You can see what made the cut by the carvings on the bench at his grave: a baseball and bat, a piano, a flower pot, musical notes, a chef’s hat, and an airplane.

Bill Lear, maker of the famous Learjet, gave Danny the honorary title of Vice President of Learjet, but told him not to worry about any job responsibilities, like building jets or anything. Maybe Danny’s wife had warned him about what happened to the dentist’s office in Danny’s younger days. She knew. That dentist was her dad.

Danny had become a millionaire making people laugh. To calm a nervous, captive crowd after a typhoon hit the hotel he was staying at in Osaka, Japan, he went on stage with a flashlight lighting his face and sang every song he could recall.

He gave his best and expected the same out of others—especially his fellow pilots.

An old friend of mine was flying for TWA as a first officer on the Boeing 727. On a flight from San Francisco to Los Angeles, the plane was no sooner airborne, gear pulled up into the gear wells, when the captain picked up the mic, and proceeded to give a “tour” of San Francisco from the air. The captain didn’t put the plane on autopilot but was hand-flying it as he pointed out the sights. My old friend kept asking, “Do you want me to fly while you’re doing this?” No, the captain replied. After they arrived in Los Angeles, taxied in and parked at gate, as soon as parking brake on, the captain hopped out of his seat, opened the door and stood at the exit, expecting accolades from his passengers.

Instead, Danny Kaye walked up and chewed him out. “That was the most unprofessional thing I have ever heard! You weren’t even barely off the ground when you started talking. You should have been flying, not talking!”

Good job, Danny. Bloated egos make people do stupid things.

ElyAirLines.blogspot.com

February 19, 2019 TWA Hotel

The Liberty Gazette

February 19, 2019

Ely Air Lines
By Mike Ely and Linda Street-Ely

Mike: In the mid 1950’s, my Dad worked for Trans World Airlines as a ticket agent in Los Angeles. His favorite airplane was the Lockheed Constellation, and it was one of the airplanes TWA flew. Naturally, TWA was his favorite airline. Following deregulation in 1978, many airlines, TWA included, fell on bad times. All airlines cut services to be competitive, reducing the look-forward-to-travel experience to that of riding in a cattle car.

When American Airlines acquired bankrupt TWA’s assets in 2001, my dad had already passed, so, thankfully, he missed that heartache. Much of the airline’s unique classiness was lost as it became homogenized with American.

But one piece of its history was left to languish: the TWA Flight Center at New York’s JFK airport. This mid-century terminal building with its saucer-shaped wings, looked every bit like a space travel machine. Through expansive glass windows, patrons were offered panoramic views of the expansive ramp with jets coming from and going to far-off lands. It was the creation of Finnish American architect Eero Saarinen, whom also engineered the arch in St. Louis. Sadly, Mr. Saarinen never saw his futuristic design centerpiece completed, having passed away in 1961, the year before it opened.

For nearly forty years, the Flight Center was the most noticeable jewel in TWA’s crown. When people referred to the terminal at JFK, without a doubt they envisioned the TWA landmark with its sweeping stairways and full-length curving balcony. But the building was dumped when TWA was purchased.

When the flight center was abandoned, members of the New York Port Authority proposed building new terminal expansions around it. This raised plenty of objections, likening their plan to placing the building in a sarcophagus. Renowned architect Phillip Johnson was outspoken. Their plan, he said, would make the building invisible. “If you're going to strangle a building to death, you might as well tear it down.” Preservationists staved off the wrecking ball until 2005 when the National Park Service listed the iconic structure on the National Register of Historic Places. Some demolition did take place, but the main structure was saved.

Behind Jet Blue’s Terminal 5, the old TWA building now has a new lease on life, its two hundred thousand square feet is the foundation of a brand-new hotel.

The TWA Flight Center Hotel will open this year with over five hundred modern-but-retro-influenced rooms with amenities reminiscent of the 1960s international traveler style. The front desk and service personnel will wear uniforms that are classic TWA. Eight restaurants and lounges will grace the establishment with every fine detail, including TWA’s logo on menus and room card envelopes. Hotel guests will be welcomed by a restored 1958 Lockheed Super Constellation. Inside, they’ll find a lounge affectionately named, “The Connie.” The generous observation deck and spacious meeting center will evoke the luxury travel style created by TWA during the heyday of the Golden Age of Flying. My dad would have loved it.

