December 25, 2012 A gift

Liberty Gazette

December 25, 2012

Ely Air Lines
By Mike Ely and Linda Street-Ely

Linda: I had a long but important trip ahead of me. My first fuel stop would be Memphis, and I looked forward to lunch with a friend I hadn’t seen in nearly 30 years. Then on to Cincinnati to see some “Grands” (I later learned that I landed right behind singer Alan Jackson…oh, so that’s why there were groupies at the airport).

Myles, now 10, was born with Severe Combined Immune Deficiency, better known as “the boy in the bubble disease.” He has no functioning immune system, a disease so rare it took a year after his first illness at five months before getting a diagnosis. Two previous bone marrow transplants failed, and while preparing for the third try, cancer popped up in the way again. Lymphoma. Second time. But that’s treatable, and only postponed the transplant. Meanwhile, supportive head-shaving parties held by friends and family around the country ended up in a nice YouTube video, “Shaved Heads for Myles,” with “Stand by Me” sung by Indiana University’s a cappella group Straight No Chaser. And we sent thank-you cards and a Superman cape to our hero, the anonymous young man who donated his healthy bone marrow to save my grandson’s life.

Our family takes turns helping during these times by either staying with Myles in the hospital or with his two young siblings at home while my son-in-law is at work. I enjoy both options, but there’s something special about staying with Myles. Between treatment interruptions we do school work, bible study, build Legos and watch movies – lots of movies, like Red Tails, Spiderman, and The Avengers, which we saw over Thanksgiving. I think he picked Red Tails just for me.

I admire my daughter for the medical warrior she is for Myles, and the great mommy she is to all three. Changing doctors for the third transplant was a wise choice; Myles has been discharged from the hospital several months earlier than expected. While the first 100 days post-transplant are critical, he’s doing remarkably well – well enough to be in isolation at home rather than in-patient.

He was well enough even before discharge to get 4-hour passes. The day after Thanksgiving we went to Lunken Municipal Airport on a pass. Little Princess Caroline stayed behind with Mommy, and I took Myles and four-year-old Liam out to the airplane and strapped them in, explaining everything I was going to do so they’d understand what they were experiencing. Since we’d just watched Red Tails we imagined we would shoot down an enemy if we saw one in the sky. We did several touch-and-go’s, staying in the traffic pattern around the airport because Myles can’t really go anywhere yet. We looked for his doctor’s house in the neighborhoods below and saw the Little Miami and Ohio rivers flowing along side the airport. And I saw him smile. Not just from his lips, but from his whole being beamed this happiness, as those big eyes gazed out the window, taking in the great view from aloft.

It thrills my soul to have been with him when he felt well enough to go up; an indescribable gift for which I will always be grateful, and it gave him a unique story to tell when we returned to his hospital room that afternoon. One of the nurses asked, “How was your pass today?” Myles held his composure like a man and said, “Good. I went flying with Nanny.”

www.ElyAirLines.blogspot.com

December 18, 2012 Stand by for re-route

Liberty Gazette

December 18, 2012

Ely Air Lines
By Mike Ely and Linda Street-Ely

Mike: Years ago when a pilot ventured by the field where fourth-grader Charles Queen flew remote control airplanes and suggested a visit to the local airport, Charles discovered a $2 investment would get him a flight in a Piper TriPacer. By age 14 his journey into flight training began and good grades earned him a Civil Air Patrol Cadet scholarship.

Two incidents of engine failure didn’t discourage his love for flying. The first time, as a seven-hour student pilot he landed the plane safely after the engine stopped on takeoff when ice formed in the carburetor. Another incident occurred during aerobatics. Lacking a fuel system that kept positive pressure when the plane was upside-down, the engine quit due to fuel starvation but was quickly restarted once he rolled it back over to a normal flight attitude.

A degree in mechanical engineering got him a job designing jet engines for Pratt & Whitney and he earned two patents, one related to jet engines and the other, nuclear research.

