In early April of 1963 the flying club bought a 1956 Tri-Pacer (150 hp). I began to fly it quite a lot because with four seats the cost could be spread around. I talked many of my friends into rides. At this point I had had two experiences with the Tri-Pacer, the original check out, the flight about a year later trying to get to Cleveland, and yet the log shows no checkout in this new club airplane. One spring evening a graduate student friend and I decided to take our wives for a ride. We came upon migrating geese and my friend wanted to see how fast they were flying. I remember trying my best to sneak up from behind a flock at 60 mph and just as I got to them they would break hard away from the plane. If I tried to follow them, the bank would cause the plane to stall. Their cruise speed was below the stalling speed of the plane probably in the 45-50 mph range. Only afterward did I find out that this kind of harassment of migrating water fowl was illegal. My friend and I in the front two seats were having a ball but his wife had never flown before and all the banking and half stalling really frightened her.

In June I flew to Houghton Lake to what was then called a Dawn Patrol–today a fly-in breakfast. I won the "Youngest Pilot" award, a Zippo cigarette lighter. I got in 25 hours in 1963 and ended with the logbook showing 169:45 TT, 35:05 dual and 3:30 night.

I continued flying the club Tri-Pacer when I could afford it in 1964 but that was not much. Some biology student friends were very interested in the elk that had been brought into norther lower Michigan. Much of the ten hours I flew in 1964 was on an Elk observation trip. However, we never saw one The logbook shows 179:30 TT, dual 35:05 and night 5:00 at the end of the year.

I continued graduate school at the University of Hawaii in the fall of 1964. I began to look for an airplane to rent. I do not remember how I met a fellow who had access to a J-3 Cub. One day he put me in the back seat and we blasted out of Honolulu International and headed for the other side of the island. He knew there was an abandoned airstrip there and he let me do touch and goes on the long runway. The strip was so long I could do three in a row before turning around and doing it the other way. I had never flown with a stick before and had to use my left hand on the throttle. It was all so new that I did not get to appreciate the Cub.

By January had found a Tri-Pacer based at Honolulu International that I could rent. I had never operated from a large tower controlled airport before and most of my 30 minute check out was devoted to radio work and touch and goes. The plane had been disassembled for shipment to Hawaii and was very poorly rigged. I soon gave up holding hard rudder to keep the ball in the center and just let is skid along. Just two days after the checkout on January 28, 1965 I headed for Hilo with three friends, life preservers and a 4 man raft plus a minimal amount of baggage. We were all skinny so we were just about at gross and within CG limits. I checked. It was the longest cross country I had ever made and I have many memories of that flight and that trip.

At one point I spotted whales below on my side and the guy next to me stood on a rudder pedal trying to look out my side of the plane. Damn near rolled it over. As we approached Hilo, I called the tower when I thought we were about 10 miles out–no GPS then. I was following the north coast of the island and just after I made radio contact I came around a point of land into a fog bank. I turned left and quickly got in the clear again but did not have enough fuel to go anywhere but Hilo. So I called them again and confirmed that they were clear. I did not want to fly out over the ocean out of sight of land so I put down flaps, set up for slow flight and let down to about 100 feet above the water and 100 feet from the steep mountain side on my right and plowed back into the fog. I could see the surf crashing on the cliffs on my right and straight down to the water on my left but nothing ahead. After about five minutes (which seemed like an eternity) I popped out into clear skies. That was my first really bad experience with weather. After touring the Big Island for two days we loaded up and flew to Maui on the 28th and then back to Honolulu on the 29th. Another memory of that trip is swimming on a black sand beach with nothing around but some pigs, and being caught in a current that was rapidly carrying me down the beach and slowly away from shore. While I was hollering for help my friends were taking pictures of themselves is the buff on the black sand. I finally got back to shore more that a half mile down the beach, so tired I could not stand up.

In April I took the Tri-Pacer to Kawai, the western most island. The FSS had a manditory VFR reporting system for the 90 mile over water part of the flight. We stayed with our friend's parents who were Filipino. We were the first white people to ever stay with them. One day we were led out into a sugarcane field where we got to watch a cockfight. There was lots of betting going on and the losing bird died as they had 3 inch knives strapped to their real spurs. I was amazed that the owner of the dead bird cut its legs off (to keep the spurs) and gave the bird to the owner of the winning cock who took it home for dinner. The one and only time I ever got drunk happened on that trip–the Saturday night before the return flight. I knew I was in bad shape and delayed the departure until late morning. I preflighted two times and checked the weather carefully. It really bothered me that there was a 30 minute peroid when you were out of sight of land and there was no omni signal. My passengers were all asleep within 10 minutes of takeoff–they were hung-over too. The flight went well until I got ten miles from Honolulu International airport. I had been taught to call in from over the Arizona memorial in Pearl Harbor when aproaching from the west. You older folks will remember the Narco radios we used to call "coffee grinders". That was the kind of radio I had. The receiver was tuned by a little crank. I believe it had 9 crystals for transmitting frequencies. Well, I called the tower and got no reply. So I start doing 360s at 800 feet over the Arizona memorial trying to figure this out. I call many times. I start cranking the receiver tuning crank and finally hear the tower counting "5,6,7,8,9,10,9,8,7... Tri-Pacer 7632D Do your read?" I was reading the dial wrong and was looking for the tower on 119. instead of 118. They let me land. In May I flew to Molokai and went dear hunting. The fellow I went with got one. It was strange hunting for a Michigan boy with warm sunny skies and the ocean in view one way and mountains the other. Even the deer were strange with spots like a fawn.

The University of Hawaii experience was good but the man I went to study under was a nut so in June I came home. I was lucky to get an assistantship at Iowa State University working with a wonderful professor and in late June moved to Iowa. My log book notes that I got checked out in a 172s at two different airports and a Taylorcraft at another. I got in 28 exciting hours in 1965 ending the year with 197:45 TT, 5:00 night, 35:55 dual. To be continued...

Copyright © 2001 by Gary Collins.  All rights reserved.

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