It’s great to call them friends, but the conversation topic was grim: “What in the hell is going on at Lunken Airport?” Sure enough, the front-page headline in the Sunday Cincinnati newspaper shouted, “What’s Next for Lunken Airport…Cincinnati’s tiny, aging airfield…and what’s ahead for the struggling airport’s second century?”

“Aging”? OK. “Struggling”? I don’t think so. Mismanaged? You bet!

After the inevitable COVID-19 pandemic slowdown, Lunken general aviation and corporate traffic recovered dramatically. Recently there have been 10-to-15-plus jet operations each hour and an increase of 100,000 total operations in each of the past two years. Three thriving flight schools, plus private and corporate traffic, keep the control tower busy from 0700 to 2300 local time every day.

But the city is tearing out one of three runways—the oldest one that’s parallel to the primary, 6,100-foot 21L-02R. It has multiple functioning instrument approaches, lighting, and markings, but eliminating 21R leaves only a shorter runway, 7-25, which is unusable for airplanes over 10,000 pounds. gross weight and whenever the long runway is active because of crossing approach paths.

• READ MORE: An Ode to Aircraft Mechanics

Cincinnati Municipal Airport-Lunken Field (KLUK)  has long been home to large and small corporate flight operations with multiple business aircraft, including Procter & Gamble (on the field since 1950), Kroger, NetJets/Executive Jet Management, American Financial Corp., and more. These days there are more smaller jets and turboprops (Pilatus, TBM, etc.) that increase jet light turbine operations to about 250 daily.

The flight schools are seeing unprecedented growth with student pilots flying for fun or business and many pursuing airline careers. Lunken Flight Training, a Part 141 school, occupies two of the original three brick hangars built for the Embry-Riddle Company in 1927, and it’s swamped with students and renters. 

Years ago, Cincinnati Aircraft was where I launched my 6,000 hours of instructing and, much later, was a busy DPE. Jay Schmalfuss (c’mon, Cincinnati is a German town) has turned it into an impressive operation. Sitting in on one of its weekly huddles, I learned operations have risen 30 percent this year, following a 30 percent increase the year before. Its fleet includes 10 Cessna 172s and four Diamonds with more on the way.   

The FAA and the city also continue to demand that one of those three historic hangars be demolished because of its proximity to the Runway 25 takeoff area. This once beautiful, abandoned building has badly deteriorated—sad to watch. This most ornate of the three hangars has lasted for nearly 100 years with nobody crashing into it. From the ’50s through the ’80s, it was the place to learn to fly or keep your airplane. The exterior was classic art deco, and the interior offices were elegant, like something out of a movie. 

That art-deco terminal building—also now abandoned–was built with Works Progress Administration funds in 1936 and ’37. Flooding had been a danger (hence the nickname “Sunken Lunken”), but pumps, levies, and other flood-control measures tamed that problem from the adjacent Ohio and Little Miami rivers.

• READ MORE: Perusing Some Old Logbooks

The terminal’s beautiful lobby had a number of ticket counters for scheduled airlines when Lunken was once the city’s main airport and the world’s first and largest municipal facility. In the ’30s, American Airlines based at Lunken and operated schedules with Curtiss Condors and DC-3s. American opened its original Sky Chef restaurant in the building.

But after World War II the search was on for a larger airport. Federal funds were available, and across the Ohio River in northern Kentucky, a military field had been built during the war. Alben Barkley was a Kentucky Democrat and vice president under Democrat President Harry Truman, while Ohio was a solidly Republican state. So, it’s no mystery why the “Greater Cincinnati” airport was built on that property near Covington, Kentucky (thus the “KCVG” designator), and the major airlines abandoned Lunken for what is now Cincinnati/Northern Kentucky International.

When I came to the airport in the early ’60s, the terminal building housed the control tower as well as a Flight Service Station, offices, the Airman’s Club, and the Sky Galley (once Sky Chef) restaurant. Any night of the week, the restaurant was crowded with airport and nearby racetrack people. The food was pretty good, and the bar was always jumping. 

