It was the Fall of 1982 when Rick Jones introduced himself to me. We instantly became friends. He worked inside of a family business and I was involved in a Post College Internship. He was working on his Private Pilot Certificate and was kind enough to introduce me to a gaggle of flying guys. These guys were fanatical about flying and lived around Huntington, WV and Chesapeake, OH. These were my kind of guys! They liked airplanes, liked flying airplanes to Pancake Breakfasts and liked to talk about airplanes all the time. Rick was a good ol' boy from Milton, West Virginia and he made me feel like a part of the group even though I was a Yankee from up North in Michigan. It was a good bunch of guys that made me feel welcome in their circles. If somebody was flying somewhere, I got invited to go and because the word was out that I was a broke college kid, everyone knew that I was only payload and not a paying customer. They knew that I just needed help to get off the ground until I could do something "officially" for flight training; I really needed that at the time.
In hanging out with these guys, Rick found out that I already had a log book that I had used from keeping track of my "hours" for RC Aircraft. He asked me if he could borrow it for awhile and I said sure. I had no idea what he was going to do with it but I was certainly okay with him having it for awhile. When I got it back, Rick had made me, from scratch, a log book cover from beautifully crafted ox hide, I could not believe it. I still have it to this day. It was such a thoughtful gift to a guy that simply wanted and needed to hang out with guys that loved to fly. There was one thing about me however that Rick could not understand. You see because I trusted Rick, I talked to him about the Bensen gyrocopter; I needed his counsel about them because I did not know much about them. Like most people, Rick too had heard of "a couple of guys" that had flown them and got hurt. I can still remember him saying to me, "Jimmy, I don't think that you ought to be thinking about flying something as dangerous as the little gyrocopter things". When you take his counsel to heart he was right, the Bensen's were involved in a great deal of accidents. I had no idea why such a simple little aircraft could be so dangerous. I simple knew that I liked them and someday wanted to own one. Rick had another idea.
One of the "guys" in the gang at the airport, was Rick's friend Donny Chapman. Donny went by the name of Okie Skidmore. I don't know how he came to be called that other than he was a Master at doing forward slips in aircraft. He was a great guy and generous to a fault. He was sort of my ideal....he owned an airport, a Seneca and a Cessna 120 like the one pictured above and a customized Cessna 140 with an o-200. One day I was at the airport and Donny asked me if I had time to go up and log some time in the Cessna 120. Believe it or not, I had my log book with me and off we went. We started with all the heading and altitudes basics. Then we transitioned to turns, two minute turns and turns to a heading. It was wonderful even though I chased the aircraft and all those needles around the sky. After a couple of hours passed it was time to head back to Donny's home field in Ona, West Virgina. Ona is famous for one thing, it is Chuck Yeager's home town. Big deal! Chuck's home tome is in some of the hilliest parts of the world....and at the bottom of the hill is where Donny's airstrip was. Now he, not me, had to land the Cessna 120 at the end of my lesson. For those of you that have never seen or flown a 120, it is has no flaps. Thats right, I said no flaps...only ailerons. It was about this time that Donny asked me if I had ever done a slip. I don't remember what I said but I had no idea how we were going to get that little airplane with "no flaps" into that pea patch down there by the river in them there hills! He said, "well then why don't I take it from here". I was glad to give him back the controls. I sat in awe as Donny setup a left downwind leg, call out his base leg and begin his final with a perfect forward slip into that little pea patch of a runway down by the river side. We sank like a manhole cover but with controlled airspeed to the numbers, centered to the runway and did a perfect wheel landing. I was amazed and knew that when I grew up I wanted to be able to fly like Donny did. He made it look easy and put the seed into my heart to fly well, make look easy and most of all to share the gift and privilege of flight with others. He did all of this because I was Rick's friend; a broke, post college kid in some internship thing. To this day, I have the log book that Donny signed....Donny did this just because I was Rick's friend.
In closing, as great as this memory is I wish that Donny would have taken me to take a ride in a two-place gyroplane rather than an airplane. I don't mean to sound ungrateful in any way for all that Donny did, but a gyroplane is tens times more fun than an airplane. Because of that, it is my desire to share my love of flight and more importantly to share my love of the gyroplane with as many people as I can all over the world.
Bring your log book and let's go flying!
Jim