ElyAirLines.blogspot.com

February 12, 2019 White Noise

The Liberty Gazette

February 12, 2019

Ely Air Lines
By Mike Ely and Linda Street-Ely

Mike: Forty-five years of flying, sitting only a few feet from thundering engines and propellers, or in noisy jet cockpits where the air blasted by, has left me with a buzzing in my ears that sounds like cicadas. I have tinnitus. I’m not deaf; it’s a low-volume hum in the background. Soaring soothes my tinnitus. Quiet flight in sailplanes is not silent, as often believed. There is a soft airflow whooshing by the canopy creating a static-like resonance. It masks the little critters chirping in my ears and gives me relief.

The whoosh is “white noise.” The full scientific definition of white noise won’t fit here—the length and vocabulary involved remind me of the Youtube video of the guy in the lab coat comically hawking the fictitious “Turbo Encabulator.” He’s trying to sell it to the government, touting its “swerthing bearings” and “use in the manufacture of novatrunions.” Sounds like mumbo-jumbo, just like reading about white noise. My eyes glaze over as I try to understand harmonics. But simply put, white noise is like a radio tuned to an unused frequency. And, it is helpful in treating what I live with—like therapy—it’s relaxing, as it quiets the ringing.

Because of its effectiveness on tinnitus, there are many sleep aids that produce white noise. By the way, if you think your house is bugged—possibly by that flat-screen TV—you can purchase a white noise privacy enhancer or a smart phone app that sings white noise.

Linda: Speaking of smart phones, wasn’t life a lot quieter without them? Companies are sometimes forced to have their employees leave them outside of meetings to minimize interruptions, so everyone can focus. One popular gas station/convenience store upholds the employee policy to leave their cell phones in their cars. Employees are there to work, not chat. We were recently in a meeting when one person got a phone call and kept the phone on speaker while carrying on a conversation, interrupting the presentation.

How many people want to listen to a stranger’s phone conversation? Consider that conversation inside an airliner passenger cabin. Once the aircraft door is closed, they should have that thing on airplane mode, so it won’t interfere with the airplane’s electronics.

Many older airplanes lack modern shielding to prevent electron interruptions. That technology wasn’t around twenty years ago. Today’s cell phone conversations can intrude on pilot operations. As airplanes climb, getting further from cell towers, the phone works harder trying to link to the network. The greater power output forces voices to radiate through the shielding. The conversation can pierce into the pilots’ headphones. This interference may happen at a most inopportune time, like when receiving important instructions from air traffic control. The best way to prevent this is to put the phone on airplane mode or turn it off entirely.

Mike: That’s good advice that helps pilots. Meanwhile, I’ll keep soaring. The whooshing white noise helps keep the cicadas treed for a while.

ElyAirLines.blogspot.com

February 5, 2019 Flight Computers and Pigeons

The Liberty Gazette

February 5, 2019

Ely Air Lines
By Mike Ely and Linda Street-Ely

Linda: When we were discussing what to share with you this week, I thought about the history of the E6B. It was the first flight computer. Not a Mac or PC. More like a slide rule. In fact, that’s where Philip Dalton got the idea for it. Dalton’s first E6B was a circular slide rule that provided the means for calculating true airspeed and altitude. The items necessary for those computations are a clock, a compass and an altimeter. You need to know the temperature, too, because that affects air density, which affects speed and altitude.

A later model of Dalton’s gizmo included a wind arc slide. This was printed on an endless cloth belt which moved inside a square box by turning a knob. Fortunately, this is a collector’s item and not the version of E6B used today.

The Germans improved on the gadget with what looks more like today’s E6B, a dial and a slide rule together. Line up the numbers right to figure direction, time, distance, speed, altitude, fuel burn, and more.

To be honest, what prompted me to tell you about the E6B was something that seems to be turning into a game (and by way of this article, I’m putting the other party on notice). At last months’ Chamber luncheon, Bruce Campbell pulled me aside and said he had something to show me that no one else in the room would understand. He reached in his pocket and pulled out a mini-E6B keychain. I gasped, because that’s what a pilot does when presented with an E6B keychain. “Where did you get that?!”