I met Ebby Lunken there, we got engaged, and I worked for his Midwest Airways while getting private, commercial, and instructor ratings. When the little airline closed, Ebby moved to a second-floor office, and I played secretary to his (pre-Part 135) charter operation, booking trips on his DC-3 and Lockheed 10s in the mornings (and climbing out a window to tend a thriving herb garden on the roof). Afternoons and evenings, I flight instructed and eventually opened my own school. 

I’m no expert on city politics, but I’m pretty sure the City of Cincinnati knows as much about airports as I do about quantum physics. They hired a commission which recommended the airport needs to generate between $8 million and $27 million, and a new manager whose main qualification is he’s always loved airplanes and is “anxious to do whatever the city wants.”

So, all hangar rents have increased at Lunken Airport, and I have to get rid of the 1942 John Deere tractor stored in my hangar for a corporate pilot friend. That’s fair enough, but with Runway 21R gone and corporate hangars (no T-hangars) extending out into the middle of this essentially one-runway airport, the impact on us little guys and student traffic will be devastating. You can’t easily insert touch-and-go traffic between frequent jet operations.

• READ MORE: Sometimes the Flying Weather’s Fit Only for Turkeys

I wonder if all the fences and locked gates installed after 9/11 are the real reason that no bombings or hijackings have occurred at Lunken or any other GA airport. But sadly there’s no curious teenage eyes peering through to learn about flying anymore. 

Have we surrendered too much freedom to government mandates? Painfully, the Lunken Airport I’ve known and hung around for 62 years is becoming something very different. I’ve flown, loved, laughed, cried, crunched a few airplanes, and made countless friends at this old place. I’d sit in the control tower on crummy days and, even now, they call me by name.

I taught hundreds of people to fly and issued licenses to hundreds more from this field. It’s a special place that will always be my “Home Sweet Airport.”

This column first appeared in the September Issue 950 of the FLYING print edition.

The post Cincinnati Will Always Be My ‘Home Sweet Airport’ appeared first on FLYING Magazine.

Those guys are gone now, but the T-hangars on the south line at Cincinnati’s Lunken Airport (KLUK) where they worked are still there, close to where that little Ercoupe that my sister Mary and I came to fly was roosting in the grass. N341 (we should have kept the number) had been generously loaned to us by a friend who hadn’t flown it in some time. It needed an annual inspection, which Carl Garlough and his two helpers did, as well as repairing a few things like a hole in the gas tank before we took to the skies. 

Carl was an amiable, sort of fatherly guy, probably trained in the military, who always had a pipe clamped between his teeth. And the man who took me aside and explained I might stop bragging about being a member of the “Mile High Club.” My dastardly instructor, Larry Whitesell, announced my prestigious status after we coaxed the little airplane (with a “sick 75”) above 5,000 feet. Naturally, I bragged about it but didn’t understand the reaction of the old guys around the airport who knew there was no way that could happen in an Ercoupe. 

Carl was a good mechanic but also kept Tom Noonan’s airplanes running, although “TV Tom” had less than a sterling reputation with customers, creditors, insurance companies, and the FAA. Working with him in his shop was a nice, competent mechanic named Henry, who I would learn was a periodic alcoholic—on his game for weeks at a time only to disappear. Henry always showed up days or weeks later with the shakes and often badly beaten up. But Carl, bless him, helped him along. Another young guy, whose name I can’t remember, was a newly certificated “A&E” (in those days). He was maybe a little sweet on Mary, but I reminded her the only aircraft mechanic school in the state of Ohio, in those days, was the Chillicothe Reformatory.

• READ MORE: Perusing Some Old Logbooks

Those guys kept the Ercoupe running while Mary and I got out private licenses. And Carl even used a bolt cutter on the chain my dad had wrapped around the prop of the Ercoupe sitting out in the grass. He was determined to keep me grounded while he and my mom were away for a few weeks because he thought I was cutting too many classes at college to go to the airport. Before my parents even knew I was taking lessons, I had forged his signature on the permission slip required in those days for students under 21 to solo. Anyway, somebody hooked the chain back up before they got back.