And then he bought a Cessna 310, just like the one Sky King used to fly. He flew Angel Flights and took his pastors to church conferences and out of town funerals. That’s when he put “Isaiah 40:31” on the tail, which is what got our attention when we stopped for fuel in Knoxville, Tennessee. And that’s how we came upon Charles Queen.

Linda: Returning to Knoxville one evening from Philadelphia the beautiful October weather had turned messy and Charles would be flying “in the soup”. He’d filed his instrument flight plan, expecting air traffic control to clear him on his requested route. But the controller’s next words changed that: “Stand by for re-route.” He’d have to extensively re-plan and review his entire route as he headed into the thick clouds where he’d have no visibility and more than moderate turbulence. He touched down safely in Knoxville but the experience stuck with him.

Then the morning of May 8, 2003, Charlie’s alarm buzzed, as usual, but his left arm wouldn’t move to shut it off. Then he tried to get out of bed, but his left leg wouldn’t move. Mildred called 911, and during the 68 days in the hospital, doctors told her that her husband would never walk again.

The stroke ended his flying and the design work he was doing for research equipment for a nuclear fusion program. However, he has since walked to the top of Clingmans Dome in the Smokey Mountains – the highest point in Tennessee – and volunteers at the hospital twice a week working with stroke patients and the chaplain. It hurts to walk but he keeps going.

“I know God is in control of everything and allows things to happen for a reason,” Charlie says. “I don’t always know what the reason is, but I know I have to trust Him. I’ve had such a blessed life with my loving wife and three wonderful daughters and a great job that let me travel the world. I never questioned Him when things were going well, so why question Him when things changed?”

Charles Queen’s nine grandchildren will someday have their grandfather’s autobiography to help them appreciate what they have, and trust God in the hard times, even when it’s hard to understand, even when God says, “Stand by for re-route.”

www.ElyAirLines.blogspot.com

December 11, 2012 Catching up with Billy Werth

The Liberty Gazette

December 11, 2012

Ely Air Lines
By Mike Ely and Linda Street-Ely

Linda: A new poster depicts a Pitts S2C (biplane) just a few feet above a runway, inverted. You’re looking at the airplane from behind, as though it is flying past you, very close. The upside-down tail is within reach, a gloved hand almost touching it; a snapshot of an air show routine performed by the Werth brothers, Billy, a pilot, and David, a motorcycle stuntman and racer.

I caught up with Billy last week before he left for ICAS – the International Council of Air Shows annual convention in Las Vegas. Growing up in an aviation family and flying since 1988, Billy is a military pilot (Aircraft Commander on the air re-fueler KC-135R), a Chautauqua Airlines captain on the Embraer 145, and a modern-day barnstormer, dazzling air show crowds in his newly acquired Christen Eagle and giving rides and lessons in the Pitts through his company, Grayout Aerosports, of Indianapolis.

He’s often spotted practicing aerobatic maneuvers over my sister’s house, so it’s not unusual for me to get a text message from someone in the family, “Billy’s up practicing!”

We first met him at the fuel pump at the airport near her house several years ago. Back then Billy was very close to getting his ground level waiver, meaning the FAA would allow him to do aerobatics without limitations on how low he could go, a valuable commodity to an air show pilot.

Today, he’s a hot item. And while that’s certainly a testament to his skill and training, he also married a marketing guru with a background in broadcasting and event planning, who does a great job selling Billy as a product. Haley, who I remember as a toddler in pigtails growing up a couple doors down from us, is a burst of energy and an asset in the air show business.

The routine with brother David is a bit edgy to some airshow executives, so for now they’re performing a wing grab, rather than the depicted tail grab. “Some airshow executives think we didn’t think this through, that we pulled it out of a hat and tried it once – but that’s not it. We’ve taken all the possible safety steps. We’re in constant communication during the routine, weather has to be just right, and we practice, practice, practice. Nothing we do in a show is new to us; it’s planned out, choreographed, and practiced.”

