By Brian Hart, EAA 1457879
The Old Man was not always old; he had once been young and dreamed of flight. And when he was young, he had an Old Man of his own that dreamed of flight before him. That Old Man, the first of his line to reach boyhood in the aviation age, entered the world in the auspicious year 1927 when the Spirit of St. Louis famously bore Lindbergh safely across the Atlantic. And he was there in the sleepy town of Vancouver, Washington, in June 1937, a curious 9-year-old at Pearson Field gaping in awe at Chkalov and the ANT-25 recently arrived from Moscow.
Throughout his adolescence, this Boy returned often to that airport to watch airplanes, dream of flight, and purchase a pint of dope to finish his free-flight models. He carried his aviation dreams into adulthood, and although he had nary a chance, nor the money, to pursue flight training, yet he had one Boy of his own and did not fail to pass along his unrequited love affair with aviation as they built free-flight models together in the 1970s.
This Boy in turn nurtured his own dreams of flight. But alas, like the original Old Man, this Boy never had opportunity for flight training and settled for control-line and radio control models, where he found the most relaxing time to be had with his Carl Goldberg Gentle Lady glider. He knew instinctively then that soaring makes the best pilots.
As boyhood became young manhood and then work and marriage, he found he had a choice: he could raise a family, or he could pursue a dream of being in the air. So once again, as with his Old Man, he focused on family, home, and work over the next 30 years, deferring on behalf of the family — yet never entirely abandoning — his love of aviation.
He was no longer young, but neither was he old — half a century now — the day he took his own three young men to Grove Field in Camas, Washington, to watch the airplanes and maybe — just maybe — allow that long-neglected bud a chance to recover, perhaps even flourish. Thus, it was that his youngest man, the titular Kid of our narrative, had his first airplane ride at the tender age of 4 years with pilot Neil Cahoon that saw the aviation longing in their eyes and offered each of the four a ride in his Pacer.
Thus began a decade-long volunteer stint for the entire family at Grove Field, which provided that enthusiastic, uncelebrated background support so necessary to a thriving aviation community. Still The Old Man — as he was becoming now — found that family and work yet frustrated his repeated attempts to actually fly, and he began to feel that aviation had irretrievably passed him by. Yet Providence turned no blind eye to that decade, silently fostering in The Kid his own love of aviation. Dormant it lay, patiently awaiting the day that The Old Man, knowing two things the Kid did not — that gliders make the best pilots and that a glider pilot can solo at age 14 — intoned unceremoniously one unremarkable day, “It is time for you to learn to fly — in a glider.”
“Well,” said The Kid — silently to himself, “that would be boring, flying around without a motor.” Nonetheless, he dutifully found himself heading off with The Old Man to Willamette Valley Soaring in North Plains, Oregon, where the instructor’s first statement, “Let me tell you about adverse yaw” did little to alleviate The Kid’s suspicion that the whole “without a motor” thing would put him to sleep. But then came the first takeoff roll, when at the moment of liftoff in the Blanik L23, boredom evaporated and has not been seen again.
The Kid persevered through winter instruction at blustery Hood River, Oregon, an hour from home, being blessed with enthusiastic instructor and cross-country pilot Mark Stanfield. First solo came on a gray and soggy January day, followed by a 4,000-mile road trip to Alabama with an older brother to pick up the Libelle 201 The Old Man purchased so The Kid could build his skills without tying up the club gliders.
That year brought B, C, and Bronze Badges, and another opportunity: if he would complete his FAA written test, said the instructor, The Kid and his Libelle could attend the Seattle Glider Council’s annual spring DustUp cross-country glider event! So study together they did, and with a successful test done, off they went — Old Man, The Wife, and the Kid — to Ephrata, Washington.
So here was The Kid with his Libelle, surrounded for the first time by cross-country enthusiasts in booming thermal conditions. “Let’s do a lead-and-follow flight; I’ll go find the lift, and you follow me,” said the instructor the first morning. That plan lasted all the way to the flight line, when the instructor, succumbing to his own cross-country soaring bug, decided to head off on a long flight to the Canadian border with a friend. So The Kid’s first cross-country flight plan was promptly adjusted to “Go fly to Davenport [60 miles away]”. There was a revised safety and weather brief — including the fact that cloud base was 10,000 feet.
Now, powers of inference might be yet undeveloped in a 14-year-old mind; the cloudbase at Hood River is rarely 5,000 feet, “heading out” occurs at 4,500, and “out” is 10 miles from the gliderport. So The Kid got off tow and immediately headed for Davenport, stopping briefly for a turn or two in each thermal, still perhaps pondering why it mattered that cloudbase was 10,000 feet when things were working so well under 5,000. The text less than an hour later told the rest of the story succinctly (which is more than can be said for this tale!) — “Landed in a field.”
In fact, The Kid had thermalled his way 45 miles out over open farmland, never over 3,500 AGL, before he finally got below the lift band, picked a field, flew a pattern, had to put away spoilers when he found the ground falling away on final until he crossed the ravine that had been invisible from the air, then did a deliberate ground loop after touchdown to avoid rolling into the ditch before the road. His Bronze Badge cross-country training had been excellent although perhaps shy on but one small unstated point, “Now that you know how to land in a field, stay in range of an airport so you don’t have to.”