Oh, my, how things have changed. There are no “small airplane” shops on Lunken Airport these days—at least ones that last. I fly to a smaller airport nearby for maintenance and annuals. In an emergency, Mark Day from Blue Ash Aircraft Service at Lebanon will drive down to do the repair. Lots of guys use freelance A&Ps who arrive in pickup trucks and pull the annuals in their (or a friend’s) T-hangar. And lots do the annuals themselves, paying a friendly IA to sign off their work. Thank the Lord, I’m not mechanically inclined. An old boyfriend—a toolmaker with an IA—used to tell me, “Machinery doesn’t love you.”

Small shops are increasingly rare at large airports. It’s too expensive and new A&Ps can get better-paying, more secure jobs with the airlines or large corporate operators. A friend took his Cessna 182 to the shop at a large, local FBO that caters to bizjets. It charged him for 10 hours of work to change the oil.

But it certainly wasn’t always that way through the 1970s when Lunken had at least two large, full-service, FBOs that began in the ’30s. Cincinnati Aircraft, a Cessna dealer, occupied two of the three large brick hangars built in the ’20s for the Embry-Riddle Company. Queen City Flying Service, a Beech dealer in Hangar 3, was always a “posh” operation that catered to people with more money than we had. The offices were up a spiral staircase that led you into something right out of a ’30s or ’40s movie with art deco furniture and fixtures, private inner-sanctum offices, and a woman at the front desk. The parties and liaisons that went in Hangar 3 were legendary but, in fairness, the airplanes, pilots, instructors, and mechanics at both operations were top-notch. 

• READ MORE: Sometimes the Flying Weather’s Fit Only for Turkeys

Back in the day, I confess we’d send the Cub logbooks to an IA friend who signed them off for $100. Another guy worked for years as a pilot and mechanic with phony, forged certificates. 

But you have to watch out even for the good guys. Flying your airplane after an annual is kind of a risky process, so do a good preflight check and stay over at the field until you’re sure everything works as it should.

Barry Schiff tells me he flew a Tri-Pacer (I said, “Shame on you.”) in California after annual. There was no problem in flight because you hardly use the rudder pedals anyway. But turning into the FBO after landing, there were curious “crunching noises.” It seems somebody had allowed a metal E6B computer to migrate back in the tail.

A corporate pilot for a squeaky-clean, very large company told me a mechanic had left a wrench inside the engine of a G3 with devastating results. I think he was relegated to making soap. Another lost all power (IFR) when flying a Cessna 182 home. Two G-5s had been installed by a radio shop, but the crankcase breather port was blocked by a plastic cap with oil spewing out of the underside of the engine.

I found a large black Maglite jammed behind the rudder pedals and another very conscientious mechanic wouldn’t let me fly again until he drove to Cincinnati to retrieve a hand mirror from the tail section.

You’d be surprised at the number of things that are FAA- and manufacturer-approved temporary repairs—some involving “speed tape’” (if you can afford $700 a roll). It’s said that you could stick one end of the roll onto the hood of your car and pull it with the other end.

Look at the FAA publication Maintenance Aspects of Owning Your Own Airplane but, remember, you gotta know what you’re doing. 

This column first appeared in the July/August Issue 949 of the FLYING print edition.

The post An Ode to Aircraft Mechanics appeared first on FLYING Magazine.

We don’t have much violent weather in the Ohio River Valley, but we suffer through weeks of low, gray skies, rain/snow mix, and gusty surface winds. The surface winds at the moment are 240 degrees at 14 gusting to 22 knots with a light rain/snow mix. Ceiling is 1,300 feet overcast with rime ice reports up to 9,000 feet, plus a wind shear alert—winds at 2,000 feet are from 210 degrees at 50 knots. And that wicked witch, Mother Nature, plans even stronger surface winds with high temperatures in the single digits.