The act opens with a game of chicken between airplane and motorcycle. Then the boys settle down to race. Then there’s “the grab”. “It’s the ‘High Five,’” Billy explains. “Brothers fight, compete, and make up. If you have a sibling you get that, and we relate to the audience on that level.”

Rides and lessons help support the costs of performing. Non-pilots can get a taste of aerobatics; for pilots, aerobatic lessons are important for keeping valuable skills current. Whether you’re flying a small Cessna or a Boeing 757, as Billy emphasizes, you can lose those skills. “One day that auto pilot might go out. When you’re looking around asking, ‘where are we going and why are we in this hand basket,’ you had better take a long hard look at that. You need good stick and rudder skills. Sometimes you have to turn off all that fancy equipment and fly the airplane.”

Have a look at their website, www.GrayoutAerosports.com. You’ll be impressed!

www.ElyAirLines.blogspot.com

December 4, 2012 Flying Clubs

The Liberty Gazette

December 4, 2012

Ely Air Lines
By Mike Ely and Linda Street-Ely

Mike: When I started flying I rented airplanes from a small local flight school. Like most kids my age, I couldn’t afford to buy an airplane. Even if I could have, with limited exposure to the field of aviation at that time I wouldn’t have known what would be the best machine for me. Renting offered an opportunity to learn to fly more within my budget and experiment with a few different airplanes. Scheduling was sometimes a challenge, and there were always checkout requirements – proving to an instructor you could fly a certain model airplane before you’d be allowed to rent it – which added to the cost.

Like most flight schools, the one I patronized relied on the airplanes they rented to be available for student training, so once I earned my private pilot certificate it was more difficult to use their airplanes for pleasure trips. Charging by the hour, most flight schools will establish a daily minimum if an airplane is taken for the whole day; it’s a means of bridging the gap of what they need in rental revenue and the desires of their licensed customers.

I learned to fly before I bought my first car so I guess you could say it was my passion for flight that forced my first auto purchase. My local airport had no flying club, so ground transportation became necessary. The motivation was always flight.

Air South Flying Club at Fullerton Municipal Airport had a wide range of airplanes and while not all flying clubs are for the same purpose, here members had access to all the airplanes owned and operated by the club at a discount price and without daily minimums. This included larger faster airplanes with six seats, and even twin engine airplanes. Even today it is nearly impossible to find an airplane with more than four seats for rent outside of a flying club.

Clubs come in all different sizes and are created for different purposes. They might have just one airplane or many. Some are commercial ventures, others a social center. I interspersed my advanced flight training with the club’s instructors with aerial adventures to Santa Catalina Island and snow ski trips to Idaho. Club events such as photo-flight contests and dinner fly-outs encouraged members’ mutual support.

In the 1970’s Beech Aircraft Corporation sponsored flying clubs across the country called Beech Aero Centers. They even had a custom designed modular club house. The idea was members could check out in a particular model airplane at one Aero Center and that check-out was good at any Aero Center, saving them any further check-out expense if they wanted to fly an airplane in another part of the country. That practice faded over time, but now it’s making a comeback.

Presently there are around 600 flying clubs in the United States. The Aircraft Owners and Pilots Association has set a goal to grow that to 2,000. With the return of universal check-outs making flying more affordable more people will be able to participate in this wonderful activity, and expand their horizons. We think a flying club could work well here in Liberty.

www.ElyAirLines.blogspot.com

November 27, 2012 Jerrie Mock

The Liberty Gazette

November 27, 2012

Ely Air Lines
By Mike Ely and Linda Street-Ely

Mike: On a spring day 48 years ago a red and white Cessna 180, a single-engine airplane, touched down in Columbus, Ohio completing a fairly long cross-country flight – 23,206 miles long to be exact. Exiting the aircraft before a cheering crowd of 3,000 the pilot, Geraldine "Jerrie" Fredritz Mock, a 38-year old housewife and mother of three stepped into history; now it seems an almost forgotten history. Quite a journey, the flight ended exactly where it began 29 days and 21 stopovers before.

