A Passion for Flying...Where are Aviation Safety Ethics Today

Part 2-
Continued from 2/09/2013

The concept of mentoring and decision making was used as part of the Certified Flight Instructor’s mantra, at least with the flight instruction that I received in the 1960s. 

While my first lessons were with Mike Dewey of Dewey Aviation at the Santa Paula( KSZP) airport, and he was good…he soon became too busy. Dewey’s business was like this...flying from 7 a.m. on the weekends until dark.

As my father was getting his license I was hanging around the Dewey’s Fixed Base of Operations (FBO) during his instruction.

All the students were watching their wrist watches to see if it was their time to fly. When a plane landed and was five minutes late it backed up the schedule. My first lessons were only half-hours and this put a crimp in Dewey’s days.

Once my friend Tony, the son of Sammy Mason turned 17-years old he got his Private License and immediately started on getting his Commercial license and Certified Flight Instructor ratings.

He did both all in one day…on his 18^th birthday.

This thrilled my other airport friends Johnny, Harrison and Pete and my bother Vince as we spent our free time riding bicycles all over the airport checking each hangar to see what new was going on, or who was getting ready to go flying.

This meant that we could go flying, get instruction by renting a plane with fuel and pay our buddy now a professional pilot for our dream of learning to fly.

I mowed lawns, cleaned yards, raked leaves and pulled weeds every weekend to earn money to go flying. Once my lawns were done I hopped on my 10-speed bike and peddled down Ojai Road to the airport south of town.

Tony was professional, ethical and was a mirror of his father, dark complexion, bushy blondish eyebrows six feet tall wearing Ray-Ban aviator’s glasses. While he didn’t wear white dress shirts with epaulets, usually blue jeans, and a T-shirt with tennis shoes, his instruction style was thorough to the point and well explained.

Flying lessons with Tony were discussion before we flew, and after each lesson then he would sign his observations and pass you your logbook.

He posted progress and what we were going to do next on every entry in my logbook.

“Air work practicing power-off, power on stalls, slow flight…good recovery. Next lesson landing approach work. Anthony Mason, CFI #XXXXXX 1/29/68”

Tony had the inside scoop on everything airport at Santa Paula as not only was his father connected but his older brother was also flying almost daily.
 The Mason’s hangar was close to Dewey’s outfit and we used to all gather in the hangar and talk flying while we were challenged by Tony to questions about aeronautics.

One time we entered the Mason’s hangar and found two or three wooden crates in the back of the hangar covered with a foreign language shipped to a M. Slovak.
This piqued our curiosity and became the center of conversation...what aircraft could be in those huge wooden crates?

Growing up around this airport was like reliving the different stages of aviation from the 1920s to the apex of general aviation’s aircraft manufacturing in the 1900s. DeHavilland DH-5 mail plane, Travelair, Curtiss Robin, Monocoupe, Curtis PT-19, PT-22, Ryan STs, Aeronica Bathtub, Staggered Wing Beechcraft, Howard DGA, Stearman Biplane, Cessna T-50 “Bamboo Bomber,” AT-6, SNJ-4, Pitts Special S-1,2, Thorpe T-18, Cosmic Wind Goodyear Racer, Cassutt Racer, etc.

All these wonderful aircraft on one airport and all flown by professional pilots many who flew during the week at Van Nuys, Burbank, or Los Angeles International airports, keeping their personal aircraft at Santa Paula.
Soon we would find out what was in those boxes and what new aircraft would join our bevy of flying machines at the airport.

To be continued...Next: Our Brother in Flight Joins the Angels

A Passion for Flying...Where are Aviation Safety Ethics Today

 Teaching us to fly right!

               Sammy Mason


by Rob Stapleton

Its not hard to imagine how those of us who have been watching birds fly while growing up and admiring nature would yearn to fly ourselves.

It was not just the flapping of wings, or the circling above that first caught my eye it was the precision and exactness of a birds landing that interested me.

The glide into the area, the change in their wing's angle of attack, and then the back winging motion to set down in an exact spot.

Amazing, truly amazing, to see small and large birds land on telephone and power lines high above the streets were we were playing below.

Later I took this fascination to the local airport where I grew up.

Santa Paula, California had a family owned airport and once I could break away from my weekend chores it was a race to head to the airport. I rode my bicycle down Ojai Road as soon as the chores were done, once arriving it was pure joy to watch aircraft taxing for take off, rotating for take-off and the engine at full power climbing above.

Of course I always imagined that it was me, pushing the rudder pedals, checking the mags and then fire-walling the throttle to thrust forward and lurch into the sky.All the time adjusting the pitch for climb and soaring above my home town toward the clouds above.

This would become a passion that witnessed pilots from all over the world coming to our airport. Mira Slovak, Rex Wells, Mike Dewey, Steve McQueen, Cliff Roberts, others and then there was Sammy Mason.

Mason was a quiet man, religious balding with caterpillar bushy eyebrows, and a quick smile... a man of precision and decisive action.

He was the father of my friend, later to become my flight instructor Anthony "Tony" Mason. Named after Tony LeVier a aviation racer, and test pilot for Lockheed.

Tony's father Sammy was also a test pilot for Lockheed, and well known for his flying from his days when he led the Hollywood Hawks barnstorming group to aerial antics over California.

Has I transitioned from a nameless boy on a bike to a boy who liked to help clean aircraft and polish wind screens, conversations about aviation safety were easily heard in the hangars among aviators that used my talents.

My style was to work hard, act like I wasn't listening and then focus on what they were saying. This way they wouldn't stop, thus continuing the conversation about airspeed, engine settings, short field take offs and landings. Just the stuff any teenager would love to know, and do and do it I would.

What does any of this have to do with ethics or aviation safety you may ask? Most conversations rallied around the topic of flight safety. Be it aerobatics, racing or flying cross country it seemed that safety was the key word, and objective of these professionals.

Sometimes the rumor mill (which all airports possess) would be how one of the more experienced pilots would talk to another less experienced pilot to give him or her an idea of how close they were coming to their demise with their manner of flying.

Those of who feared and admired these pilots, and Mason was one of these were our idols.
To be continued-