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Dear Family, Friends, and Followers,

We have moved our weekly column to Substack. All of our articles have been imported there, and you can search for older articles just like you could here. It's still free and these are still the same articles published in the newspaper, the Liberty Gazette. 

https://elyairlines.substack.com/

You've been reading us here, and we hope to see you over there!

January 16, 2024 All-in Allender

The Liberty Gazette

January 16, 2024

Ely Air Lines

By Mike Ely and Linda Street-Ely

Faith, a supportive family, access to education and training, and an engulfing passion are important contributors to the journey into an aviation career. Just ask 18-year-old Jed Allender. The oldest of four children, all of them home-schooled, Jed is grateful for God’s providence and guidance as he learns more about the world of flight. 

He showed an interest in airplanes at an early age, being that kid who always ran outside with binoculars when he heard an airplane; the one in the family who would identify an airplane by engine sound, the one they all look to when they have questions about airplanes. He’s the proverbial “kid at the airport fence,” except that he’s not just standing at the fence. 

Jed is enrolled in the Aeronautical Center of Technology (ACT) in Greenwood, Indiana, which offers dual-credit STEM-based courses for high school juniors and seniors and aviation themed after-school clubs for ages 12 and up. ACT’s multi-disciplinary aviation program has inspired him to pursue a career in the aviation industry as soon as he can decide which one. Two subjects that have really caught his attention are aircraft design – specifically aerodynamics – and flying. But they cover so much, it must be hard to make a decision. He’s getting ground school (both manned and unmanned flight), learning aircraft systems, rocketry, meteorology, aviation business, operations and management, safety, air traffic control, and 3-D printing. He’s also part of a small group of students building an airplane, a Van’s RV-12. He’s riveted spars and wing ribs, assembled rudder, tail cone, and control surfaces.

Jed joined the Civil Air Patrol a few years ago and is now a Second Lieutenant and leader of Bravo Flight, the newest cadets in the squadron. He’s the recipient of the Civil Air Patrol’s Billy Mitchell Award, given for exemplary leadership, aerospace knowledge, and fitness. He watches air traffic on FlightAware and reads accident reports to learn valuable lessons and analyze what went wrong. 

ACT says their mission is “to develop ethical standards that promote responsibility, good citizenship, respect for authority, and solid core values,” and it’s clear that Jed has taken that to heart. “It’s not all about machines,” he told us. “It’s people, too. I am blessed. God has guided me, and I am grateful.” He especially likes that there are others in this industry who share his faith What he does with God’s gifts is important.

Jed is learning so much so quickly. When we asked him, “What’s your favorite airplane?” he immediately asked, “Do you mean civil or military? Vintage or modern?” Well, let’s just have them all, however you want to break it down. Here’s his list: modern military, F22 Raptor; older military, P47 Thunderbolt. For civilian aircraft, he loves twin turbo props and business jets, and the 747-800. And he can’t leave out the turbo Cessna Skylane.

It’s refreshing to see this industry from the eyes of a young, enthusiastic person. Jed Allender is going to be doing great things, and we’re excited for his future.

ElyAirLines.blogspot.com

January 9, 2024 Where To in 2024?

The Liberty Gazette

January 9, 2024

Ely Air Lines

By Mike Ely and Linda Street-Ely

Linda: Well, hello, 2024! How shall we shape you? We got off to a great start with a shindig at the posh penthouse home of Ben Price and Linda Pickens-Price. Linda, you may recall from previous installments, was a member of the Flying Queens basketball team from Wayland Baptist University in Plainview, the phenomenal, most-game-winning-record-holders. Last February, the Flying Queens Foundation proudly hosted the grand opening of their shiny new interactive museum. Plus, air show celeb Debby Rihn-Harvey donated her Baron which is now on a pedestal at the entrance. If you haven’t been there yet and will be going to or passing through Plainview, be sure to make a visit. The designers of the museum should win some kind of award because it reflects the uniqueness and standard-setting legacy that is the Flying Queens. 

