My Viking Affair

January 5, 1993.  I crawled into the left seat of N28061, a 1978 Bellanca Super Viking.  I was 17 years old, with the ink barely dry from my private pilot check-ride exactly a week earlier.  After flying a Cherokee 140 for the previous 50 or so hours during training, there was an exhilaration that cannot be described as I rolled the power up and scorched down the runway, pulled up the gear, and retracted the flaps.  I was climbing at 750 FPM and 110 knots – faster than the Cherokee cruised…

N28061 was, at the time, painted yellow with blue accent stripes.  It had “BELLANCA” written on the underside of the entire wingspan.  Stepping inside, there is a distinct smell that Vikings have.  It is very different from any other airplane I have flown.  The combination of wood, tube, and fabric mixed with burned avgas creates a bit of a unique mix of flavors to consume.  It is a smell that is burned in my memory.

It may seem strange that I was able to fly a complex, high-performance airplane with so little time in my logbook, but I had 2 things going for me.  First, insurance wasn’t quite as controlling in the early 90’s as they are now.  But, second, and more important, Marlin Miller trusted that I wouldn’t break his airplane.  For that trust, I am eternally grateful.  Marlin and his father, James, ran Miller Flying Service in Plainview along with Marge Mitchell.  They were key to Bellanca’s success through the 70’s and 80’s, and to this day many of the top experts on the plane still work at the same business, now known as Rocket Aviation.  Unfortunately, all 3 of these mentors of mine have passed; however, they left a legacy in the Bellanca circle that cannot be matched by anyone.

Before the end of January that year, I was checked out and flying N28061 and another one, N6700V, on a fairly regular basis.  I was very fortunate that my parents allowed me to spend their hard-earned money to feed this addiction that was fast-growing inside of me.  Fortunately, there is no known cure for this disease known as flying, and for that I am quite glad.  I had a ton of great adventures in Vikings over the next 18 months as I completed my Junior and Senior years at Plainview High School.

I could tell a hundred stories of that 18 months, but a few stand out more than others, and really represent the “why” in my flying.

During my junior year, our basketball team went to state in the playoffs.  One of the games played was the Regional Semi-Final in Vernon.  That night, my Dad and little brother hopped in N6700V and flew over to the game.  We got a courtesy car, watched a great win against Justin Northwest, and flew back home under a perfectly clear, West Texas starry night.  It was picture perfect general aviation flying at its best with my Dad and brother.  Life could not have been any better than it was at that moment.  (They went on to lose the state semi-final game that year on a buzzer beater.  We returned to Austin my senior year and won state with a similar buzzer beating shot.)

Later that year, Dad and I got up at 5am.  We went to “change water,” (I grew up on a farm…translation – move our row-irrigation pipe to the next location for the day.) and took off for Spearman, in the panhandle of Texas.  The goal was simple – attend my first fly-in breakfast and claim the title of the youngest pilot present that day.  We flew up over Palo Duro Canyon just as the sun was coming up that morning.  There are colors in the sky near that canyon at sunrise and sunset that you can only see from the air.  I recall when we landed, the guy who marshaled us to a parking space asked my Dad how long he’d been flying.  He responded with a great deal of pride in his voice that his son was the pilot in the family.  That’s another feeling that cannot be described nor duplicated.  As far as being the youngest pilot there, I lost on a technicality.  There was a 16 year old there who had a medical and student pilot certificate.  So, I was the youngest private pilot that day…and I was flying the coolest airplane.

That spring I also had the opportunity to set the bar high for prom dates.  I picked up my date in a 1976 Cadillac Eldorado convertible (think Boss Hogg from Dukes of Hazzard).  We met her brother and his date at the Plainview airport and I flew us up to Amarillo.  The ride was horrible.  The wind was blowing 30+ knots that day, and we crossed over Palo Duro Canyon.  However, they all thought it was a great adventure!  We had a limo pick us up on the tarmac and take us to dinner.  We reversed the process to go back for the dance after dinner.  The wind had laid down for the evening, and it made for a much better trip back.

There were countless other adventures before I went off to college in the fall of ’94.  I test flew a lot of Vikings, and jumped in them and flew around pretty much at will.  It qualifies as some of the best flying days of my life.  The Viking itself became the center piece of flying for me, though I didn’t realize it for years to come.  I also simply did not appreciate the privilege afforded to me.  As a typical teenager, that realization would only come after I had to earn a dollar for myself.

I went off to college in ’94 at Baylor and transferred to Texas Tech in 1995.  I got married in 1996, and made a goal of getting my instructor’s license and making some money that way during college.  I started renting a little Cessna 150, but never accomplished the goal.  However, another day with a Viking stands out in my memory from soon after I got married.

