AVSIM Column "Contrails" Of Dreams, Mercury Capsules, and International Trucks...!
By Steve 'Bearracing' Cartwright
At the time I grew up (the 1950s and 1960s), aviation was just beginning its boom years—there were all these World War II & Korean Conflict fighter/bomber veterans, the high desert test pilots of California, the jetliners were becoming of age, air racing began again in Reno, and then Sputnik with all that followed, from the first Mercury flights to the landing on the Moon with Apollo 11... Wow, what a time to grow up! It's unfortunate that the younger set will never know the thrill and excitement of laying flat on your back in your front yard and spotting John Glenn's Friendship 7 Mercury capsule as it passed overhead! Or hearing and seeing the first Boeing 707 take off from the Boeing field in Seattle! What a time for an aviation enthusiast like myself to be alive! The very first aircraft I rode in was a Fairchild F-27 and I was maybe 11 or 12 years old, but I remember that first flight as well today as I remember my most recent flight—what a thrill! It was only time, being marked on a bedroom calendar, before I would start my first flying lessons and that would be in the summer of 1966, when I was 16 years old. My first flight instructor—I've forgotten his name now—was quite impressed with how quickly I picked up on the basics of flying a small aircraft, so much so that I soled after only 2 hours of instruction! Little did he know though, I already had thousands of hours in a home-built full size flight simulator....? Yes, that's right, I had access to a full size flight simulator, at home, in the 1950s! You see, my dad had recognized my keen interest in aviation early on and we lived on this small 6 acres of land, up in the Western Cascade Mountains of Oregon. Down in the lower 2 acres of cow pasture, where I lived, was an old 1930's something International truck; well actually it was just the frame and cab section, no wheels or axles, and it was just sitting on the ground rusting away. My dad, being a millwright at a local sawmill, welded up a control column with a working control wheel (it was just the old steering wheel out that International truck cut so it appeared like the control wheels found in aircraft of that time), fully spring loaded with a working trim adjustment (it simply made the springs softer or stiffer), plus a center console with throttle quadrant. My dad did this for me when I was about 7 or 8 years old, pretty cool actually. All this inside this old International truck, laying in the pasture, and under this rather large Oak tree. Everything else was left up to my imagination! So, somedays I was flying a B-17 four-engined bomber deep in the heart of Germany, sometimes an F4U Chance Vought Corsair fighting zero's in the South Pacific, while other times it was a United Airlines DC-4 making its daily flights up the California Coast. Finally, on my 10th birthday or so, my dad got me this book titled "Stick & Rudder," probably the finest book ever written on the subject of flight! From this book I started imagining how the throttles made you sink or climb, while the stick controlled your speed... this combined with a good imagination... well, you'd be surprised how effective this is... hell... I soled in only 2 hours of instruction in the real thing, some years later... so there must of been something to it! Being someone of my age (50 now), my young mind back then wasn't spoiled from the effects of television; it was simple, we didn't have television, it was either books or listening to stories or plays on the radio! So having the imagination to dream of flying in that old truck was far easier than you might imagine! On March 17th, 1967 I received my single-engine, private pilot's license, but had yet to get my driver's license (which wouldn't come until a year later)! I flew every chance I got and I worked after school, at either a local gas station or the grocery store, where ever I could earn money to go fly. While all my schoolmates were trying to save money to buy the coolest cars (so they could get the girls), I was out at the airport looking for an airplane to fly! There were several moments where I had to hitchhike to the airport to take some friends up flying... I had a pilot's license, but no drivers license... my schoolmates thought I was very odd! Sometime, in the early 1970s and after the war (Vietnam), I was in college, majoring in Aviation Engineering, when the opportunity came about for me to apply for a flight crew position (actually there were four positions open, if memory serves) at Western Airlines. I sent in an application for one of these positions, along with my flight experience resume, but little did I know, Western was only accepting applications from those with jet time! For some reason though, I got called in for an interview anyway! I, along with about twenty other guys, were stuck in this room together an we spent the better part of 4 or 5 hours answering verbal questions and also doing various written and proactive tests. It sort of came out, during this 4 or 5 hours that I was: one, the only pilot there with less than a thousand hours of flight experience; and, second, I was the only pilot in that room that had NO jet time! Everyone else was either ex-military or ex-Air America or of similar backgrounds! It was my former flight instructors and the FAA inspector from my multi-engine checkride that had all recommended to Western that they take a serious look at me! I was scored 7th out of about 22 or so guys... not bad for a kid from the mountains of Oregon that had gained his first flight experience in an old International truck, an old truck laying out in a cow pasture! After that, I never again applied for an airline flight crew position, but the dream has always remained! Oh... I did spend a summer flying fire patrol for the U.S. Forest Service, up in Washington, and there was that couple of years flying search and rescue for the Oregon State Civil Air Board, plus an occasional charter flight to Reno or Las Vegas, but after about 1978 or 1979 my life changed directions and flying became less and less a part of my daily concerns or activity. Then, sometime in the mid-eighties, a little software company called Microsoft came out with their program called "Flight Simulator" and I purposely purchased a small computer (I think it was a Commadore... hmm not sure), just so I could run this really thrilling and accurate simulator... hey... compared to that old International truck this was great—black/white only, but it was still great and the gauges worked! It wasn't until FS5/95 though, that I started getting serious about using this form of flight experience, but none the less, if I didn't have the time to fly the real thing, this most certainly was the next best thing! With FS98 and the Internet, flying solely with a sim has become second nature, as with all my daily activities and now, with FS2000, I just don't see how it could be better? I have in my possession, just about every flight sim ever released (ProPilot99, FU, FU2, FU3, Falcon4.0, Silent Thunder, Jane's USAF, Jane's F/A-18, FLY, FLY2K, X-Plane, CFS, CFS2, FS5, FS95, FS98, and FS2000), but it's only FS2000 that can hold my interest at this point—why it's got everything I could ever dream of. You want to fly a floatplane into some remote lake in Alaska with trees and wildlife around, you can! Or, would you like to fly an Antonov AN-124 Super Transport into the Yelosiva Airbase at Petropavlovsk-Kamchatsky, Russia, you can do that too. Or maybe penetrate the stratosphere with a Graham Waterfield SR-71, or maybe you'd like to just listen to the rushing wind past your canopy in a glider over the southern deserts of Nevada... finally a sim that can answer all your dreams! In my life's career, like most, I'm dedicated and very involved... there's the daily work related stresses, not to mention the personal issues that come up, but I never worry, because I know that I can come home, strap myself into my flightsim and take-off into whatever world I wish, for a few minutes or for a few hours... maybe it's not that old International Truck that my dad built for me, oh... so many years ago, but it's most certainly the next best thing! Thank you Microsoft and mostly thank all of you guys and gals that have developed those aircraft, textures, and sceneries that have made my flight simming experience that much better! Now, if I could just locate a 1930s something International Truck...! The dream lives...! Bear (KRNO) [Editor's Note: Reprinted from Bear's post in the Avsim MSFS General Forum, "Of Dreams, Mercury Capsules, and International Trucks...!" January 9, 2001. A reader asked, "Perhaps some day in the Racing forum you will talk a bit about your days on the race track.. (I thought you said that's where the name Bearracing comes from)" Bear replies, "Yea, I spent 15 seasons on the CART/PPG Indycar World Series, operating the "Bear" brand computerized wheel balancers for Goodyear Racing. In addition I handled chassis engineering advice at the Indy500 (also for the Bear Alignment Equipment Company)!"] © 2001 - AVSIM Online All Rights Reserved