They are a women’s college basketball team, and they got their team’s name and a tremendous amount of support from the local FBO owner at the Plainview airport, Claude Hutcherson, who used to fly the ladies to all their away-games in his fleet of Beechcraft Barons and Bonanzas. 

Linda Pickens-Price’s personal story is an inspiration. The little girl who was born into poverty, dirt floors, no indoor plumbing, and a difficult and sometime scary home life, has led an exemplary life, rising above pain and disadvantage, using her athletic skills (she played center for the Flying Queens) to gain access to a college education, then spent her career giving back to children in need. She became one of the most influential women in Houston as she worked to improve the CPS system. It was an honor to be counted among her delightful friends welcoming the new year and the endless new opportunities ahead. 

One of the questions we often hear when we run into friends we haven’t seen in a while is, “Flying much?” Our answer is always the same: “Never enough!” That led us to think about the new year; new flight plans to make, new adventures to seek, new stories just waiting to be told. I’m betting Mike will want to continue racking up more badges for landing at airports in AOPA’s badge program. In the last quarter of 2023, we were focusing on airports in the state of Louisiana, because that’s one of a couple of states that invests more into celebrating and encouraging personal flying. I think we’d like to do more fly-and-bike trips as well. We made so many of those trips throughout that government-sponsored-Wuhan-flu-nonsense and had a great time. We researched airports with bike-friendly roads to parks and trails nearby, loaded our bikes and picnics in the back of the airplane, and shot out into the wild blue yonder to find adventure, fresh air, and exercise. 

So where will we fly to in 2024? With over 19,000 landing facilities in the United States (airports, heliports, sea plane bases), we may never check off every single one, but we’ll have so much fun trying!

ElyAirLines.blogspot.com

January 2, 2024 Things You've Wondered

The Liberty Gazette

January 2, 2024

Ely Air Lines

By Mike Ely and Linda Street-Ely

If you’ve traveled by air, you may have wondered about some of the rules and operational details. While we’ve covered some of these in previous editions, we thought a nice little list might help with understanding how to keep yourself off an airline’s naughty list, or just satisfy your curiosity. Here are some of the most common questions we’re asked regarding flying on an airliner.

Why must seats be upright and tray tables stowed? For safety! While accidents are rare these days, those that do occur are most often during takeoff or landing. If there was an emergency, you may not have time to tuck that tray table away fast enough to escape a dangerous situation, and a reclined seat can prevent the person behind you from having the most room available to maneuver. Remember, Mom’s right arm wouldn’t have kept you from flying out the front window when you were a kid, even though that may have been the best safety equipment she had at the time.

Why do I have to put my phone in airplane mode? Cell signals can produce a very bothersome noise through the headsets and right into the ears of your pilots. It’s also possible for the cell signal to interfere with the aircraft’s communication and navigation instruments. Face it. Your cell phone isn’t going to work at 38,000’, and you’ll just run your battery down if you keep it on. Besides, putting it in airplane mode is a federal regulation.

Are turbulence and lightning dangerous? They can be. For the most part, lightning will be directed off the plane thanks to special lightning wicks installed to channel the electricity away. However, lightning comes with storms, as can turbulence. Sometimes, however, you may encounter clear air turbulence. While severely disrupted airflow can cause problems, airplanes are engineered for flexibility and well tested before they are ever released to haul passengers. Also, pilots know the limitations of the aircraft they fly. Just be sure to heed the warnings, like staying in your seat with your seatbelt fastened when the skyway gets bumpy. You won’t have to worry about losing your balance if you’re in your seat.

Do they ever have too much fuel or not enough? An aircraft will be filled with enough fuel for the flight, plus extra in case of diversion to land at an alternate airport (like if the weather’s bad at the destination). If pilots need to land sooner than expected, to avoid landing with more than the max gross landing weight limit, it may be necessary to fly a holding pattern to use up some fuel. If there’s an emergency though, they may jettison fuel if the airplane is capable. Landing overweight can cause structural damage.

Do airline pilots fly the same route every day? Seniority matters. Pilots (and flight attendants) bid each month for their schedules. Those who have been with the airline the longest will get preference. 