I go down to the airport, KLUK, and sit in the airplane, thinking maybe I ought to take it around the patch a few times, but the thought of pulling off the heavy winter cover, preflighting, and pulling it out of the hangar for a couple landings is too daunting.

So, I’ll regale you with a great story from Lunken Airport’s early days.

It’s a special place for me, but then who doesn’t feel that way about their home field? Lunken is older than most because in the early 1920s, when aviation was “getting off the ground,” the site was uniquely natural for an airport—a big, flat area within 5 miles of downtown Cincinnati. At the time the government was pressuring cities to build airports for the new and popular airmail service.

Called the Turkey Bottoms, this mostly farmland property was eventually purchased by my ex-husband’s grandfather, Eshelby F. Lunken (Lunkenheimer Valve Company), and deeded to the city as an airport for 99 years. Later a ditzy, civic-minded aunt assigned the lease permanently to the city. Bummer.

• READ MORE: There Was Just Something About Michael

In the early ’20s, the Cincinnati Polo Club used a portion, and its members didn’t appreciate a guy landing his “flivver” on their field between chukkers—7½-minute periods in polo.

It was John Paul Riddle, a talented, handsome (even when I knew him in his 80s), and fascinating barnstormer originally from Pikeville, Kentucky, who would play a very big part in creating what is now Cincinnati Municipal Airport-Lunken Field.

I came to know Riddle in the 1980s, when the airport was planning a 50th anniversary celebration, and I was asked to write a booklet for the affair.

“Damn,” I said to an old friend, J.R. Wedekind, “I wish that Riddle guy was still alive. There’s so much I’d like to ask him.”

“He is,” said Wedekind. “Lives in Coral Gables, Florida, and, at 80-something, still plays tennis every day. I’ll give you his telephone number. He lives in a two-family house…with his ex-wife upstairs.”

• READ MORE: Martha’s Return to IFR Skies

So, I called, wondering if he’d be annoyed at the intrusion, but Riddle was, well, charming. We would talk many times in the following weeks because, like so many of us, his memories from way back were sharp and clear.

A celebration was planned, so the city and Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University (with which there was a quasi-connection) brought him to Cincinnati in summer 1987. Riddle hadn’t been at Lunken Airport for more than 50 years, but he recognized the hangars the city had built for what became the Embry-Riddle Company.

We talked for hours, he rode in my Cub, and we enjoyed a memorable dinner one night with my ex, Ebby Lunken, at a restaurant downtown. The Maisonette was an elegant, five-star joint, and the maître d’ was clearly uncomfortable. Ebby and Riddle were both quite deaf and communicated by shouting across the elegantly laid table.

Afterward, I drove Riddle back to Lunken and, as we neared the airport on a little street over railroad tracks called Airport Road, he muttered, “Oh, yes, I remember—Davis Lane.” That had been its original name many years before. I opened the door of one of the three hangars where, in the 1920s, the company had operated its flying and mechanic schools and kept the WACOs and Fairchilds used on its airmail route to Chicago. Standing in that dark hangar with this man with the rain beating down and not a word said was a rare experience.

• READ MORE: Gear-Up Landings: There Are Pilots Who Have and Those Who May Have To

Riddle was the guy who had landed in the polo field with a passenger and then hopped riders in the afternoon before returning to Ravens Rock upriver. That field at Portsmouth was unlighted, so he would circle town until the local radio announcer heard the airplane and asked everybody with a car to line the runway with their lights on.

On one of his Turkey Bottoms trips to hop some rides, a local man named T. Higbee Embry approached him and asked how much a ride cost.

“How much do you have on you?” Riddle asked.

“Twenty dollars,” Higbee replied.

“That’s what it costs,” Riddle said.

Eventually, Riddle taught Embry to fly, and from that a partnership in a flying company was formed with Embry’s wealthy mother putting up money to buy two WACOs and Riddle running the operation. By 1927, the city had taken legal possession of the land and built three hangars for the new Embry-Riddle Company. It was a success, offering airplane sales, mechanic and flight training, and an airmail contract for daily flights from Cincinnati to Chicago (CAM 24) in WACOs.