Late on a Friday, Marlin Miller called me and asked if I could help deliver a Viking to Dallas, and bring one back to Plainview from Rogers, AR.  It sounded like fun to me, so I said yes.  I called my Dad, but he couldn’t go, so I called up my new father-in-law and asked him to come along for the ride.  We left as a flight of 2 with Clay, who was the pilot/instructor at Miller’s at the time, and made it into Addison airport with no problem.  It was my first time into the TCA (now Class B), so I was scared to death, but it turned out to be extremely easy.  The 3 of us then loaded up and flew up to Rogers to get the Viking that was coming to Plainview for maintenance.  Along the way, the Rogers airport was closed due to a plane crash just off the airport.  We were forced to go into neighboring Bentonville for lunch while we waited on the airport to reopen.

At that time, Clay had only been at Miller’s for a short period, and so I got to take advantage and win a quick bet with him on the approach to Bentonville.  I grossly misjudged my base turn and upon turning final, we were way high.  He said I should go around.  I laughed, and said I could still turn off at the first taxiway.  He did not believe me…he had not experienced the incredible sink rate that a Viking can produce with full flaps and a low power setting.  He took the bet, and I turned off as promised, with a pretty smooth landing to boot.  Hot doggers beware, this is not advised without some practice.

We discovered in Bentonville at the time, though home of WalMart, there were no cabs or courtesy cars.  We walked to a nearby bar to grab lunch.  They didn’t serve food there.  So, we walked to a Chinese buffet further down the road and ate some absolutely terrible food, walked back and flew over to Rogers.  The return trip that afternoon was one that tested all our endurance.  There was a fierce headwind, slowing our swift machines to near 110 knot ground speeds.  Oklahoma is a big state.  I recall noticing the major excavation going on to the southwest of Bentonville that would ultimately become the XNA-Northwest Arkansas Regional airport.  I had no idea how that place would be such an integral part of my Viking adventures in the future.  My father-in-law and I forged a strong relationship that day, and I owe yet another debt of gratitude to the Viking and Marlin for that opportunity.

From that point, my wife and I began the journey of starting careers and a family.  I occasionally flew whatever I could get my hands on, but never did anything consistently.  In February of 2003, I bought into a partnership on a Cessna 182.  This got me flying again, but I never just loved the plane.  It was functional for the travel I wanted to do, but definitely not a Viking.  I began going home to West Texas from the Austin area (Georgetown) where we live now.  We went for Texas Tech football games and to see family regularly.  In 2004, I was captivated by the Garmin G1000 and bought a new 182 with a partner.  We turned that into a management business and ended up with a 2005 model in a partnership until 2007.  I enjoyed the planes a lot, but never really considered them a part of my family.

Then, after selling that last 182, I found her.  N89EL is a 1989 model.  I was looking around for a Viking to replace the newer plane, because I just simply wanted a Viking.  I went to look at it and test fly it in July.  We made a deal almost immediately, and I brought her home to Georgetown.  She is a beauty inside and out.  The paint is unique and striking; a yellow, blue and plum mix that represents the colors of the Navy’s Blue Angels.  In fact, she was painted this way because a prior owner was a Blue Angel back in the 1950s.  He also customized the tail number to his initials.  Near perfectly maintained, this airplane was a dream come true.  As I took off from Granbury, TX to bring her home, I knew this would be a special relationship.

Soon afterward, I found a fellow pilot, Douglas, who wanted to lease some time in it, which offset the costs for me, and we have become great friends over the last several years.

This little story has already grown a little long, so I’ll spare the many stories I could tell of the last 4 ½ years.  What I can say in summary is that I have had many great adventures with N89EL.  We’ve flown over 400 hours together, bringing my total Viking time closer to 500 hours of my roughly 1,000 hours of logbook time.

Some highlights have included a trip with my wife and 2 girls to Disneyworld, and a weekend trip with my wife out to Ruidoso, NM.  I have used her extensively for personal trips out to see our family and watch Texas Tech football.  A favorite memory is the night in 2008 when Graham Harrell hit Michael Crabtree to seal a victory over UT.  I had 3 passengers with me that night.  One was a fellow Tech alum, and the other 2 were Longhorns.  It was a quiet ride home.

I have also used the N89EL for business trips regularly.  I am a software sales rep, and have the Texas, OK, LA, AR region to cover.  It is in this context that this tale takes an unexpected turn, and causes the most reflection on my affair with the Viking my wife so regularly calls my mistress.