Here’s wishing you blue skies and tailwinds in 2024. Happy New Year!

ElyAirLines.blogspot.com

December 26, 2023 Tracking History

The Liberty Gazette

December 26, 2023

Ely Air Lines

By Mike Ely and Linda Street-Ely

Mike: In 1985, as a budding freight pilot, I flew a Piper Lance delivering checks and other bank mail. My route originated in Burbank with a layover in Blythe, California, on the banks of the Colorado River. I’d land at a few airports along the way, hopping from one to the next, where I’d pick up and drop off bags at locker vaults or with drivers who made local deliveries.

To reach Blythe, I flew through mountain passes and over the eastern Mojave Desert. I mostly approached Blythe from the northwest after departing Twentynine Palms and crossing Joshua Tree National Monument, which is now a National Park. This leg of my journey wasn’t very long, so I flew at a fairly low altitude.

On approach to Blythe one day, I noticed tracks etched into the sand below and assumed they’d come from motorcycles. Everyone I knew had seen the movie “On Any Sunday,” where Steve McQueen and others rode dirt bikes in off-road races, and the activity was all the rage. I saw that the trails and tracks were widespread and extensive, so the bikers must have been digging up the terrain for some time. Thereafter, each morning, I looked for those tracks and found more of them. Big circles, straight lines, and hundreds of donuts in the sand. They were everywhere.  

One day, while on my layover, I went to the airport to take an FAA written test. The test examiner operated the flight school at Blythe. I mentioned how much damage those dirt bikers had done to the desert. The examiner seemed to glare at me. Then his facial features relaxed, and he explained. “They weren’t motorcycles,” he said. “Those tracks were made by tanks. Patton’s Army trained here during World War Two, and those scars are our history. And yes, we’re proud of them.” I felt embarrassed because of my initial assumptions. The desert’s dry air had preserved those indentations for more than forty years.

During WWII, a huge portion of the Mojave and Sonoran deserts in California and Arizona was designated the Desert Training Center (DTC). The weather and topography offered unique conditions for Patton to train his troops to face the German tank corps in Northern Africa and Sicily. After Patton left to fight in 1943, the DTC was renamed the California-Arizona Maneuvers Area. After the fall of Nazi Germany in 1944, the Army decommissioned the training area and returned the land to the Department of the Interior.

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Besides tank tracks, there are still ruins left in the desert from the twelve camps built within the boundaries of the DTC. The Bureau of Land Management maintains the area and its history. There is even a sky trail with nineteen points of interest strung along a route nearly 200 miles long, starting at the Patton Museum at Chiriaco Summit, about fifty miles west of Blythe.

From that day on, I looked for those tracks, the marks of our history, of winners in training, with respect.

ElyAirLines.blogspot.com

December 19, 2023 Quite an Airport

The Liberty Gazette

December 19, 2023

Ely Air Lines

By Mike Ely and Linda Street-Ely

Along I-10 in the middle of the California desert is a 5,300’ paved runway with nothing nearby but a racecourse, the Chuckwalla Valley Raceway. The 2.68-mile grand prix circuit with its 17 turns came almost a century after the airport. 

The town formerly known as Gruendike’s Well had a garage, and one day in 1921, cotton farmer Steve Ragsdale was driving through when suddenly he had car trouble. During his stop at the shop, he surveyed his surroundings and decided he’d buy the place. The whole town. 

“Desert Steve,” as he came to be known, renamed his town Desert Center. He built a café, service station, and new garage. The café remained open 24/7, 365 days a year, from the 1920’s until the early 2000’s. They’d say they couldn’t close because they lost their keys. For many years, this was the only stop for travelers through the desert.

Desert Steve promoted his town with ads that told of the amenities along the shortest route from Phoenix to Los Angeles: a store, a hotel with pool and showers; the café, of course, and real western hospitality, and a “large plane landing field.” 

They had a school, too. To get the county to send a teacher, Desert Steve ran an ad for a mechanic with a very large family. A “real good mechanic” was hired, and the county sent a teacher. Eventually, they opened another market from which was sold, for a time, the most Coleman camping equipment in the entire U.S.A. 

