Continued from
Part 2...
TED'S FLYING FROM START TO FINISH, Part 3
I had been at Stockton a little less than a year when I was
discharged and could go home to Albuquerque, N. M. I got my old
job back instructing. All the guys sure razzed me when I would
be cranking a little Taylor Craft like, "Hey, Major can't you
get some G. I. to do that for you, etc?" I was new and a student
would show up for a lesson and there wasn't an instructor in
sight and I soon found out that student was real sorry or a smart
alec, hot rock or something.
I worked for Cutter Flying Service about three months when he
sold a Texas oil man a Twin Beech D-18 and I got him to sell the
pilot with it, so I had the most interesting job of my life. The
man and his wife were in Boston, but lived in Dallas and that was
the principal reason I went to work for him instead of a job
flying a Lockheed Lodestar out of Detroit for a large sound
company. I had flown the Detroit weather when in the Ferry
Command and the weather was usually bad, two thirds instrument
and nine months of winter. So I went to Dallas for less money
but I'm still alive anyway. I was trained for the job by the
Army - hurry up and wait.
My new boss, Snowden, called Cutter, requesting I fly the plane
to Boston - stop in Oklahoma City and one of his associates would
meet me with 700 pounds of butter and 500 pounds of bacon. I
then flew to New York to pick up a banker. The weather got worse
going to New York - lot of thunderstorms over Pennsylvania. I
could just see all the butter plastered all over the interior of
that new airplane but managed to smooth out most of the bumps and
keep the butter down. Arrived in New York, landed at LaGuardia
Airport making an instrument approach, fortunately switched
radios as the range station was just opposite the Empire Building
and helped too. I called the banker and told him Boston was
socked in and we would have to go on the next day, and I would
send a wire to my boss in Boston. He advised me not to do that,
but call him on the telephone. The man loves a telephone and it
turned out to be so true.
Right after the war, bacon and butter was rationed or unavailable
so my new boss when no could get a whole pound of butter, would
buy 7OO pounds of the stuff and give it to his rich friends in
return for lot of their money to invest in his oil ventures.
When my boss met me, he thought I was too old--needed someone
younger. On my first trip with them from Boston to Plattsburg on
the return trip had to make an instrument approach at night-
landing to the north over the Bay. Just as I leveled off to land
the cockpit door flew open and all I could see was the cabin
lights glare on the windshield. I yelled, "Shut the damn door"
and they did. It's a wonder I didn't get fired for that. We
flew a lot. My new boss used the airplane on lot of trips to New
York, Boston, Chicago and to oil patches in Texas, New Mexico,
etc. Mr. Snowden soon taught me not to file a flight plan. I
was up at 4 o'clock checking the weather to Boston for a 7 A.M.
take off. The weather was instrument all the way, but had picked
the best route, Memphis, Nashville, Washington, D.C. etc. Just as
I started take off roll, the boss yelled be sure and stop in
Oklahoma City to pick up John Doe. So I ended up making a new
flight plan, checking the weather all the way to Oklahoma City
via radio.
Sometimes my boss would try to push me out in the weather when
I first started working for him. After the first year under his
employment, I got him pretty well broke of that. Early one
morning we were going to Austin and found that it was socked in
and no way could we land. He called Braniff and yes their
flight, a DC 4 was taking off for Austin and San Antonio in
about one-half hour. My boss then said if they can go why can't
we? I told him I can fly anywhere they can. We saw them take
off so I followed and they landed in Waco and so did I. Braniff
didn't want all those passengers to get away so they marooned
them in Waco same as I did with my load. My passengers hired a
taxi to a little store, got some crackers and cheese, etc.,
stayed all day, then back to Dallas. The weather opened up in
Austin and San Antonio about midnight so Braniff finished their
flight.
After about three years we started flying a lot to Los Angeles,
San Francisco, Las Vegas, and of course that was usually a lot
better flying weather than flying to the east coast. I also was
flying to Fort Morgan, Colorado; Lusk, Wyoming; Wichita, Kansas;
Falls City, Nebraska; Des Moines, Iowa and Chicago. So I was
really covering the U.S.A. pretty well. About that time I had
made thirty five instrument flights straight and began to think I
might as well have gone to Detroit to work.
One time the boss sent the Lockheed to Chicago with another pilot
to pickup a full load of his investors and their families to take
them to Los Angeles for a big holiday while he took over some of
their money. There were a lot of kids all the way from Chicago
to St Louis and they ran up and down the aisle and wore the pilot
out trying to keep the plane trimmed. Finally he decided to fix
them as it was in the hot summer time and he flew all the way to
Dallas at about 3000 feet. It soon worked as it was really rough
and most of them were sick before he got to Springfield,
Missouri, so it sure settled them down. It took about two hours
to clean the plane up in Dallas before I flew it to Los Angeles.