It was his uncle’s and it is now a prize possession of Bruce’s. I was impressed. I went on eBay. You can buy them today, new ones, but there’s nothing like the historical family heirloom that Bruce has.

Then we thought an E6B keychain might be difficult to explain, so I did an internet search for a different topic. I entered the word, “flying.” Top result was Flying Magazine. But way down at the bottom was an entry that got my curiosity: “NY Flying Flights.”

Now if you’re Stuart Marcus, or an ornithologist, you probably already know this is a bird. And maybe you know the story behind it. But we didn’t. It has nothing to do with aviation, really, other than perhaps the story of Icarus or the fact that man builds airplanes so he can fly like a bird.

The fad started in the late nineteenth century. People in New York and New Jersey captured these pigeons called Tumblers (they call them “Flights”) and raised them on rooftops. They fly in flocks of a few hundred. Flight flyers have a game, the object of which is to lure and capture one from another gamer’s flock. Flights love being with their kind, so if one strays, it easily attaches to another flock. Sometimes the game became violent, turning into “pigeon wars.”

Conclusion: the E6B was the better choice for this week.

ElyAirLines.blogspot.com

January 29, 2019 Flying Dutch

The Liberty Gazette

January 29, 2019

Ely Air Lines
By Mike Ely and Linda Street-Ely

Linda: Oh, the complexity, the plurality, the many faces of the moniker, "the flying Dutchman." Of course, it may have all started with that myth about the ghost ship, the one nineteenth century composer Richard Wagner wrote about in his opera of the same name. While I generally love Wagner’s music, that opera fell short of my expectations for entertainment. Mike, however, liked it a little better than I did.

The opera is based on the legend of a ghost ship that can never make port and is doomed to sail the oceans forever. The myth probably originated from the 17th-century golden age of the Dutch East India Company.

But wait, there’s more.

Soccer star Robin van Persie plays forward for the Feyenoord team in The Netherlands. He will probably retire this year, going out as possibly the greatest striker of his generation. When you watch him go for a header, he really does look like he’s flying. It’s low-level, of course – even lower than crop dusters – but he sticks his arms out to the sides and sails across the air before skidding back down across the grass. He earned the nickname "the flying Dutchman" doing this.

When van Persie was just a babe in grade school, auto racing champion Arie Luyendyck drove his race car so fast at Indy that everyone said he was the flying Dutchman. He won the 500-mile race twice.

And then there’s the seafood restaurant on the Kemah Boardwalk. And the liquor store in Nassau, The Bahamas. The owners of the former like to use the tagline, "It’s not just a story, it’s a local legend," playing on the famous ghost story. Owners of the latter were fortunate enough to snag the coveted URL, "flyingdutchman.com." It’s hard to get a domain name like that these days.

For what it’s worth, not one of the above examples has ever actually flown. Van Persie probably came the closest.

However, ladies and gentlemen, it’s girls to the rescue. When nothing makes sense, when you cannot find any so-called flying Dutchman who actually flies, we chicks can sort out the mess once and for all.

Her name is Michelle Gooris, and she is "Dutch Pilot Girl." This is the name she chose when she was between jobs and started a YouTube channel. She uploaded a simple video of a solo flight and her channel became a big hit. Since she was reaching so many people, receiving thousands of emails, she decided to use the opportunity to help others reach their dreams of becoming a pilot.

She had learned the keys to achieving goals: responsibility, motivation and perseverance and felt she had something more to say, so she wrote a book titled, "Become an airline pilot." She believes she has become a stronger person because of setbacks in her career, because she’s not one to fade away in a headwind. You can buy her ebook on dutchpilotgirl.com.

Finally, a real flying Dutch.

ElyAirLines.blogspot.com

January 22, 2019 In It For The Long Haul

The Liberty Gazette

January 22, 2019

Ely Air Lines
By Mike Ely and Linda Street-Ely

Mike: Lately, we have made some pretty long trips. Iceland, Southeast Asia, the Balkan states of former Yugoslavia on the east side of the Adriatic. And we just returned from a journey to Germany, Austria, Switzerland and Liechtenstein. The method Linda uses to find tickets at a reasonable price has served us well. Through our travels, we have discovered a few things.