December 12, 2011.  I got out of bed, packed a suitcase, and went to my hangar.  I had filed a flight plan from GTU to XNA (Northwest Arkansas, Bentonville, AR) via the Cedar Creek VOR in order to avoid the DFW airspace.  It is a flight plan I was regularly taking during that time, as I was working on a deal with a small retail company up there.  It was a marginal VFR day, but I was filing IFR on every trip anyway.  There were some light showers along the route.  I opened the hangar, preflighted, loaded my bags, pulled out the plane and parked my truck in the hangar like I had done a hundred times before.  I started the engine.  I love the sound of that IO-520 coming to life.  Avionics Master on, I listened to ATIS and called for my clearance.  “Radar vectors to V-76, Waco, Cedar Creek, then direct.”  I knew that would be the clearance from my many trips along that route.  I taxied out, did a run up, and launched.  I was soon handed off to Gray Approach for the V-76 leg of the flight.  Normally, I would ask for direct to Cedar Creek, and be told to wait until I was with Waco.  However, good fortune was shining on me this morning, and I was immediately cleared direct to Cedar Creek.  The weather was better than forecast and the ride was smooth.

Right about the time I was crossing the Red River into Oklahoma, I got a text message from my co-worker who was meeting me at XNA on American Airlines.  He had been bumped from his flight, and wasn’t going to make it to his meeting.  I texted him back to meet me at the McKinney airport, and changed my flight plan with ATC to return to the DFW area.  I actually beat him to McKinney, refueled, and we launched for the trip up to XNA.  The flight was still mostly smooth, though the weather had begun to build up, and some of the trip was IFR.  We made a visual approach into XNA though, and went our separate ways to client meetings.

This is where the wheels came off the bus for me.  As I was sitting in my meeting, I lost the ability to pronounce words that required my lips and tongue.  This is sincerely limiting in the English language.  A little freaked out, I went to the closest ER.  The speech recovered very quickly, but the right side of my face was drooping and not fully working.  I was diagnosed with Bell’s Palsy, given some meds to take, and sent on my way.  Over the next few days, I struggled with drinking liquids and some other things, but it seemed to be getting better quickly…almost too quickly for Bell’s Palsy to be the right diagnosis.  I was a little concerned about my health and a major storm system confirmed my desire to take a commercial flight home for the weekend.  I was to return the following week for further meetings, so my plan became to bring the plane home then.  Over the weekend, I talked to Douglas, and convinced him to fly up commercially and join me for the flight home, just in case.

I wrapped up a series of meetings and completed the deal I was working on that following week on the 21^st of December.  Douglas met me at the Regional Jet Center and filed for the flight home.  As we walked out to the plane, I asked him to let me fly us home “just in case this medical stuff doesn’t pan out in my favor.”  He agreed.  I crawled in and started the engine.  Did I mention I love the sound that IO-520 makes when it comes to life?  It is combined with a smell that only comes from a Viking.  I inhaled, very purposefully.  It’s still in my nostrils.

I got a clearance of Direct to Cedar Creek, then Direct to GTU (Georgetown).  We departed, and I left the tower controllers with my usual greeting from our tower manager in Georgetown.  We wished each other a Merry Christmas, and “see you next year.”  The flight home was picture perfect in my mind.  Douglas and I talked about the deal I had just closed.  We talked about plans we had for the airplane, possible panel upgrades, and just generally about life.  I relaxed.  It was the first time I had done so in a while.  It was pure joy to fly that night.  We spent part of the flight in the clouds, so we got a little extra IFR time as well.  We approached Georgetown visually, and I lined up a long, straight in final approach.  As is typical, I was high, on purpose.  There are lots of houses and trees north of the airport, so I don’t take chances with a lost engine on approach.  I landed on runway 18 with 3 small squeaks.  I may not be great at a lot of things, and landing a Viking is something that takes a little practice.  But, once you have it down, and can nail it, it is one of the most satisfying feelings in the world.  I turned off by the gas pumps, taxied around the big hangars to my T-hangar.  We pushed the plane in, and I drove home.

The following morning, I went to see my primary Doctor.  He referred me to a neurologist, and on January 5^th, we did an MRI of my brain.  Less than an hour later, the Doctor called me to inform me that he believed I had a stroke.  I am 36 years old, and in general very healthy.  This was a shock.  My immediate knowledge was that I was out of flying for a while now.  Turns out that is 2 years before I can successfully apply for a medical certificate again.

While that sank in, I took solace in the humor that we discovered I do actually have a brain, and that it is damaged, as many have suspected for years.  I am fortunate that it was a very minor event, and I am doing well; however, I find that this chapter in my affair with Vikings may come to a close.  I have listed N89EL out on the market for sale.  I can’t justify the cost of keeping her, and I just can’t go out to the airport and take care of her without being able to go fly.

While there will undoubtedly be new chapters in this adventure, this one has come to a pause in life for a while.  Perhaps my wife will appreciate the extra affection without the Viking to get in the way.