One time I flew a bunch from Long Beach on the way to Dallas and
they wanted to stop in Las Vegas. I tried to rush them out of
there but no luck. A bad cold front was coming in and was going
to be instrument all the way and was in it before we got to
Boulder Dam. I was well aware of the altitude of the Frisco peak
just a little off course, so I climbed to 17000 feet altitude.
The passengers found out how high we were and could hardly breath
so I closed the door, set the co-pilot altimeter at 10,000 so
they had no more trouble breathing.
After I had flown a couple of years for that oil man I had them
so spoiled they thought I was strapped to that pilot seat all the
time and I nearly was. One time we were at Cisco, Texas and as
usual I was all packed in my hotel room waiting for the telephone
to ring as I had been alerted that they intended to leave right
after lunch. They went out to the airport, got in the plane and
someone said to tell Ted they were ready to go. Sure enough Ted
was still in the hotel so they sent someone to get me.
A lot of times they didn't realize that even pilots needed to
sleep sometime. One night I was called at home about 10
o'clock to fly some legal papers to Abilene. The lawyer had
mailed them but was short three cents postage so they were
returned and had to be in court by 9:00 A.M. next day. It was
low ceiling and pouring down rain all the way. I got a cab,
hand delivered the papers to the judge and flew back to Dallas.
Very often we had an over-load of passengers, some sitting on
their baggage, etc. I never got caught but it is a wonder I
didn't as it is illegal to fly any passengers that didn't have a
safety belt. About 1950 we bought a Lockheed Lodestar and I was
sure that would eliminate the extra passengers but on the second
trip to Los Angeles we had 18 passengers and 14 seats.
On a trip I made to Canada, we left Dallas, flew as far as
Calgary getting in there about 9:00 P.M. The next morning we
went to Edmonton, picked up a couple of passengers and flew
north, northeast about two or three hundred miles and then back
to Edmonton and on to Great Falls just as it was getting dark. I
checked the weather and it was socked in all the way to Cheyenne
so I filed for Cheyenne with Denver as an alternate. I had
recommended that we stay in Great Falls, but they insisted that
they had to get back to Dallas. Likely someone had a date or
trying to beat a check to the bank. The weather was not bad
until we got about halfway from Billings and Sheridan hitting a
snowstorm. I flew at 11,000 altitude, any higher I would ice up
some, lower with the dry snow hitting the airplane, it built up
the most awesome load of Saint Elmos fire I had ever seen. The
airplane was lit up like Fourth of July fireworks and squealing
like a pig hung on a fence. Radios were useless. This stuff
usually only lasts about 15 to 20 minutes and we had it for
nearly three hours. I knew that Laramie Peak was higher than I
was flying so I gave it a wide berth. Must have turned the
corner over Lusk, Wyoming or Scottsbluff, Nebraska and one
passenger was on his knees in the back asking the Lord to help
and another one was getting in my way and tearing up my
navigation equipment. Guess the guy praying didn't get through
because his wife shot him about a year later. Somewhere in the
vicinity of Wheatland, Wyoming I got out of the snow for a few
minutes. Most of the static discharged so I could use the radio
and I called Cheyenne. They were zero-zero; Denver was zero-
zero. I then cleared to North Platte, Nebraska and they had good
weather. I still had some Saint Elmos fire after that but it
petered out before I got to North Platte. I was in the clear
about thirty miles from there, so we landed and the two guys that
just had to get to Dallas were delighted to spend the rest of the
night there.
On a flight from Beaumont, Texas to Oklahoma City with a full
load the weather was bad. I hit a big thunderstorm in the
vicinity of Durant, Oklahoma, that was the granddaddy of them
all. Just got all the passengers buckled down when we hit it.
If you are flying V.F.R. you can fly around them but on solid
instruments you don't know where they are until you are in them.
These big ones have air currents straight up and down as fast as
300 miles per hour so the proper thing to do is to keep the speed
of the airplane slow. The Beech at 120 M.P.H. which means you are
flying straight up or down all the time. A passenger, Mel Belie,
a big lawyer, said I was a sorry pilot because I didn't stay on
my assigned altitude. If I had we would all be dead. Then we
hit hail so big when it was hitting the airplane we couldn't even
hear the engines. I think the hail was the size of baseballs. I
immediately made 180 degree turn and got out of there but it beat
up the airplane pretty bad. Cracks on the cockpit windows,
dinged up the rudders pretty bad, so I got on the radio and got
clearance to Dallas. When we made our approach there in a
cloudburst type rain, after landing I taxied off the lighted
runway it was all covered with water and couldn't tell the
grass from the taxiways. One of the Southwest Airmotive service
men came out and led me in with the tow truck. I taxied into the
big hanger and the water was about eight inches deep so we had to
wade out.