We get up and move about the cabin. We stretch. We lift and lower on our tip-toes. We keep the blood flowing. On long hauls, the flight attendants generally finish up their service duties a couple hours after take-off. That leaves a whole lot of time to get up from our seats and take advantage of open space. Some people do push-ups or full yoga routines in the areas between lavatory and galley or where ever there’s room. Most everyone else sleeps while we exercise to avoid deep vein thrombosis.

Here’s another thing: We wonder why nobody wants to look outside. Day or night, nearly all the shades are closed. We cannot understand this strange phenomenon. Part of the enjoyment of flying is the unique views. On forays to far-off lands, the departures from here are usually during daylight. Flying into the night affords unprecedented views of the heavens, the Aurora Borealis over the poles, and lights the shapes of cities far below. Why not compare the map of where you are with a visual sighting of something on the ground and learn a bit about the land?

Regarding food, some airlines, no matter how much notice you give them, will never get your special diet request right. Carry extra food just in case. In our experience, Asia-based airlines have an incredible level of service and get it right every time. Our longest flight to date was on Eva Air from Bush Intercontinental to Taipei’s “Hello Kitty” airport lasting nearly sixteen and a half hours. Even with a full aircraft, the crew treated us exceptionally well. They not only got our vegan meals right, they had vegan snacks too.

But with the globetrotting capabilities of today’s airliners, it might be best to break things up. Iceland Air offers several days’ stop-over in Iceland on jaunts to Europe at no additional cost. For Far East excursions, Anchorage is a good mid-trip pause. If you have an early morning departure, places such as the Hilton Hotel inside Munich’s terminal make life easier. Staying the night before allowed us to saunter down to the boarding gate without dealing with traffic in a foreign country or dropping off the rental car.

And for clearing customs, there is mobilepassport, the smartphone app that has allowed us to stand in a short, twenty-person-deep line instead of with the hundreds stuck in the one that snakes left and right.

As we travel, we learn more. Then we take that and use it on the next junket to feed our inner gypsy, because we’re in it for the long haul.

ElyAirLines.blogspot.com

January 15, 2019 Herb Kelleher

The Liberty Gazette

January 15, 2019

Ely Air Lines
By Mike Ely and Linda Street-Ely

Mike: The skies mourned, but downtown Dallas high rises lighted them in colors of Luv last week, paying respect to Southwest Airlines founder, Herb Kelleher. Herb passed away on January 3, leaving a legacy and a ton of friends.

Our own local friend, Kathleen Burnham, worked for Herb for many years. She shared her unfiltered thoughts. “Really don’t even know where to start. My heart is broken over the loss of our fearless leader and the BEST boss a person could ever dream of having. I am beyond blessed that I was hired at SWA in 1979 when SWA was still small and everyone knew everyone. Herb would board an airplane and knew everyone’s name and it always made our day to have him on our flight. Herb iced cups, passed out peanuts and visited with all of our passengers making their day as well. I never once saw Herb without getting a huge hug and a big kiss on the cheek! You will be so missed Herb, loved forever and always be my hero! May God rest your precious soul. You may be gone but you will NEVER be forgotten!”

Herb was unique, and you’ll hear the sense of loss from his large contingent of friends. He brought a refreshing twist to “CEO,” and the tributes to this “brilliant maverick” are still flowing in.

Linda: I remember standing in the jetway with Herb and many others as we waited for Captain Alan Crawford and his family to walk off the plane after Alan’s retirement flight. The jetway was jam-packed, and there was Herb in the midst of it all, celebrating with everyone, ready as ever to encourage and cheer others on.

Maybe his secret was that he didn’t seek the spotlight, but that he sought to be the spotlight for others. One thing’s for sure: he lived his life fully, and it was in his nature to be a people-magnet. He didn’t even have to try. And that was reflected in the fun atmosphere on Southwest Airlines flights.