Her story, in the back pages and nooks of history books, few people know: that she was the first woman to circumnavigate the globe solo. Many people think Amelia Earhart was the first to fly solo around the world but she only completed about 75 percent of the trip before she and her navigator Fred Noonan disappeared someplace over the Pacific Ocean.

Today organizations such as Earthrounders help pilots organize circumnavigation attempts, but this was in the days before Al Gore invented the Internet. Jerrie planned the entire adventure herself in the basement of her Ohio home. She flight planned using old world navigation charts given to her by a former Air Force pilot friend and her husband Russ supported her by securing sponsors and equipment donations.

Jerrie fell in love with flying the day she first rode in a Ford Tri-Motor at the age of 12. She dreamed of visiting far off places, yet it wasn't really her intent to be the first to make such a trip. Things just sort of came together and it sounded like a lot of fun.

While in the final phases of planning she learned that Joan Merriam Smith was planning to make a similar flight, only in a faster twin-engine Piper Apache. Smith wanted to be the first woman to round the globe solo and she was going to make a race of it. Jerrie moved her planned departure date up and she launched sooner than she felt she was ready.

Through the course of the “race” she faced dangers from ice over the North Atlantic to sand storms over the Sahara Desert. Her brakes’ mechanical problems weren’t the only concerns about the airplane; the long HF radio antenna necessary for communication over the Atlantic and Pacific oceans wasn’t entirely cooperative either. Navigating around the escalating conflict in Vietnam, she finally achieved her goal but the significance of her feat was drowned out by the war that sprung to the front pages of every newspaper in the U.S.

Named for her airplane, Three-Eight Charlie published in 1970 chronicles the adventures of Jerrie and her Cessna 180, but the book had a limited release so many people even in aviation circles don’t know about her.

Jerrie lives in Quincy, Florida, her beloved Charlie, also known as The Spirit of Columbus, hangs from the ceiling in the Smithsonian Museum in Chantilly, Virginia, in all its glory for all to see, encouraging others to dream about launching on their own adventures.

www.ElyAirLines.blogspot.com

November 20, 2012 Houston Airport System's Aviation Club

The Liberty Gazette

November 20, 2012

Ely Air Lines
By Mike Ely and Linda Street-Ely

Mike: NASA’s Johnson Space Center has made Houston a leader in the aviation and aerospace industries by supplying research and development, guiding the future of those industries. Among the many destructive decisions coming from Washington is cancellation of programs that would keep the United States strongly at the forefront of space exploration and aviation. But with the dispersal and forced retirement of key employees, the City of Houston is stepping forward with plans to grow the next generation of industry leaders and workers. 

Houston Airport Systems (HAS) has created the Aviation Club, initially at two Houston area high schools, to provide focus and support for students who’ve shown a desire to enter this field. The club will engage students in science, technology, engineering, and math, which is critical if America is to maintain its leadership in space exploration. Currently offered at Sterling High School and Carnegie Vanguard High School, plans are in the works to expand the program across the Houston ISD by next year. Sterling already has an aviation magnet program so it makes sense that this should be one of the “starter” schools.

Houston continues to lead the nation in the creation of jobs during a difficult economy mostly due to more entrepreneurial business-friendly laws and tax structure. This new education program focuses on one of the city’s strongest sectors, with the ultimate goal to build a workforce to accept the challenges for tomorrow’s aviation and aerospace jobs. While there are certainly some lower paying non-technical jobs in the industry, the city of Houston realizes that the skilled technical jobs the aerospace and aviation industry provides are the ones that really help the city’s economic structure.

Mario Diaz dreamed of aviation when he was growing up. Today Mario is the Director of the Houston Airport System. He feels early exposure to the industry was critical for his career path. As a teenager, he became fascinated with aviation, became a pilot and later an executive for airports in three major U.S. cities. He has long wanted to create an initiative that would launch the passion for flying in the next generation of aviators and space pioneers. Looks like Houston is the lucky winner.

Bob Mitchell is the president of the Bay Area Houston Economic Partnership. Understanding that students have many career choices but also face many distractions, Mitchell believes the new Aviation Club will introduce them to some of the most exciting career opportunities available now and in the future.

