"Why should ignorance not be bliss, where knowledge will make no difference?"
~ Theodore Dalrymple
Once in a while I try to understand what is going on. The world seems to be run by monsters and madmen but, surely, I think, that can't be true; there must be a logic behind events that I am missing. Yet when I immerse myself in current affairs and politics, reading and studying until I become nauseated with what I discover, I find no answers, no understanding. All I'm left with is profound dismay and a deep foreboding for a future I can in no way influence, let alone avert. What have I done by bringing children into this world? How can I protect them from this horror? I find no answer.
So I turn my back on it all, ignore the world and focus on my own life and those who live it with me, live each day as it comes, immerse myself in the here and now, not merely ignoring, but refusing to notice what is going on outside our redoubt. May it be strong enough to preserve us.
Shine, perishing republic
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| Thomas Hart Benton's "Indifference" |
heavily thickening to empire,
And protest, only a bubble in the molten mass, pops
and sighs out, and the mass hardens,
I sadly smiling remember that the flower fades to make
fruit, the fruit rots to make earth.
Out of the mother; and through the spring exultances,
ripeness and decadence; and home to the mother.
You making haste haste on decay: not blameworthy; life
is good, be it stubbornly long or suddenly
A mortal splendor: meteors are not needed less than
mountains; shine, perishing republic.
But for my children, I would have them keep their
distance from the thickening center; corruption
Never has been compulsory, and when the cities lie at the
monster’s feet there are left the mountains.
And boys, be in nothing so moderate as in love of man,
a clever servant, insufferable master.
There is the trap that catches noblest spirits, that caught
—they say—God, when he walked on earth.
~ Robinson Jeffers
The Answer
To know that great civilizations have broken down intoviolence, and their tyrants come, many times before.
When open violence appears, to avoid it with honor or
choose the least ugly faction; these evils are essential.
To keep one’s own integrity, be merciful and uncorrupted
and not wish for evil; and not be duped
By dreams of universal justice or happiness. These dreams
will not be fulfilled.
To know this, and to know that however ugly the parts
appear the whole remains beautiful. A severed hand
Is an ugly thing, and man dissevered from the earth and
stars and his history...for contemplation or in fact...
Often appears atrociously ugly. Integrity is wholeness,
the greatest beauty is
Organic wholeness, the wholeness of life and things, the
divine beauty of the universe. Love that, not man
Apart from that, or else you will share man’s pitiful
confusions, or drown in despair when his days darken.
~ Robinson Jeffers
****************
Well, enough of that, as dad would say. On to the daily normal —
"The Beech 18 made me a pilot. I have to admit I approached it with some trepidation. It had a bad rep as a pilot eater but that airplane taught me how to fly. We
flew together for 12 years and it never gave me a moment's grief.
Honest and straightforward, exciting, and an airplane you could take
great pride in flying well. The
confidence I have in my flying skills is the direct result of the
experience I got and the lessons I learned in that big beautiful twin."
~ Tom Leatherwood
When I mentioned to el jefe that I thought our Twin Beech's service life was limited, he disagreed. He mentioned all the upgrades and mods that had made it a safer, better performing aircraft than it had been originally and said he didn't see why it wouldn't last as long as the B-52s are projected to (through 2050) and the ones flying now were all built in 1960 or 61, so only a few years
younger than our plane which has far fewer hours on it than the Stratofortresses.
He did agree with me about the Hoerner wingtips.
Then he mentioned the Piper Saratoga that suffered an in-flight break-up in a thunderstorm earlier this month in Tennessee. The wings broke off and the fuselage plunged to earth at 11,000 feet per minute. That plane was built in 1993, almost 
four decades after our Beech, yet, he reminded me, I'd flow through a powerful storm cell last summer with no problem at all. Right, no problem, I thought. But he had a point. Beech makes good airplanes and has from the beginning.
Thinking about what he said, I recalled the conversation I had at the airport burger shack with a former Air Force pilot who flew C-130Es in Iraq in 2007 and '08. The last one of these planes was built in 1962 and they all had seen hard service in Viet Nam and the first and second Iraq wars.
When I landed, he was refueling his Bonanza V-tail as I taxied up to the pumps. We got to chatting and continued the conversation over lunch.
He talked about his time in Iraq, especially the technique employed to avoid anti-aircraft fire and manpads when landing. It was called the 90/270. Flying at 8,000 feet, they would approach the airfield and center on the runway from three miles out, then dive steeply, pulling out below 1,000 feet. They would race toward the airfield at 280 knots just a few hundred feet above the ground then haul the plane into a 60-degree bank and turn 90 degrees, level off and immediately execute a 60-degree tight turn 270 degrees in the other direction, rolling out of the bank in line with the runway, drop 50 degrees of flaps, drop the gear, drop the flaps to 100 degrees, pull back the power just as the tires touched the runway, then go into full reverse props, stand on the brakes and stop the 135,000-pound beast in less than 2,000 feet.