While I was flying for Snowden I was struck by lightning three
times that I knew about. It would burn a hole in the flap about
two feet from the fuselage every time. I could never figure that
one out. I accused some welders working in the hangar of
dropping a hot rod stub on it but they hadn't been near the
plane. I then remembered I had flown through a thunderstorm the
night before.
Snowden went broke the fall of 1952 so I changed jobs. Went to
work for the Lone Star Cadillac in Dallas also flying a Twin
Beech. That job was more a tax write off. I didn't fly very
much and was usually to Detroit. I didn't mind it at all as I
got to stay home a lot. When I wasn't flying or working on the
airplane I worked in the garage. I sure like the 8:00 to 5:00 -
not like flying all day and all night. The last year I worked
for Snowden I was home three times from September to Christmas -
less than 24 hours at home.
The radios in the Lone Star Cadillac's Beech were quite obsolete
so I got permission to take the plane to the radio shop and get
some of the radios updated so I could navigate and so I could
talk to someone. When Mr. DeSanders got the bill for $2755.00 he
called me into his office. He had nearly fainted over the bill,
and I told him that was fair for the radios and labor. He said
to me "is $2755.00 a trivial amount to you?" He had just given
each of his son's a million dollars for Christmas. I guess that
is the reason he has his millions. We flew the Beech about two
years and then traded it off for a new and more modern one which
had Hydromatic propellers and was a D-18 model.
I flew Mr. DeSander and his wife up to Portland, Maine to spend
about two weeks on a vacation. When we left it was low ceiling,
pouring down rain, heading for Detroit which was clear. I took
off climbing out thinking I was the only dummy in the sky. The
controller as usual had me going this way, that way and up or
down. Making work for his job and I was as busy as could be and
I got into one of those killer spirals and start to really wind
up when recovered.
I think it was in 1955 that Lone Star sold the Beech to Auto
Convoy Company. The President was Col. Stewart. I asked him to
hire me to fly so he asked me to meet him at his office with his
son, Waldo Stewart, and general manager, Gordon Hall, so they
could all pass on hiring me. Well to make a long story short,
neither Waldo or Gordon showed and the Col. couldn't find them.
They were hiding out so if I turned out to be sorry it would all
be on the Colonel's back. Of course I was suppose to be too dumb
to notice but the Colonel had become a multimillionaire by
surrounding himself with good people. So I was hired after
flying for them for a while. I worked directly under Gordon Hall
and he was soon the best friend I had. They already had a
helicopter and pilot, Max Stone, the best ever. The company also
had a new Aero Commander, a Tri-pacer and Gordon owned a Cessna
170. I soon had them all not afraid to ride with me and was
doing a lot of maintenance for them. They built me a little shop
onto the hanger at White Rock Airport.
When I went to work for the Convoy Company they had a Bell 47
helicopter. I helped work on it quite a lot so the Company sent
me to school at Bell's maintenance school. I ate it up, but
didn't think much about flying them. But on finishing the course
they gave each of us a ride in the flying school helicopter. The
instructor I drew was an old friend of mine that use to fly Twin
Beeches for the Wagner Ranch at Vernon, Texas. After we got off
the ground and away from the airport he let me fly it. Well, I
was hooked. I loved the little bit I'd flown. The next summer
the Company sent me back to Bell for a flight course. They
really poured it on. I took my flight test from their chief
pilot on Friday afternoon and I had to pass because Bell gave all
their people a vacation at the same time and just shut it down
for two weeks. Convoy Company needed me to fly helicopter for
them on Monday. That Monday morning I started flying a scheduled
run to Fort Worth from the top of a parking garage in Dallas to
the top of a four story building Fort Worth. This, my first
trip, with the rating in my pocket and the ink wasn't even dry on
it yet. The Heliport in Dallas had a square link fence around it
so small I had to park the tail in a corner. So I didn't have a
learning job. I had to get with it right off so I kept learning
and building time. I surely liked it but the package service
petered out, never made expenses. The new Dallas-Fort Worth toll
road opened up and the busses ran every hour just as fast their
terminal was right downtown. We couldn't compete. At that time
Convoy had three helicopters, a 47G, 47H, and an old D model. Most
of our flying was photographers, shopping center openings and sub
divisions, etc. We flew Santa Claus all fall and we hopped
passengers during the Dallas State Fair. Max flew the day shift
and I flew from 6:00 P.M. until I ran out of passengers usually
about 11:00 P.M. We must have flown thousands of them usually two
to every five minute for three weekends. Lots of passengers in
those 16 hour days.