As one employee put it, “Where else could you wear shorts to work, dress up at Halloween, tell jokes and sing on the PA system?” She’s right. The first time I heard a joke from a flight attendant aboard a Southwest Airlines flight, I thought, how refreshing – a sense of humor!

He certainly blazed a new trail and did things like no one else. He modeled the role of a CEO as a human being, one who didn’t act like he underwent transformation at “CEO school,” where they tend to emerge having learned how to alienate themselves from their minions. Kathleen explained it well. “I don’t believe a Texas company has a founder as compassionate, loving and selfless as Herb Kelleher! The love you give, is the love you keep!”

Here’s to Herbert David Kelleher, who said, “It is my practice to try to understand how valuable something is by trying to imagine myself without it.” He was a valuable man.

ElyAirLines.blogspot.com

January 8, 2019 Splashdown!

The Liberty Gazette

January 8, 2019

Ely Air Lines
By Mike Ely and Linda Street-Ely

Linda: At the end of 2017, I found myself facing a deadline. My employer offers a flying stipend we can use for flight training, but it’s a use-it-or-lose-it deal by the end of the year. I hadn’t used it, so we dashed up to Seattle for Thanksgiving week, hoping I could get a seaplane rating.

What was I thinking?! Seattle, in the late fall?

The ceiling wasn’t high, but it was high enough. The visibility was good enough. But the wind gusted, making waves too strong, beyond the limitations of smaller aircraft. No seaplane flying occurred that week, and I came back home and spent the money refreshing my tailwheel and aerobatic skills. First in a Super Decathlon, then in an Extra 300. Fun, of course, but I still didn’t have a seaplane rating.

Then came December 1, 2018 and I found myself in the same position, not having done any new training. This time, however, I wised up and chose Southern Seaplane in New Orleans, where the weather might be better than in Seattle.

I lucked out and started my training with Nate, a young man the older guys referred to as "the prodigy." I understood why right away. Great instructor. He followed all the rules of good, sound teaching.

The minimum requirements are two hours of training with the same instructor followed by a one-hour proficiency flight with a different instructor. I flew with Michael for the proficiency flight. Of course, you can take longer if needed, but I found the instruction to be of such high quality that I didn’t need more than the minimum required.

After three hours in the Cessna 172 on floats, I met with the FAA Designated Pilot Examiner, Lyle Panepinto. We sat down for the oral exam I had studied for, then went out to the plane for the check ride. I was required to show him I knew how to perform various types of taxiing in water, then off we flew, following a channel away from New Orleans, then over the Intercoastal Waterway for some splash-and-go’s.

Part of the test required that I prove I can land the floatplane in a specific spot, then under different conditions. The spot landing went well, so I went on to show Lyle my landings and take-offs in glassy water, rough water, confined space. Because the way water behaves has a significant effect on a float plane, each of these requires a different method to accomplish.

I returned to the base a happy new commercial seaplane pilot.

As we secured the airplane to the dock, Lyle informed me that those who fly in Alaska don’t consider pilots flying in the Gulf to be seaplane pilots. "You’re now officially a Louisiana Ditch Pilot," he affirmed. He didn’t even charge me extra for the pure enjoyment of listening to his thick Cajun accent.

I already miss landing on water. It’s a different skill, not necessarily harder, just loads of fun.

ElyAirLines.blogspot.com

January 1, 2019 Thoughts from Jan Oreck

The Liberty Gazette

January 1, 2019

Ely Air Lines
By Mike Ely and Linda Street-Ely

Linda: Trend-setting vacuum cleaner king, David Oreck, and his wife Jan were the subject of our stories the past couple of weeks. We’re sharing just a bit more on this aviation-loving couple, because Jan had more she wanted you to know.

For starters, she advises that, "If you make your local airport a destination, people will come. People of all ages look for things to do close to home – but especially older folks – where they feel welcome and included."

We and all others who have experienced the unique world of flying know this, that the health of an airport is directly tied to the health of a community. For instance, the Louisiana Regional airport hosts a "Second Saturday Fly-in" fish fry, and people from the area come, too.