I asked him if he had any qualms about flying that way in a 45-year-old airplane that had seen a lot of hard use and he said no. I mentioned the C-130A engaged in firefighting that, pulling up after dropping a load of retardant, lost both wings. He explained why that happened -- fatigue cracks in the wing doublers, stringers and skin that were not noticed and repaired. Shoddy inspection and maintenance will get you every time, he said. He mentioned that that plane had been in the Air Force inventory for decades with never a problem because the USAF takes care of its planes, but once it was sold to a civilian contractor it went into decline. The C-130E he flew in Iraq had more than 32,000 hours on it, he said, yet earned a "black letter initial," meaning the aircraft went with no
open maintenance issues the entire year and was rated a perfect
aircraft, ready for flight and a good flyer.
I asked what year his Bonanza was and he said 1952, so it was years older than our Twin Beech. He told me about a teenager who flew a 25-year-old Bonanza solo around the world some years ago. As long as you keep up with the airworthiness directives these old airplanes are perfectly safe to fly, he said, and better than a new type designed to be as light as possible to make it fuel efficient and to save material costs -- it's safe for a certain number of flight hours, but when it reaches that limit it has to be retired, there's no way to extend its life.
 |
| Old tech works if you can work it. |
I tried working on vaccines against bacterial diseases and I enjoyed that but realized my ability to contribute was limited unless I did graduate studies in the field to develop the required expertise. That was out. So I
was at loose ends, which was good for a while, enabling me to make some serious hiking and horseback journeys. I had a lot of thinking to do, in particular about what I was going to do with the rest of my life. Flying the Beech keeps me on my toes. It's not like a modern airplane with something like the Collins Aerospace Pro Line Fusion Avionics Suite which pretty much flies the airplane for you. You have to fly the Twin Beech yourself. Think ahead of it, anticipate what it's going to do from engine start to idle cut-off.
"Full
stalls can quickly get the attention of the new Beech 18 pilot. The
Beech 18s with the original round wing tips can roll over pretty quick
when a wing breaks during the stall and then she heads for the ground
real fast. The important lesson is twofold: You really have to work hard
at it to get into this situation as the Beech gives plenty of
indications early on that she is about done flying. The other important
lesson is that should a wing drop off in a stall the last thing you want
to do to raise that wing; that's just what comes naturally to most
pilots -- to use the ailerons. When you roll the ailerons in in
proportion to the excitement level multiplied by the bank angle, you
will stall that wing deeper and then you get to see what a Beech 18 is
like in a spin. Learn to keep the ailerons level and use the rudders. It
is a tough thing to do but a critical survival lesson in the Twin
Beech.
"The Beech 18 is a demanding aircraft that requires your undivided
attention but once you learn the rules and learn to listen to what she
is telling you then you can do wonderful things with the Beech. It's a marvelously good airplane that will be both a challenge and a true delight. "
~ Taigh Ramey
"One of my funniest recollections from back in the early '70s was starting the training of a former USAF C-7 Caribou pilot in the Beech 18. He had never flown a minute of tail wheel time. Starting the engines went well, but when he unlocked the tail wheel and released the brakes a comical series of random directional taxiing commenced. We did zigzags, we did 90 degree turns, we did 360 turns, we stopped, we started again, we stopped again. All that time we never made any progress in going in the desired direction.
After my stomach muscles were exhausted from laughing, he just looked at me and said, "You taxi this SOB!"
~ Charles Tilghman
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| Getting the annual, a polish and some upgrades. |
~ Doug Rozendaal
"Of
the dozens of airplanes I have had the pleasure to fly, from
J-3s to the Consolidated B-24 and even the SMS-1, nothing has ever been
as much raw fun as my Beech 18. Walter Beech just got everything right."
~ Walter Atkinson
"I've been fortunate to have flown a lot of very fun and cool airplanes, including DC-3s, a B-25, T-6s, biplanes and jets, and the Beech 18 is my absolute favorite airplane to fly. It is just the most pleasant, enjoyable airplane I've flown."
~ Andrew Hochhaus
"If you can fly a Twin Beech, you can fly most anything. It required more stick and rudder skills than any other airplane I ever few. Forty-two years and nine type ratings. Taught me a lot, loved that machine."
~ David Sims
"You cannot find the combination of cost per seat mile, performance, cool factor, nostalgia, and challenge of flying a real airplane that even comes close to the Twin Beech!"
~ Barry Hancock
"The Beech 18 is one of the sexiest airplanes ever made."
~ Sean Mollet
"The Twin Beech is forever. There is absolutely no doubt that somewhere in an obscure corner of the world there is a Model 18 turning final to a short stretch of broken asphalt or gravel, earning its keep. While many 18s are spit and polished and on display at fly-ins, there are still those out there working for a living. And there probably always will be."
~ Bud Davisson
Beech 18 Annual Out-of-Pocket Costs (2023):
Fixed Costs
Database updates 450
ForeFlight app 120
Insurance 7,500
Corporate tax prep 1,400
Annual 10,000
TOTAL FIXED 19,470
Variable Costs
Wash and wax 2,000
Fuel (173 hours) 41,520
Oil (300 quarts) 2,820
Filters 400
TOTAL VARIABLE 46,740
TOTAL OUT-OF-POCKET 66,210
That's about $2.00 per mile. In 2023, the standard mileage reimbursement rate for personal aircraft allowed by the GSA and accepted by the IRS was $1.74 per mile, so net expense is around $0.25 per mile. Two bits. Not bad.