He told me wonderful stories, and we pored over old photographs and newspapers the company published. By 1930, Sherman Fairchild brokered a deal for the company to be sold to the Aviation Corporation (which later became Avco), and one of its passenger/airmail companies moved into the hangars. American Airways—later American Airlines—started life at Lunken.

Embry headed to California and Riddle went to Florida, where he would become a big name in the airplane world. Ten years after selling the Embry-Riddle operation, he contracted with the government and trained more than 700 pilots and mechanics, filling big hotels in Miami for civilian pilot training programs. Then he moved to Brazil, where he ran an operation training pilots for its government and, after World War II, founded and operated a large freight carrier, Riddle International Airlines.

I stumbled on a charming story about Riddle’s early years in Pikeville, Kentucky. He graduated from Pikeville College, trained in the military as a pilot and mechanic, and came home to barnstorm. At a Fourth of July celebration in 1923, Riddle, to the huge delight of the townspeople, flew his Jenny under Pikeville’s Middle Bridge.

When I found the still-standing memorial and read it, I laughed but couldn’t help wondering, “What’s wrong with this picture?”

This column first appeared in the April 2024/Issue 947 of FLYING’s print edition.

The post Sometimes the Flying Weather’s Fit Only for Turkeys appeared first on FLYING Magazine.

When I was learning to fly during winter 1961-62, there were several ratty-looking AT-6s and Beech 18s tied down in the grass outside the flying school shack. A guy named Michael who owned one of the AT-6s was, I thought, an interesting-looking guy. I’d see him at Mass at Christ the King Church—usually standing against a side wall because he’d arrived late (in those days, Catholic Sunday Masses were always crowded).

Using side glances, I pointed him out to my sister, but maybe I wasn’t as discreet as I thought because, a few days later, at the airport, he introduced himself and invited me for a ride in the T-6…at night…Wow! So, he belted me in and I was flat-out thrilled by the awesome power and noise on takeoff. We climbed on top of a thin overcast and rolled and looped with the lights of the city visible through the misty clouds below and clear stars shining above. Well, what do you expect? I fell madly in love—with the AT-6 and Michael.

After graduating from college and serving in the Air Force flying B-25s on flight check missions, Michael was working for a Cincinnati company that sold dry cleaning store franchises, and he used that T-6 for sales calls in his territory throughout the Midwest and South. Curiously, despite the Air Force training and experience, he thought filing IFR was like “being in jail.” When the weather was down in those pre-GPS days, he commonly flew airways at 500 feet below the MEA and made an approach at his destination. I know, I know…

We flew a night mission in a Piper Aztec loaded with freight from Cincinnati to Baltimore for a local character named “TV Tom.” Coming back over the Alleghenies, to avoid filing we climbed to 18,000 feet msl for about an hour to stay above an icy cloud cover. But we were young, and I guess the Lord was looking out for fools like us.

• READ MORE: Getting Tired of Tragic Accidents After Engine Failures on Takeoff? Yeah, Me Too

Before I knew him, Michael had acquired a little floatplane time at a seaplane base on the Ohio River down the road from the airport. Barely out of his teens and with Lord knows what kind of certificates and ratings (definitely not seaplane), he ferried a Piper J-3 Cub on floats to a buyer in Florida. Think about that…a 10-gallon fuel tank and a 5-gallon can of car gas strapped in the front seat. Sure, there are lots of lakes and rivers between southern Ohio and Florida, but it’s still pretty gutsy. He was good at en route repairs…rarely “by the book” or with approved parts—but good enough to hang things together. The luck of the Irish.

He wasn’t a braggart. He just did things most people wouldn’t. And I’m not suggesting anybody should emulate him, but Michael was very talented, very stubborn, very much his own guy, and could be absolutely maddening. We were fast friends, but he was married with two boys and, if we had married, we would surely have killed each other.