And as Jan and others have pointed out, we need more young people in aviation. One thing that helps is when airports look and feel inviting. Barbed wire fences and signs that wreak of unwelcome don’t further the healthy goal. What if you were interested in a new adventure and were met with such a sight? So, take it from a remarkably self-made successful business man and the woman who has been at his side – airports are vital to a community’s well-being.

Jan was chatting with me from their Mississippi home on six hundred acres, with a one hundred-acre lake, where their hospitality is well known. David still has his fleet of airplanes, and he still goes to work every day in a building they own which used to be a federal reserve bank, built in 1923. David says it was built in honor of the year of his birth. That’s when Jan gives him "that look." Perhaps, it was forecasting his success.

She also shared this thought to ponder.

David had been in the military during World War II, serving as a navigator on B-29s. Many years later the Orecks received a call from a man named Mark who wanted to know more about his own father. He had learned his dad served with David, so he hoped for stories that would fill in the gaps about things he didn’t know. As Jan sat and listened, she considered the irony, the unknown, and all the twists and turns life takes. She heard David tell Mark of the dangers he faced navigating bombers in war.

There were many casualties aboard B-29s shot down. Survivors have wondered why them – when the odds are uncomfortably high, why did one guy make it home, and not another? "What if," as Jan has often contemplated, "their plane had gone down – the one David and Mark’s dad were on?"

The world would have been a different place. Thankfully, both survived the war so that today we have Oreck vacuums and we all enjoyed cheering for Olympic Gold Medalist swimmer Mark Spitz fifty years ago, because his dad and David made it through on a B-29.

One second can make a difference. So can one life. Here’s to a happy, prosperous 2019.

ElyAirLines.blogspot.com

December 25, 2018 Jan Oreck

The Liberty Gazette

December 25, 2018

Ely Air Lines
By Mike Ely and Linda Street-Ely

Pilot, veteran, entrepreneur, lecturer, and philanthropist David Oreck made an appearance in this space last week. Now you’ll meet his lovely pilot wife, Jan.

They met on a blind date forty-two years ago. David had a Cessna 421 and when Jan flew with him, she often asked questions. After they married, he brought home an airplane for her – a Super Decathlon. She was a bit overwhelmed at first.

"I appreciated the gift, I mean, what a surprise, an airplane! But I told David there was just one problem: I didn’t know how to fly. He immediately answered, ‘You’ll learn.’ Then I had that fleeting thought of self-doubt and I asked him, what if I can’t do it? What if I can’t fly this plane? When he said, ‘Then I will,’ that took all the pressure off me, and I was ready to give it a try."

Jan trained every day during the week out of Lakefront airport in New Orleans. When it was time to solo, her instructor, Al, hopped out of the plane and said, "Take it up, three times around, a full stop landing each time."

Many, if not most students don’t feel ready to solo when the instructor knows they can do it. Jan started to say, "Wait!" but it was no use. Al was out, portable aviation radio in hand, waving her on.

All her training had been done on Runway 18-36, which is oriented north-south, so when the tower controller sent her to Runway 9, the east runway, she had to do a mental reboot and figure out where to taxi.

"The first time around," she says, "I was nowhere near landing in first third of the runway. I heard Al’s voice in my head: ‘If you can’t land in the first third, go around.’ The second time, I landed."

Then the controller told her to land on a different runway, which she suspects was Al’s idea. "I handled it. But that took a lot of moxie," she laughed.

Jan loved the early challenges of learning flight planning, finding an airport, and flying. She earned her private pilot certificate within a few months.

"These days," she says, "I’ll go from our farm in Mississippi to lunch in Gulf Shores because I can. I’m happy putting around in my girl."

The Orecks have hosted fly-ins at their farm the first weekend of November to commemorate the founding of the women’s pilot organization, the Ninety-Nines. "We have a ‘Top Gun’ theme and everyone wears flight suits. We’ve turned it into our own version of ‘Rocky Horror Picture Show.’ We sing and have a wacky time."

But she’s quick to point out that flying is so much more than going somewhere. Many of her friends flew supplies into Houston and Beaumont after Harvey. After Katrina, Jan was able to take off from her grass runway to see if there was a way out for people who were trapped.

"Flying is very serious, but when we’re done, we jump out and shout ‘Wahoo!’"

ElyAirLines.blogspot.com