In the early 1940s, the airport became the Desert Center Army Air Field. It served as a sub-base of Thermal Army Air Field and a support base for the Air Technical Service Command near Camp Desert Center. Today, if you want to see auto or motorcycle racing, you can land at the Desert Center Airport, park your plane, walk just a few yards to the ticket gate, and find a seat in the grandstands. We hear the racing there is premier, and there’s really nothing else left in Desert Center other than the post office, a few derelict buildings from the town’s heyday, and the Desert Center cemetery.

Desert Steve had planned to live out the rest of his life there. He put up his own grave marker where he wanted to be buried. But he ended up moving to the summit of Santa Rosa Mountain in 1950 and died there in 1971. His grave marker in Desert Center still stands: “Desert Steve, born June 16, 1882. Founded D.C. Sept. 21, 1921. Worked like hell to be an honest American citizen. Loved his fellow men & served them. Hated booze guzzling. Hated war. Hated dirty deal damn fool politicians. Hopes a guy named Ragsdale will ever serve humanity at Desert Center. He dug his own grave. Here are his bones. I put this damn thing up before I kicked off. Nuff sed --- Steve. Died ____, 19__.” 

Not quite a ghost town, not quite a grave. But quite an airport.

ElyAirLines.blogspot.com

December 12, 2023 The Colditz Glider

The Liberty Gazette

December 12, 2023

Ely Air Lines

By Mike Ely and Linda Street-Ely

Not long after Nazi Germany executed 50 prisoners who had escaped from Stalag Luft III, which had caused the Allied High Command to discourage such attempts, a captured British Lieutenant had a brilliant idea.

Lt. Tony Rolt, one of several prisoners being held in the old castle at Colditz, Germany, not far from Leipzig, noticed when he went into the castle’s chapel that the guards couldn’t see the roofline from their look-out. The Germans were watching for signs of digging, but they were apparently oblivious to the opportunities for escape from on high. The chapel roof seemed a right good spot to launch a glider if his fellow prisoners could build one that would make it across the River Mulde about 200 feet below. Lt. Rolt wasn’t an airman, but there were plenty of them at Colditz. Fortunately, the castle’s library was maintained, and in it was a two-volume set of books called Aircraft Design, by fellow Brit and aviation inventor, Cecil Hugh Latimer-Needham.

Bill Goldfinch and Jack Best studied the physics and engineering explained in the books. There was even a detailed diagram of the wing section, which was a huge help to their lofty plans.

Goldfinch and Best selected 12 men to assist in building the glider. They called them their 12 apostles, and they worked in secret in the attic above the chapel. Bed slats became ribs, floor boards became wing spars; old electrical wire found in unused places of the castle served as control wires. The prisoners gave up their cotton sleeping bags to make the aircraft’s skin, and set aside some of their rationed millet, which, after boiling, would seal the pores in the fabric.

In addition to building the glider, they needed some kind of surface from which to launch it. Using tables carefully collected from around the castle, the men constructed a 60’ long runway. Since they didn’t have access to a tow plane (not to mention that would be a dead give-away of their escape), they’d have to catapult the engineless aircraft. For this, they filled a metal bathtub with concrete, linked it to a pulley system, and when the tub was dropped, the glider would bolt out.

The finished vehicle would weigh just 240 lbs., and only two men would be picked to fly out in it. They were planning to make their escape in the Spring of 1945 when they heard Allied guns. They knew the war would soon be over, and the Nazis would be defeated. While they waited, they agreed to keep the glider available for use in case the Nazis ordered a massacre. It was nearly completed when the American Army liberated the prisoners on 16 April 1945.

The Soviets got a hold of the glider, so there’s no telling where it ended up. But Goldfinch kept his drawings, and one single photo was discovered, so a few replicas have been built, some even tested – and they launched successfully in the field across the river, all according to plan.