In monthly two-hour sessions students will learn from mentors and through enrichment activities. The criteria for participation in the club include being a student from Sterling High School or Carnegie Vanguard High School campuses in grades 9-12 (later to be expanded to all Houston ISD schools), be in good standing with a minimum GPA of 2.5, maintain satisfactory attendance at meetings throughout the year and have a desire to exploring post-secondary educational and career opportunities in aerospace or aviation.

The program is designed to encourage growth in all these technical fields as well as encourage a solid work ethic, and discover a passion that makes them look forward to each work day.

                                                   www.ElyAirLines.Blogspot.com

November 13, 2012 Airline Airports

The Liberty Gazette

November 13, 2012

Ely Air Lines
By Mike Ely and Linda Street-Ely

Linda: Our space here is usually devoted to the good and wonderful stories that come from the world of general aviation. There’s good reason for that – we have a very important general aviation airport here in Liberty that is a vital part of the National Airspace System. Supporting our airport and its critical role as part of our nation’s network of landing facilities, as well as promoting its huge potential as an economic generator for our area is a way for us to contribute to our community. We don’t often reflect on airports served by commercial airliners, but found a couple of current studies on airline passengers sort of interesting.

One study is being undertaken to measure the stress level of passengers as they enter airports that serve airlines, and how that stress affects them while at the airport. All airports, not just big commercial ones, compete for business and it behooves them to be the best they can be. A bad reputation can easily lead to loss of tourism, convention and business dollars, so they actually study this stuff. In fact, I’ve seen charts and graphs produced by Skyscanner, showing the minor ebbs and major flows of stress levels from the point of entry to a major commercial airport, through check-in, to the purposed illusion called “security” that violates our rights (that’s my description, not Skyscanner’s), and finally locating the gate. Once the passenger has made it successfully through all these obstacles stress levels begin to finally drop a bit. Once beyond the unconstitutional, humiliating and pointless groping travelers become captive to grossly over-priced goods and services (again, that’s my frank and honest description), just as the stress levels begin to ebb. And do you know what airport planners call this time? Happy hour. You, the traveler become somewhat “happier” and the airport becomes – you guessed it, much happier, because it is in this time you will contribute to their non-aeronautical revenue. An Airports Council International survey showed non-aeronautical revenues (parking, magazine and coffee sales, etc.) accounted for 46.5 percent of airports' income worldwide in 2010, so you can see how important happy hour is.

Another question opened up in our discussion forum on whether or not to inform airline passengers of wait times through checkpoints. Now these discussions take place in an international arena, and the American reaction to such theory favors strongly the preference for truth, no matter whether that truth is good or bad news – just tell us the truth, whether the wait in this line is three minutes or thirty minutes. I found it interesting that airport management from other countries were less interested in telling the truth than they were in controlling public behavior. Alas, our own government has clearly moved in that direction as well. But we the People have not.

When it comes to that control mechanism veiled as “security”, the feds are working on “risk-based security” and the potential of identity management. They say it’s so they can streamline the process and make it more efficient and less stressful.

It used to be that the benefit of going by air was the convenience and speed realized over that of travel by train or car. Unless and until this farce called TSA is abolished, you might say you’re better off driving, but I’d say go get your pilot license and fly yourself.

www.ElyAirLines.blogspot.com

October 30, 2012 Redbird Skyport

The Liberty Gazette

October 30, 2012

Ely Air Lines
By Mike Ely and Linda Street-Ely

Mike: Returning from a business meeting we stopped in San Marcos, where the city has invested enthusiastically in their airport with innovative ideas. Construction of a new air traffic control tower and hiring an aviation management company to manage the airport are just two major changes to San Marcos in the past couple of years. Another is the impressive Redbird Skyport, an FBO (“Fixed Base Operator”) offering flight training and much more.