We both loved Cubs, and Michael found one at Blue Ash Airport, now long gone but then a wonderful grass field north of town that actually predated Lunken Airport (KLUK). A young kid had soloed in a J-3 he’d bought, but the airplane was in pretty rough shape. Michael and I warned the kid it was a deathtrap— the fabric was way beyond salvaging, there were bad fuel and oil leaks, and who knew the condition of the structure inside? If he valued his life, he needed to sell it and rent one of the Cessnas from Moose Glos, the operator. He thanked us profusely when we took it off his hands for $600.

Well, OK, it was pretty rough, but we flew it all through that summer. You didn’t drain the sumps because they dribbled rust, and it demanded nearly a quart of oil after every flight. And “40M” quit on me in a climbing turn after takeoff from Hamilton (KHAO) and, when I got it back on the ground, Bill Hogan came out and saw the rust stains at the sumps. After giving me a well-deserved lecture, we drained the tanks, filled up with fresh gas, and I was on my way.

• READ MORE: Need for Pilots Should Not Take the Place of Passion

Then cooler weather arrived, and Michael took one of his kids for a ride, but they had to land in somebody’s pasture. With the door and window closed and the heat knob pulled on, they got a good dose of carbon monoxide. So, that was it for 40M! We got it back to Lunken and pulled it apart. Since Michael lived less than a mile away, we hauled the pieces to his basement and garage, ordered dope and Ceconite envelopes for the wings and fuselage, and sent the engine out for overhaul.

Well, if you’re familiar with the smells that go with recovering an airplane, you’ll understand it wasn’t long before Michael’s wife (who was terribly shortsighted about airplanes) ordered us out. His mom, a wonderful old Irish lady, was glad to have us around, so we hauled it out to her house. In her mid-80s, she was still climbing ladders to wash windows and made wonderful sandwiches and cookies to keep us fortified.

Michael would eventually go through several divorces and marriages, buy a farm where he laid out a strip, and own and fly some wonderful airplanes—a Lockheed Lodestar, Waco UPF-7 (I took out a couple taxiway lights with that one), F-8 Bearcat, Aeronca Chief on floats (in which I gave him a seaplane rating after he taught me to fly floats), Stearman, Citabria, Heath Parasol, and Cessna 150. Then he moved to Florida, getting very sick with cancer. But he kept Cub 40M—even soloed around the patch when he was near the end.

I was with him in the hospital when he returned home, and my friend Bishop Joe came to administer last rites.

I’ll share more stories that are too good to forget. Sure, I miss him, but Michael’s “rules of life” stay with me: “Don’t admit anything, drive a beige car, and aim for the light spots.”

This column first appeared in the January-February 2024/Issue 945 of FLYING’s print edition.

The post There Was Just Something About Michael appeared first on FLYING Magazine.

Why? Well, it’s old and has centerline drainage but, most importantly, it’s too close to a row of corporate hangars full of jets—used for both business and privately owned. I don’t know if FAA standards have changed or if they are just being enforced, but I do know that some of these “big operators” have expansion plans and there’s nowhere to go except into the runway’s safety area. The reality is, with 21R gone, accommodating traffic from three busy flight schools with a steady stream of “big iron” on a single runway is going to be a challenge…or, as one controller opined, “It sucks.”

You may have guessed by now that occasionally I don’t see things the same way as the FAA, but this edict seems exceptionally onerous. It reduces a heavily used airport, with three (at one time four) runways, to the single 6,500-foot, fully IFR-equipped 21L-03R. Oh, there is one other “old-timer”—Runway 25—still in use but restricted to aircraft under 12,500 pounds. It’s further limited because its final approach conflicts with the 21L final, and speculation is that it too is on the way out.

