by
Darryl Phillips
One of my favorite flying stories happened one dark night in south Florida. The year was 1968. I was a design engineer in Fort Lauderdale, and a manufacturers rep had chartered a DC3 to take about 20 of us electronics types to a technical conference in Orlando for the evening. A real DC3! I didn't care about the conference, but here was a chance for a free ride on THE classic. I wasn't going to pass that up.
The old taildragger appeared about 4 PM at the Bendix ramp on the north side of Executive airport. The first thing to go wrong was the announcement that they had been unable to get insurance to cover the flight. Someone suggested that if the trip went well it wouldn't matter, and if nobody lived through it then there wouldn't be any proof they ever told us that! The logic seemed sufficient, and we began to board.
In the rear of the cabin were the refreshments, with lots of ice and ready for consumption. Times have changed and it might not be acceptable today to supply that much booze. It amounted to about 2 quarts per passenger. And a couple of us didn't drink.
My buddy Joe Parchesky and I took front row seats where we had the best chance to peek into the cockpit. Joe wasn't yet a pilot at that time, I was a Mooney driver. We were enjoying every minute.
The flight to Orlando went well enough, once the imbibers were convinced that they had to sit in a seat, at least during takeoff. This was rapidly becoming a rowdy bunch. Several engineers preferred to sit in the rear of the cabin - on the floor with the booze. Weight and balance can't compete with scotch and soda.
By the time we got to Orlando it didn't matter that nobody had called ahead for enough taxis. It didn't matter that, after the 45 minute cab ride, we were too late for dinner. It didn't even matter that this really wasn't much of a technical conference.
After midnight we made our way back to the airport. The DC3 was parked in total darkness. No ramp lights, no moon, it was spooky dark out there. We were on board before we realized that we had no crew. They had day jobs, and had taken a room at the convention center to catch a few hours sleep. Nobody had told them the party was over. So here we were, on this totally darkened airplane with a sloping floor and passengers who couldn't tell the difference.
Joe and I had a discussion about DC3 battery capacity. After all, electronics engineers are supposed to know stuff like that. We didn't have any idea, but a DC3 is a lot bigger than a Mooney so it must have bigger batteries, right? We thought it would be nice to turn on the cabin lights. So I borrowed a book of matches and went up front.
I never did get the cabin lights turned on. I found the master battery switch, and the cabin light switch, and some other disconnect, but that wasn't enough. There is a cabin light secret known only to real DC3 drivers, some electronic Masonic handshake that is denied to mere mortals. To this day I don't know how to turn the lights on. But I was enjoying the experience immensely. Sitting in that leather seat, feeling around in the darkness for the controls, it was easy to let the imagination take over. The matches were all gone and it didn't matter. In the total blackness I was immersed in a half century of aviation history at it's finest. Pure ecstasy.
A Miami engineer who was feeling no pain made his way to the cockpit. He clapped me on the shoulder and asked how the flight was going. I replied that it was going well. (No need to burden him with the fact that we were firmly on the ground, or that I was too dumb to turn on a simple lightbulb.) He said it sure was smooth and I was doing a great job. And he headed back toward the refreshments.
Eventually I got to thinking that it might be embarrassing to be caught sitting in the captain's chair, so I rejoined Joe in the first row. A few minutes later that same engineer went up front to talk with the pilot again. We could hear him bumping around and muttering something. When he came out of that empty cockpit he looked rather gray and almost sober.
Finally the crew arrived, and they knew how to turn the lights on! We went through the same drill, trying to get people to sit in seats for takeoff. The first officer would get people in seats, then we would taxi out, then people wouldn't be in their seats anymore. It was a memorable experience.
Did I mention that it was a dark night? Flying over the Everglades on a moonless starless night is darker than dark. A number of the fellows were trying to sleep and someone asked the crew to turn off the cabin lights. It was one of those suspended-animation surrealistic scenes, with nothing but the rumble and vibration of those old round engines. I don't know how long we sat there. There was nothing to see, nothing to smell but cigarette smoke, a numbing sort of....HEY, that isn't cigarettes, that is SMOKE!! We're on fire, that is real thick smoke!
I went up front and asked the captain if he would please turn on the cabin lights so we could see to fight the fire.
Behind the first officer was an equipment rack. The radios looked old enough to have been soldered by Guglio Marconi himself. As the co-pilot came out of his seat he grabbed the fire bottle and caught me in the solar plexus, doubling me into the tiny space behind the radio rack as he passed. By the time I had caught my breath and disengaged myself from the wires and cables the excitement was all over.
In the rear of the cabin hung a curtain, made of mohair or something equally ancient. As the guys sat around the booze they had managed to pull the curtain down, and someone had dropped a lighted cigarette into it. The old drape was slowly smoldering, that's all it was.
The first officer had had enough. His patience had run out. He had passengers who wouldn't sit in their seats, they wouldn't behave, and now they had set fire to his airplane. He was shouting like a kindergarten teacher gone berserk. He made it abundantly clear that they would never ever fly for us again. For a moment I thought he was going to throw the remaining booze to the alligators.
I highly recommend the DC3. But please, sit in your seat.
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It's Sun'n Fun time again. April 9 - 15, Lakeland Florida. In my opinion this is the best show of the year. It's not quite as big as Oshkosh yet, and the mood is friendlier. Whatever your interest in aviation, you'll find it at Sun'n Fun. Antiques, classics, homebuilts, rotary wing, very lights and ultralights, warbirds, technical forums on every subject, vendors and dealers and manufacturers, they are all there. I'll be presenting a forum on Stirling aircraft powerplants.
If you make it to Sun'n Fun, be sure to come by the Airsport booth in the center of exhibit building "A" and say hello. We'll be displaying and demonstrating our Altitude Alerters and Transponder Monitors, and there may be a Stirling engine or two running also. Come see us.