We were greeted at the airplane with a golf cart, taken directly to the door that opened as wide as the smiles of Skyport team members. The welcome was genuine, and when we said we had not been to San Marcos since before their new facility was built last year, our greeter promptly offered a personal tour of the 12,000-square foot building. Much of that space is the main hangar, but there’s also a cafe, gift shop, conference room, pilot lounge, showers, flight planning room and several computers, in addition to many Redbird simulators.

Redbird began building lower cost full-motion simulators in 2006 when Jerry Gregiore determined he could make them affordable to primary flight training schools. As it turns out, he’s revolutionizing the industry.

A pilot and retired information technology executive, Jerry served as Vice President and Chief Information Officer for Pepsi and for Dell. It was he who implemented “G2” strategy that brought Dell great success. Dell had bought in to a software vendor’s vision that building the computer around inflexible software would let them build more, and quantity meant profits. But that didn’t fit the company that advertised custom-built computers. A lot of money had been spent when Michael Dell wooed Jerry from PepsiCo. to “make it work.” Instead, Jerry swung the ax because it didn’t make sense to “layer problems around a broken core.” Given corporate politics, that took a lot of guts.

He also recognizes the importance of customer service and the value of employees, the "back room folks who are keeping the operation running". He believes too many employers misunderstand the loss a company suffers when one of these back room people leaves, saying, "there is no balance sheet for human capital loss". That attitude translates into better service, which helps craft brand loyalty.

Indusry praise. Aero News Network called Redbird’s strategy “the leading edge of a revolution of innovation.” Aviation insurer, Avemco, suggested Redbird has the formula for transforming today’s broken methods of flight training. Probably the most well recognized and highly respected flight trainers in the history of aviation, John and Martha King, defined the Redbird Skyport as the line of demarcation of the before and after, and Mark Paolucci, Vice President of Sales for Cessna Aircraft, identified Redbird as the future of aviation. Tom Haines, Editor in Chief of AOPA Magazine, congratulated all of San Marcos because the city stopped talking and started doing the right thing. San Marcos mayor Daniel Guerrerro is proud of what of what’s happening in his town, “seeing history being made right here.”

Linda: Our trip had taken us to another town not far from San Marcos. In that town, their airport is dying a slow and painful death because horribly narcissistic politicians are running it into the ground by killing off the entrepreneurial businesses that once made it a success. Ironically, Redbird had originally planned to build their facility at that airport, but when they encountered the backwards “good-ol-boy” politics so prevalent in many small towns, they walked away, and took their innovation, their success, and their enthusiastic people with them.

www.ElyAirLines.blogspot.com

October 23, 2012 Mentors

The Liberty Gazette

October 23, 2012

Ely Air Lines
By Mike Ely and Linda Street-Ely

Linda: Whew! Were you glued to a TV or computer screen on Sunday, October 14, watching Felix Baumgartner’s record-breaking jump? We were on our way to a birthday party and pulled off the freeway to watch and listen on our iPhones. Exciting, intense, and heartwarming. Not just heartwarming seeing Felix’s family, but the history and the bond between Baumgartner and Captain Joe Kittinger, who read the checklist off to Felix and coached him all the way, the man whose records Felix would break. Imagine being on the verge of attempting something only one other person has ever done, and that one person is with you through it all. Captain Joe’s amazingly reassuring voice certainly had to be a comfort, even to “Fearless Felix.”

I’m reminded of my first flight instructor, Anthony. Even though I didn’t have any fear about learning to fly, Anthony was still a comforting presence when I would become frustrated along the learning curve. There was so much to absorb, and it was all new to me. I am cursed with a trait fairly common to females, being directionally challenged. Most women navigate associating with landmarks, while the majority of men seem to have been born with a compass inside. Mike is like that. I could spin him around and point him any direction and he’d know which way he was facing and which way we need to go. Don’t bother spinning me around; it only takes one turn and I’m fumbling to find my way. I always tell him that’s what makes women better at instrument flying, because we have all these great inputs to feed us information and we don’t have to rely as much on navigational instinct. I don’t know whether any studies have been done to back that up, but it makes sense to me. With instruments giving read-outs that tell you exactly where you are and which way you’re headed the chance of getting “turned around” certainly must be significantly reduced.

