AOPA Pilot Magazine - June 2013 - 21

chief astronaut, Charlie Precourt, to give
me hours of dual instruction in the space
shuttle simulator at the Johnson Space
Center. Would I have been checked out in
EAA’s replica of the Spirit of St. Louis had I
not been a writer for Pilot? Not likely. Would
Jordan’s King Hussein and Israeli Prime
Minister Yitzhak Rabin have permitted me
to organize Operation Peace Flight and lead
a formation of 31 general aviation airplanes
from Jerusalem to Amman without my having strong press credentials? Perhaps not.
My affiliation with Pilot has led me
to remarkable experiences about which I
otherwise could have only dreamed. For
this I am extremely grateful. With these
adventures, though, has come a responsibility, one that I have taken very seriously,
and that is to make every effort to share
them in a way that makes you a part of
those experiences to the extent that my
descriptions can make this possible.
Because of these and other remarkable
opportunities afforded me, Pilot has been
my journal. Most of my career has been
documented in 600 issues of this magazine. Some of these experiences have been
quite personal, such as when I wrote about
when my son, Brian, joined me as a member of my TWA flight crew for the first
time (an L-1011 flight from New York to
Brussels). More poignant, perhaps, was
writing about my retirement flight. Brian
was my first officer then, too, and it was on
Father’s Day 1998.
The best part of these past 50 years,
though, has not been the airplanes sampled or the adventures savored. Rather, it
has been the people met. Some have been
quite famous. The most memorable, however, were not as well known but were
extraordinarily talented with stick and
rudder. Some checked me out in unusual
or truly complex aircraft, and it is important for me to thank them again for their
patience, expertise, and graciousness.
For how long will I continue to write?
That is an excellent question. I likely will
carry this passionate torch for as long as I
can still crawl into a cockpit and for as long
as you, dear reader, consider worthwhile my
contributions and views. It’s hard to break a
50-year habit.
AOPA
WEB

YO U ’ V E

E AR N ED

YO U R

W I N GS

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www.aopa.org/pilot AOPA PILOT | 21

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AOPA Pilot Magazine - June 2013

Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of AOPA Pilot Magazine - June 2013