Ned was shopping for a new airplane. The local Cessna distributor arranged for him to take a new pressurized 340 demonstrator on a business trip to Las Vegas. I flew right seat, logging some more "instruction given".
Total hours: 1077
After Cheryl and I were married in June 1973, we took up residence near Van Nuys Airport in the San Fernando Valley, and VNY would be our home airport for the next 22 years. Our first child, Tim, was only six weeks old when he flew for the first time, on a local flight with his Mom and Dad and Aunt Maureen in a rented 172. Tim would eventually carry on the family flying tradition when he soloed a Cessna 152 in 2000 -- three generations of active pilots in the family at the same time! In recent years N3878Q was based in Arizona, then was exported to Mexico in 1998.
With a growing young family and just starting out in the practice of law, time and money for flying was scarce. Through the late '70s I barely got in enough time in rented Cessnas and Cherokees at Van Nuys to stay current. I looked for any excuse to fly, such as taking 4-year-old Tim to visit his grandparents, though the trip was so short that driving would have been quicker. N757SW is now registered in Missouri.
Total hours: 1115
This was our longest flying vacation to date, and our first vacation to the family's property in southern Oregon. It was also my first visit to Oregon since the DC-3 trip six years earlier. The rented 182 had a newly-overhauled engine that needed a quart or two of oil to be added at every fuel stop, but otherwise flew well. After we got back a defective cylinder was replaced. N21203 is still active in Southern California.
Total hours: 1127
On rare occasions I would find a business excuse ... er, reason, to rent an airplane, and this was such a trip. Pioneer Aviation had this airplane, one of the last of the M20C's built, on its rental line, and I jumped at the chance to fly it. It is now registered in Pennsylvania. Total hours: 1130
Our Van Nuys Wing of Christian Pilots Association had set up a program of transporting clothes, toys and relief supplies to a missionary in a poverty-ridden district of Tijuana, Mexico. The muscular Super Skylane rented from Pioneer Aviation was the ideal aircraft for this trip. Brown Field, a former Navy base just a mile north of the Mexican border, was a convenient drop-off point. This airplane is now listed as "de-registered."
Total hours: 1137
Fellow Christian Pilots Assn. member Tom Howell and I took this rented 310R on another mission trip to Sister Ruth. 38J is registered in Ohio now.
Total hours: 1140
One of our friends from the Christian Pilots Association owned this high-time but well-maintained 1970 Cherokee 180. To defray some of his expenses he rented the airplane to us, and we had some enjoyable short trips in it. The photo shows us embarking on a picnic trip to the beach at Santa Barbara. This Cherokee is now registered in Utah.
Total hours: 1208
Our first venture into airplane ownership was a 1/4 share in a lovely, well-equipped 1977 Cherokee 140, which enabled us to make several long trips at reasonable cost. On one of these trips we landed at Cedar City, Utah, and drove up Cedar Canyon to Cedar Breaks National Monument (photo at right), where a ranger told us that there are no cedar trees in Utah. Other destinations in this airplane included Lake Havasu City AZ, Catalina Island, San Francisco, and multiple trips to southern Oregon.
Total hours: 1273
When a pilot friend planned his wedding day, he asked me to fly him and his new bride over the hill to Santa Monica to evade rowdy well-wishers. When the day came, I decorated the cabin with paper wedding bells and waited, expecting the newlyweds to have changed clothes before coming to the airport. Nope. He was in tux and she was in full wedding gown. Somehow they squeezed into the cozy "2+2" rear seats, while her brother rode shotgun. Fortunately it was a short trip.
Total hours: 1308
The Cherokee was snug for Cheryl, Tim, my mother and me on this Memorial Day weekend trip to Oregon, and we had to watch the fuel load very carefully.
Total hours: 1328
My dad and I flew to Las Vegas for the AOPA convention. Leaving Las Vegas we detoured by way of Lake Mead and the Grand Canyon (before the Special Flight Rules Area was established!). This was my last flight in the Cherokee before the airplane was sold and the partnership was dissolved. A flying club in Illinois now operates this airplane.
Total hours: 1344