Quote:
Originally Posted by Winni-Retired
He always scarred the living **** out of me
My primary instructor was Dick Burke (was a manager at Hasbro and later was the corp pilot for A T Cross). I also got many a free lessons from Mr Pansey in his twin Aero Commander by washing it on Saturday mornings
I must have been a sight, riding my (non 3 speed) bike to the airport then planking down my $4.00 in quarters / half dollars and dollar bills from my paper route to rent the training aircraft for 30 minutes of solo flying.
Gene did ripped my head off on a 720 turn over the reservoir, under the hood, because I loss more than 100 feet. I remember him to this day yelling at me to stop trying to tear the wings off his plane.
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I took my checkride with Gene in June 1988. I think he might have been over 70 by then. I could have taken the ride with a checkpilot over at Taunton who was supposed to be easy. I picked Gene because he was supposed to be tough. He was.
He made me land at busy T.F Green in Providence on Rwy 16....which turned out to be dead
Crosswind. I'm sure he knew it would be.
I did fine and he even told me so. I've heard he rarely commented on the students performance during a checkride ..designed to put pressure on the student. You never knew if you had done the maneuvers correctly until you were back on the ground. Those were the days.
NB
Now back to Skydiving...