I flew a load of executives to Washington, D.C. in the Beech and
when we were ready to leave about 4:00 P.M. there was a cold
front about Roanoke, VA, and Washington International is the
most poorly operated airport in the U.S. They keep a line up
waiting for take off - waiting for a landing aircraft - not even in
sight yet and they are very pro-airline and act like all other
traffic is a nuisance. We finally got off and hit icing
conditions over the mountains and had a lot of ice on the
airplane. It builds up on the navigation lights and magnifies
the lights five to ten times. And like all ice on a flying
airplane it gets so big that the slip stream breaks it. When this
happened one of the passengers came up to the cockpit all
excited, said the light on the left wing just went out. I tried
to tell him it was still on, and if it was out nothing could be
done until we landed and when we did land and parked he ran out
there to see if that light was on.
The best part of flying for the Convoy Company was the helicopter
flying. One time I flew a camera suspended 50 feet under the
helicopter that was over 465 pounds. A good load for a 47G Bell
and then when the camera man showed up with his little black
boxes to put in the helicopter he was 6'6" tall and must have
weighed 285 pounds. Fortunately the wind was blowing about 20
M.P.H. and managed to get it all in the air. We raced a Braniff
Jet 707 down the runway at Love Field. The jet had to give us 5
minutes start so we would be even with him when he rotated on
takeoff. The Jet Captain was tee'd off for having to hold for
five minutes but his dispatcher told him he had to do it. I also
flew that camera downtown Dallas at night between all those
skyscrapers. That was 'hairy' but didn't hit any wires - or
anything so it worked out all right. The camera man wanted to
know what this line by my hand was for and I told him it was a
quick release if we got into trouble, I could pull it and dump
the camera, and he said, "Oh, my God, that camera cost over
$250,000. "
Then I got the most dangerous flying job I ever had. It was
flying a politician, Judge Lee Ward, running for Governor of
Arkansas. We landed downtown or on the courthouse lawn of every
town in Arkansas that had 500 or more population. We made 10 to
12 towns a day all with built-in hazards, stop lights, street
lights that were extended out over the street. I would fly under
the first one and over the second one on the take-off. Every day
they planned a night landing through that mess of hazards. I did
land in a lot of ballparks, parks and the like at night. One
morning we were to land on the courthouse lawn in a pretty town
with trees everywhere. The trees were so tall that I told the
Judge he would have to hitchhike out as there was no way we could
get up out of there with both of us. While he was making his
speech the wind came up and the trees along the street were just
wide enough for the helicopter blades and just as I was climbing
up out of there a big gust of wind hit those trees and blew the
branches together. That helicopter looked like a lawn mower
going up through there and the crowd down below got showered with
a lot of twigs I cut off with the blades. Gasoline was a big
problem. I had five, five-gallon gas cans in the car that went
with us but they would get lost or be late, so I used a lot of
automobile gas. Good premium gas was just as good as aviation
gas.
One thing I found out when flying a helicopter was the reaction
of animals to it. Chickens, turkeys, horses and fish would
really get spooked. Cows, deer, hogs, goats and sheep just
ignored the helicopter. The animals that spooked are frightened
when the helicopter was not in sight so it must be a sound that
we cannot hear but they do. I also sprayed a lot of timber all
over the deep south. I liked that as I could really get with it
and get a lot done. The spraying was to kill the post oak and
all broad leaf trees. I also sprayed telephone and power lines.
The power lines were pretty dangerous as they usually had very
high-voltage and 36' cross arms. If the engine coughed once you
would be right down on them and fry like bacon.
The Convoy Co. had the best helicopter trailer I have ever seen.
You just flew the helicopter up and landed it on the trailer and
you could tie it down and be on the road in less than 20 minutes
and it didn't beat the helicopter to pieces hauling it. Another
job I had was up at Borger, Texas, flying pipeline patrol for the
Pnillips Petroleum Company when they had a strike and that was a
perfect job for a helicopter. It also helped break the strike.
I found out that dumb old cows will drink gasoline until they
fall over dead. We had a leak in a gasoline line and the cows
did just that.
One of the superintendents taught me hypnosis. It was lots of
fun and I got to be really good at it.
In 1960 I bought out a maintenance shop on Dallas-Garland Airport
and ran that along with flying the helicopter for Convoy Company.
