Ted's Flying Days, Part 3
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.
