support your local B.A.M.F. (Airport Personalities, Part I - The Good)

I love airports.

As one particular pilot-author wrote, there is a feel to an airport like no other patch of ground.

Something about them seems hallowed, sacred somehow. You're closer to the sky at an airport than you are on the highest mountaintop. Just knowing that, upon that patch of ground, from that magical strip of cracked asphalt or uneven gravel, humans slip the surly bonds of earth and fling themselves headlong into the heavens...

Well, it gets the imagination going.

But there's another side to flying. The lofty dream cannot alone suspend you in midair. It's not all freedom of movement and the absolute beauty of unbroken ether. There's a dirty, grungy, sweaty, oily, gritty side to it, too. A practical side, a brainy side, a down-to-earth side, for lack of a better term. Airplanes are machines. They use internal combustion engines, burn fossil fuels, employ oil as a lubricant, shoot exhaust out their tailpipes, get covered with dust and mud, and are bolted together with a bazillion screws.

Airplanes don't run on dreams. It takes skill to operate them, practice, patience, diligence, intelligence, and a certain amount of intestinal fortitude.

Badassitude, in other words.

Even at an out-of-the-way airport like Apple Valley, there's lots of pilots. Some of 'em are permanent residents, with airplanes in their hangars, tantalizingly out of sight, a lucky glimpse to be caught on some auspicious weekend or holiday. Some pilots fly in on the weekends from Cable and Big Bear and Lancaster and Henderson and just sit and shoot the breeze.

Everybody's got a story to tell. A mishap in flight, a tricky situation, a close call, a dangerous maneuver, a feat of derring-do, a catastrophe neatly avoided. Aviation being what it is, almost every pilot, regardless of skill level, has some sort of hair-raising yarn to spin. And some of the older pilots tell stories that would blow your balls off.

But even these senior plane-drivers aren't the badasses I'm talking about. The real badasses are the ones who don't tell stories. Their stories are told by others.

We've got about five Joes at Apple Valley Airport. One of them is the one I fly with, otherwise known as JM-1. Complete badass. I could tell you why, but (a) I'd need an entire blog entry to cover it all and (b) the details might violate national security. Take my word for it, the man's an exemplary human being and a damn good flier, and that spells B.A.M.F. to me.
Then there's Old Joe, who customarily hangs around the flight school in the main terminal building. "Old " is libel—he's still spry for somebody going on 80 years. You'll find him any given day sitting in his chair by the coffeemaker, tennis shoes and sweat pants and blue baseball cap and signature crooked grin. Fought in two wars, he did. Korea and Vietnam. Flew all manner of bad-ass airplanes: the F-86 Sabre, the F-105 Thunderchief and the F-111 Aardvark to name a few. Wounded in combat. Purple Heart on his license plates. Been in and out of more airplanes and combat zones than you could ever know by looking at him. I've never asked how many aerial kills he had, but I'm working on it. Any serviceman or servicewoman has my respect, and veterans particularly so, but something about Joe just awes me. The things he must've done and the stuff he must've seen. I can bring up any warplane that flew during the 1950s or 60s and Joe will have seen it/sat in it/flown it. The man's got nothing to prove. He's a walking testament to that kind of quiet heroism and unassuming skill so common among our nation's veterans (and your typical flying B.A.M.F.).

And last, you've got Crazy Joe. Colorful character. Jeans, flannel shirts, baseball cap. (What is it with pilots and baseball caps?) Got pictures of bikini-clad boobs hung up in his hangar with the sprightly Pitts biplane and a souped-up Cessna 140. Flies for Hawaiian Airlines. They've been working him to death lately, he says with a shit-eating smile. There are certain circumstances under which yours truly would call flying to Hawaii and Australia multiple times per week "being worked to death," but they have yet to materialize. This guy does more flying in a year than most pilots cram into their whole lives. And I mean real flying: high winds and ice and storms and instrument conditions and whatnot.

I heard one story once which went like this:
Joe was coming in for a landing at Apple Valley in a hefty crosswind—back before they'd built a crosswind runway. Joe, realizing that the winds were too strong for his little 140 to land on the main runway, decided to land across it instead of along it. Somehow he brought his plane around and approached perpendicular to the runway. With only 150 feet to work with, he touched down on the dirt margin and managed to stop before he'd crossed the pavement.

Not to difficult to do in a Cessna 140, some might say. In 30-knot winds and with less than 200 feet of pavement, I'd call it the work of a B.A.M.F.

Now, everybody has their faults. Some pilots cut corners. Some of 'em talk your ear off. Some are knights in the sky but scoundrels at ground level. But the three Joes—and a half-dozen other pilots and mechanics I've met in the course of my just-begun flying career—are just three of the proficient, personable pilots I've had the privilege to know. The guys who not only impress you with their abilities, but'll share that know-how with you. You recognize them immediately by their warmth, generosity, and prodigious skill. They're everywhere; you just have to find them and get to know them. The rewards are indescribable.

So the next time you're at an airport and you happen across one of these Samaritan savants, extend a hand and say:

"Thanks for your bad-ass motherfuckery."

And tell them I sent you.