ElyAirLines.blogspot.com

December 5, 2023 Brittany and the Blue Angels

The Liberty Gazette

December 5, 2023

Ely Air Lines

By Mike Ely and Linda Street-Ely

“I still can’t believe it happened,” says 6th grade schoolteacher Brittany Moon of her ride with the Blue Angels. The second-generation pilot earned her private pilot certificate and tailwheel and high-performance endorsements this year. 

The young wife and mom to two little boys grew up around airplanes and now flys a blue and white 1946 Aeronca Champ she named Betty. When Brittany was small, her dad bought a 1929 Waco (named Cream Soda) and rebuilt it. He re-built it again when her kids were born. She loves the photos of her at age two, standing on one of the Waco’s tires, and a photo of her oldest son (now eight) in the same pose. 

But getting to fly with the Blue Angels has long been a dream. In December 2021, they posted their two-year schedule. After a 10-year hiatus, the air show was returning to her hometown, Indianapolis. Brittany called the Navy to inquire about a flight. “Watch for social media posts,” they advised. Finally, in August this year, the application was opened for the October 25 ride-along opportunity. Two lucky people would be selected. 

On October 10, as she was teaching both her own students and those of another teacher who was out that day, Brittany got a call from Pensacola, Florida, with the news that she was a finalist. She’d have to pass a medical exam (even though she already had her aviation medical certificate). No problem. The day of the flight, she and about a dozen friends and family came to the Indianapolis Regional Airport. Her entourage witnessed her pre-flight discussion with Commander Thomas Zimmerman, Blue Angel #7. Instructions included how to breathe during maneuvers (they don’t wear G-suits) and how to eject in case of emergency (you go out with the seat). She climbed in the F/A-18 Super Hornet, and they strapped her down good – ankles, thighs, hips, chest.

They flew to southern Indiana and did some G-warm-ups, up to 4 G’s: a loop, a maximum radius turn, a sneak pass, aileron rolls, a carrier break. They flew inverted, too, but she’s not a big fan of hanging upside down (she lasted 12 seconds, not the full 30). Then, traveling at 700 mph (Mach 0.95), at 500’, they went straight up like a corkscrew, pulling 7.6 G’s. That’s when she grayed out. “It was exhausting, a total body workout, focusing on squeezing glutes, breathing, to counter the effects of G-forces. I loved it!” 

It's been a great year for Brittany. She’s a new pilot, took her son to Oshkosh, and flew with the Blue Angels. She has four goals for 2024. In April, attend the annual WASP reunion in Sweetwater, become a certified flight instructor in the Light Sport category (her Champ is in that category) – she’ll have to take spin training as part of that goal, and fly her Champ to Oshkosh with her son and land on a dot. 

Ambitious and exciting goals, and we bet Brittany will meet each one with gusto.

ElyAirLines.blogspot.com

November 28, 2023 Stories, Stories, Everywhere!

The Liberty Gazette

November 28, 2023

Ely Air Lines

By Mike Ely and Linda Street-Ely

A pilot’s logbook is full of stories of adventure, of amazing views and exciting journeys. Aircraft, too, have tales to tell. Lean in and hear them whisper, and they’ll tell you what it’s like to be lifted by the wind beneath their wings, from stories of practice flights around the patch to far-off jaunts, some civil, some not so. Aviation museums are a great place to indulge your imagination and hear the machines relive their stories. 

East Fortune, a village in East Lothian (near Edinburgh), Scotland, is home to an airfield built in 1915 to help protect Britain from the Germans during World War I. Since 1975, the National Museum of Flight has been opening its civil and military hangar doors to the curious and interested, to those who want to see a Spitfire, a Red Arrow, the Concorde, and the record-breaking airship, R34. 

The morning of July 2, 1919, eight officers, twenty-two men from England’s Army, Navy, and Air Corps, and two pigeons, to be used in case of emergency, took off from the East Fortune airfield on a mission. If successful, they would hold the record for the first direct flight between Great Britain and the U.S., the first east-to-west Atlantic crossing (nothing but headwinds all the way), and the first return flight across that same ocean (hooray for tailwinds). Mind you, this is a blimp, and it was equipped with only rudimentary instruments. 