I could run the shop during the day and fly passengers at the
Dallas State Fair at night. Max Stone flew the day shift so it
worked out all right, I was in the shop with three other guys -
each of us had one-fourth interest. I was the manager, shop
foreman, charter pilot and helicopter pilot. To make a long
story short I and one other partner were beat out of our interest
in the shop. That taught me again not to have a partner in
anything. I got a job working for a man that specialized in
buying wrecked airplanes and rebuilding them at Terrell, Texas.
So I had that long drive to and from work and the guy ran out of
money so that didn't last very long.
I started my own shop on White Rock airport in the Convoy
Company's hangar. I flew the helicopter for them when they
needed an extra pilot. I also had a Twin Beech for charter and
flew a lot for the Ford Motor Company Assembly Plant in Dallas -
all auto parts and always at night. Flew usually to St. Louis,
Louisville, Kansas City and other places and once as far as
Minneapolis, so it kept my hand in flying. By this time I was
getting a good reputation as Mr. Beechcraft either flying or
fixing and I got lots of both and liked it.
I think it was in 1968 that there was an airfreight airline on
Love Field, Tricon Airlines and they had two Twin Beechcraft and
three Piper Sixes. The F.A.A. was about to shut them down due to
poor maintenance so the president of the company came to see me
and requested that I take charge of his maintenance shop, so I
went to work for them. Rented my White Rock hangar out for
storage. My new boss was a crack salesman but knew nothing about
airplanes or maintenance. I wanted to have a spare airplane so
we could get our maintenance done but no luck and the schedules
were fine for business but hell for maintenance and the sorriest
pilots in Texas. We grew from two Beechcrafts and three Pipers
to nine Beechcrafts, three Pipers and one DC 3 while I worked
for them. The schedules all left Dallas at 10:30 A.M. and 12:30
P.M. staying at the end of the route until about 5:30 P.M. and
a night flight back to Dallas so the airplanes were sitting at a
remote field idle when we should have been working on them and
every time we bought another plane they had a new route for it.
Help was impossible to get and the ones that showed up everyday
didn't know anything, and those that didn't show up were usually
off drunk someplace. Maintenance was just like fighting fire and
on top of normal maintenance the pilots would tear up a lead sled
like landing so hard blowing new tires, run the fork lift into
the planes, push the freight clear through the airplane, hauling wet
batteries bottom side up and ending up with four inches of acid
in the belly of the plane. Others tried to do a snap roll in a
Twin Beech or something breaking the spar in the stabilizer and
one rudder - pilot never did confess what he did. They would
wear out the brakes in 50 to 100 hours. I used to reline the
brakes on the Beeches I flew at about 800 hours. I gave up and
resigned - went back to White Rock Airport and my old business.
It sure was a relief. After I left Tricon Airways where I had
six mechanics they soon had fourteen men and two or three
airplanes down all the time. Of course, they soon went broke.
When I went back to White Rock airport took two mechanics with me
and started installing Beech spar straps and metalizing control
surfaces and that soon ended. As usual, they sold White Rock
Airport to build houses on, so I got a notice that I had 90 days
to get my hangar and operation off the land. I debated with
myself should I move to another airport with my operation or
work for someone else in Dallas area. I had offers to run shops
for F.B.O. in the area but decided to move back to Wyoming and
retire. It looks like I did the right thing. All other small
operators have been squeezed out or bought out since I left
Dallas.
When I moved to Wyoming I thought I had retired from aviation. I
spent the first year building an addition on a little house we
bought did a real good job, I think. Anyhow we liked it.
Dan Hawkins kept asking me to work for Hawkins & Powers in their
helicopter department as a mechanic. I didn't like it very well
as the foreman was a dummy and was afraid I would get his job
which I surely didn't want. Anything that he or his pets did
wrong he would go to Dan and tell him that I did it even when I
wasn't there so no way to prove it so I put up with it as long as
I could - then asked to get transferred to the fixed wing
department. I was put in charge of the small planes, executive
and charter planes and I liked that a lot. Flew all my own test
flights and went to Powell, and inspected their planes up there
for Bill Blakeman.
I overhauled an engine for one of the helicopters and was helping
to install it in the helicopter and stumbled over the skid, fell
on the concrete floor, threw my shoulder out of place so went to
the hospital - got it fixed and was off work until Christmas. So
I resigned at Hawkins and Powers, but started working on small
planes for customers so I kept my hand in that and worked about
30 hours a month - did some flying so was just OK for me. Later
I wasn't able to do any more on fixing of airplanes so that is my
story on my flying days.
Ted Hill passed away in 1998 at the age of 93. He stopped flying at age 77.