Good ol’ Anthony. When the concept of an airport traffic pattern was totally foreign to me, he took me out to the parking lot of the flight school, placed markers in strategic places to represent a couple of different airports, say, Galveston and LaPorte. Late summer nights when everyone else was long gone there we’d be, Anthony and me, arms outstretched like airplane wings, flying the parking lot at Ellington Field. The asphalt below became southeast Houston as he’d give me compass headings, making me turn this way and that, then instruct me to “head toward LaPorte and enter the traffic pattern for Runway 22.” There’s a prescribed pattern for aircraft to fly and a proper way to enter the traffic pattern at airports without a control tower. That way everyone knows what to expect from each other when flying to an airport with no air traffic controller giving direction.

I finally got the hang of it thanks to Anthony, a dedicated instructor. There are some people in our lives who make a huge impact and leave us better than they found us. They’re not the people whose demise is the abyss of their self-adoration, but the ones who thoughtfully, generously, compassionately, leave traces of themselves in us, and when we examine our strength, we often find those traces to be colossal, even heroic.

www.ElyAirLines.blogspot.com

October 16, 2012 The Highest Step in the World

The Liberty Gazette

October 16, 2012

Ely Air Lines
By Mike Ely and Linda Street-Ely

Mike: Imagine this moment in time when a man named Joe (who is not your ordinary Joe), sporting the latest “moon suit”, so high up in the atmosphere he can see the curvature of the earth, steps out of the gondola of a balloon, leaving behind the placard claiming, “This is the Highest Step in the World,” and begins falling, tumbling, down, down, down.

Linda: He’s not even your ordinary skydiver; he’s Captain Joseph Kittinger of the USAF, and in that moment, August 16, 1960, he stepped out, then plunged a long way down into history. Why, you ask? Well, maybe he was like me when I was little. The house where we lived had this beautiful curving brick wall that came around the front porch of the house like a hug. That lovely wall that always welcomed me home, with its stately lampposts guiding my way through the opening, its bricks softened by shrubbery Dad maintained himself, seemed so high above the world when I was, say three, or five. I’d climb up on it, stand at one corner, higher than the shrubs, surely almost higher than the house itself, and convince myself each time that I could do it, that I could jump over those huge shrubs – and survive it. Even when I didn’t land on my feet the impact brought a sense of victory, of meeting the challenge head-on and winning over fear, of owning that jump. I wonder if Captain Kittinger felt like that after his third and highest jump, when he stepped forward 102,800’ (about 19 ½ miles) above the earth, risking his life for the development of space suits and high altitude escape equipment the astronauts would need to venture into space.

Mike: His free fall, a bit faster than Linda’s hurdle over the bushes, accelerated to an unprecedented 625.2 miles per hour at the 90,000’ mark (just under the sound barrier), decelerating as he fell into thicker air. Four and a half minutes after stepping from the platform of Excelsior III, and down to 18,000’ above earth, the main parachute deployed slowing Joe for his landing on New Mexico’s desert floor. It lasted 13 minutes and 45 seconds, and then Joe went on to fly combat aircraft in Vietnam, staying for awhile in a North Vietnamese prisoner of war camp.

84-year-old Kittinger has held the record for the highest, fastest and longest skydive in history for 52 years, but he has worked hard to change that. His would be the only voice 43-year-old Felix Baumgartner would hear, coaching him as he jumped from 120,000 feet – 23 miles above the earth. Just like his coach, Felix is testing equipment for the next generation of space suits as well as survival mechanisms that provide a back-up for astronauts in the event they have to escape their spacecraft at high altitude and re-enter earth’s atmosphere. Joe says he is happy to see someone finally break his record.

Linda: Ah, to own the title, be the victor, and savor the sweet success of meeting the challenge head-on. I bet he jumped off brick walls when he was a kid, too.

www.ElyAirLines.blogspot.com