Now, Billy Ballantyne was a rigger. He had been forced to give up his spot on the R34 for an American, but he didn’t want to miss out on these important, once-in-history flights, so he stowed away with the ship’s mascot, a tabby kitten named Wopsie. Twelve hours into the flight, crews discovered Ballantyne, overcome by leaking hydrogen. Since they couldn’t throw him overboard, not even with a parachute, into the churning waves below, the Air Commodore, Edward Maitland, put him to work cooking and pumping gas into the bags that fed the engines. 

At one point, they found a leak in one of the gas bags. The quick-thinking crews gathered their whole supply of gum, chewed it up nice and soft, and plugged the leak. But approaching the east coast of North America, they were dangerously low on fuel. They considered their options. If they ended up in the ocean, they could be refueled by a destroyer or be pulled onto land by some other capable ship. Or they could try to make it to Boston. Eyes on the prize, they went for Boston. As they got closer, they realized they could get to New York. Landing at Long Island 108 hours and 12 minutes after take-off from Scotland left them with one hour’s worth of fuel in the bags.

Remember they wouldn’t drop the stow-away into the drink by parachute? Well, crewmember Major John Pritchard had to help the ground crew, so he actually did parachute into the U.S., becoming the first person to come to America by air. 

ElyAirLines.blogspot.com

November 21, 2023 A War Against Ice

The Liberty Gazette

November 21, 2023

Ely Air Lines

By Mike Ely and Linda Street-Ely

Linda: My first cross country air race was nearly 16 years ago. The four-day race began in Bozeman, Montana, and ended in Mansfield, Massachusetts, with seven mandatory check-ins in between. Our first timed fly-by after launching out of Bozeman was Miles City, Montana. After fueling, we took off, crossing over the Yellowstone River, which flows between the airport and the town, and raced toward Aberdeen, South Dakota, the next checkpoint. It was that very river that, 64 years before, had drawn a different kind of race – a race against time.

The 1943-44 Montana winter was about average, and the weekend of March 17-18 was normal, untilSunday evening, March 19, when Spring’s thaw came out of the gate like a triple crown champion. The quick heating caused ice to break up, sending chunks careening down Yellowstone River. Ice jams began to form, increasing as they collided with ice from a tributary, the Tongue River. The five-mile-long jam caused severe flash flooding and hasty evacuations. Between the time evacuations began and when first responders were on the move, the river rose to 19.3 feet, 15 feet higher than normal. There were many boat rescues as an entire square mile of Miles City, population 7,300, was completely flooded. 

On Monday, Mayor Layton Key called local pilots, who, with permission from the feds and explosives from a coal mining company tossed 12 homemade bombs out of a Piper Cub. But they only dislodged a small amount of ice. They’d have to step up their defense with bigger bombs and bigger planes. The mayor called the governor and asked him to contact the Army. 

Blizzard conditions and low clouds prevented use of a dive bomber. Their last hope lay in the high-altitude crews training at the Rapid City air base. On Tuesday, ten Army volunteers fused and loaded 250-pound bombs onto a B17 and took off into instrument conditions. The weather was so bad, they couldn’t see out of the airplane. Picking up a local pilot in Miles City, they took off again around 5:30 pm, ready for war against the ice. 

The first bomb, a test, seemed to go in the right direction, but they couldn’t tell whether it broke up the ice dam. The bombs had a delayed fuse; they would explode under water. The B17 crew made a few more passes, dropping six more bombs each time. Finally, a 150-foot plume of ice, mud, and water exploded from Yellowstone River. Within an hour, the water was draining, leaving shard-peppered ice along its banks. The operation was a success! 

By midnight, the river had dropped three feet. Mayor Key put the bomber crews up at his hotel and fed them steak dinners in gratitude. By Wednesday morning, the Yellowstone was back within its banks, and the crew of the B17 wagged their wings on a low pass over the town as they headed back to Rapid City in the only U.S. bomber asked to bomb a U.S. city during the Second World War. 

ElyAirLines.blogspot.com