All in less than an hour. As one of the other pilots put it that evening, “Now I know how far you can get on 5,000 feet!” Seven weeks later The Kid turned 15. He was becoming a Young Man.
That summer held also a 5,000-mile round trip to Caesar Creek thermal camp in the aging RV and seven-rotation spin training at Mile High Gliding in Boulder, Colorado. Then came self-launch training and endorsement. The Old Man and The Wife were enjoying this extended time with their youngest — and so close to aviation, to boot!
Things continued to progress for The Young Man, and one day a few months later, he received a letter, “Thank you for making the effort to apply for the [$10,000] Paul Kolstad College Scholarship grant. Congratulations on securing this most prestigious grant…” That led to a new assemblage of soaring contacts and recognition at the 2023 SSA Convention as The Young Man began sharing his passion for flight with others, young and old alike.
The next spring held a glider flight over the Cascades from Hood River to Grove Field and a return to the Ephrata Dust Up, where he and his faithful Libelle worked together through badge and state record flights. Yet The Young Man was most satisfied with his performance the last day of the contest later that summer; too young for a license and therefore to compete, he was honored to pre-launch as The Sniffer [to go find initial lift for the contest pilots] under marginal lift conditions, then to have his Flarm report to the competitors 10 minutes later that he was climbing through 5,500 feet at eight knots; “Launch now,” came the cry from the flightline. And the flight that began as Sniffer finished with Gold [300 km] Distance and new state records.
The Young Man began power instruction several weeks before his 16th birthday in the Cub with that same Neil that had given him his first airplane ride 12 years earlier. He was well into his second glider logbook by now with well over a hundred hours solo when, on his 16th birthday he handily passed his checkride with DPE Robin Reid, gave The Old Man his first glider ride, then headed over to solo the Cub the same day. Shortly thereafter he became a volunteer Young Eagles pilot — possibly the youngest — and while still 16, was the pilot for 11 glider Young Eagles in one day.
Now, our tale of Old Man and Young might have simply faded into anonymous old age for Old Man and adulthood for The Young Man, were it not for a curious twist: somewhere along the way, The Old Man found himself walking The Young Man’s path so closely that he began to know things about soaring — things he could not yet do himself, yet culminating in a new role as youth director at Hood River Soaring. As The Young Man immersed himself in power training, The Old Man helped steer 13 fledgling youngsters through their first steps in soaring education — and he had yet to take a lesson.
So The Old Man began to allow tentative considerations to creep upon his consciousness that perhaps it truly was his moment. After all, hadn’t he attended all those ground training sessions with The Kid before the driver’s license? Hadn’t he flown 250 hours in Condor? He was already coaching students through test preparation from pre-solo to FAA to the SSA Bronze Badge glider cross-country training program. He had spent innumerable hours learning badge and record rules and drawing final-glide circles. He had been a de facto navigator in the ASK-21 with The Young Man.
Still, he told himself, he had better make sure he understood it all well enough, so then came The Old Man’s first logbook entries, glider and power: endorsements by The Kid’s instructors to take his FAA written tests, and he passed both. The Old Man now, finally, turned to Instructor Geoff Curtis to ask if he was willing to take on the formidable task of attempting to make a glider pilot out of The Old Man. And there he was, The Old Man, no doubt sowing the instructor’s mind with ample misgiving about his choice, as the ASK-21 staggered drunkenly down the runway on his first takeoff roll of his first lesson — where, despite his protests that the instructor had better not expect his skills to match his knowledge, The Old Man demonstrated in grand fashion that a head full of information does not inevitably translate immediately to good pilotage.
Instructors are patient and courageous, though, and eight weeks later, The Old Man found himself at his private pilot glider checkride at last, and afterward, there it was — the certificate. The Young Man was not yet a certificate ahead, but that day came soon enough when The Young Man passed his private pilot power checkride on his 17th birthday, began towing the next day in the Pawnee, and passed his instrument checkride 10 days later.
The Young Man went on to do more than 800 tows in the Pawnee the next year while the Old Man worked through FOI and AGI, then commercial and CFIG written tests. When The Old Man arrived at glider commercial first, it was only by virtue of age; it was not long after that The Kid turned 18, then promptly passed glider commercial, power commercial, CFIG, and CFI checkrides — and then entered AMT school. Now finally, at long last, The Old Man joined The Young Man when he passed his own CFIG checkride, and both are teaching side by side. And The Old Man is also a glider volunteer Young Eagles pilot with EAA Chapter 1567, Columbia River Gorge.
The age of The Old Man and Young will never closen, and the long-convergent knowledge and skills of Old Man and Young began diverging the day The Young Man came home talking of localizers and RNAV. But this is no contest, and they continue to experience the joy of soaring together and pass it on to others. The Old Man might even have to ask The Kid’s advice on a pilot relief system someday soon.