Everybody who flies in the Midwest knows that after a cold front steamrolls through the Ohio Valley, the normal south-southwest surface winds typically shift around to north-northwest and landing on 21L demands significant crosswind capabilities and pilot skills. And, with “Sunken Lunken” in a valley surrounded by hills, the turbulence approaching that runway can be awesome. (I confess that not too long ago, after waging an interesting battle with a turbulent crosswind in my Cessna 180, the tower asked, “Martha, are you OK?”) When these winds reach the edge of max crosswind capability for large turbine airplanes, they’re relegated to using Greater Cincinnati (KCVG) some 12 miles away across the Ohio River in Kentucky. This is generally not popular with corporate executives or passengers.

READ MORE: Unusual Attitudes

Maybe I’m just being old-fashioned or, as I get older, change is becoming more difficult to accept. And old memories die hard, like when you find out your old grade school has been demolished or your childhood neighborhood has become a slum, when you find yourself mourning the loss of an old lover…or even a runway (not to mention an airport).

I took my first hour of instruction and gave my first hour of dual on what was back then Runway 20 (because magnetic orientation changes over the years). And many, many times I would surprise a student by saying, “Hey. I’m tired of grinding around this traffic pattern with you. Let me out here, tell the tower you need to taxi back, and make three takeoffs and landings by yourself. And, REMEMBER, you’re going to be high on final!” Of course, this had been coordinated with the tower (and couldn’t happen like that these days), but I’d hop out and sit in the grass alongside the runway, making daisy chains or chewing on a piece of clover while my student made those first glorious three solo takeoffs and landings. Now, I was way across the airport from my flying school and, after his full stop landing, the tower took great delight in clearing the student back to the hangar. He was usually so excited he’d forget about me. So I’d climb the tower steps and use their phone to get somebody to come pick me up.

Runway 21R was the scene of my introduction to ground loops. A group of guys (one of them a CFI who knew how to fly taildraggers) bought an Aeronca 7AC and called themselves the Kamikaze Flying Club. Frank was a little sweet on me and anxious to show his prowess so we went flying in the little yellow airplane with the famous shark’s mouth painted on the nose. Taxiing back to the tiedown, things suddenly began to spin—I saw grass, the taxiway behind us, the tower, and some hangars. It was fun so I laughed and said, “Oh Frank, do it again!” He glowered at me and said, “Shut up! That was a ground loop.” No damage, except to this future airline pilot’s pride.

Another afternoon, when the winds were strong and steady, blowing right down the runway, Mike Smith and I were out in one of Cincinnati Aircraft’s Champs. (Mike’s father, Bud Smith, owned the operation so “rental” was no problem.) Out on final, he was able to slow the airplane to the edge of a stall…and it stopped! We were stationary over the golf course. After clearing us to land two or three times, the controller—who had little sense of humor—told us to LAND or go somewhere else.

The Procter and Gamble flight department had occupied with a fleet of Douglas DC-3s the old Aeronca hangar at the end of 20L since 1950. They’d even designed an ingenious “track” to turn their airplanes sideways on the ramp and winch them into the hangar. Well, the ’60s brought the Gulfstream I, and the only way they’d fit was to raise the hangar roof. P&G being P&G, thought raising the roof and obstructing the tower’s view of the approach end of the 20L was no problem. The city just displaced the threshold of 21R by a considerable 900 feet.

Then the city constructed a wide taxiway for the Gulfstreams crossing at that unusable end and put in a narrow blacktop one for the little guys taking off at the new threshold. It was less than adequate—too narrow to even turn into the wind for runup. That was the impetus for a midnight (after the tower closed) expedition out to the new “corporate” taxiway on our bicycles with cans of traffic paint, graph paper, and measuring tapes. In honor of the notoriously pompous flight department manager who exerted considerable “juice” with the city, we spent all night painting, in large letters: THE NELSON U. ROKES MEMORIAL TAXIWAY.

Nobody knew who did it but, kind of surprisingly, both the company pilots and Nelson loved it. For years, the tower commonly cleared airplanes to their hangar, “via the memorial!”

It was a different time, and I have to accept today’s 8-foot fences and security cameras as the norm—obsolete runways and all those tempting bridges have to go. But, oh, how I miss those days.

The post Thoughts on Closing a Runway appeared first on FLYING Magazine.