The school decided to start a new program to train Air Line pilots and contracted with a fixed base operator to do the flying and hired a ground instructor to teach in the college. He was to get the students ready to take the FAA exams. Well he was very intelligent and knew the material, he lacked skill as a teacher and his students were failing to pass the FAA exams. To keep accreditation 70% of the students had to pass the first time they set the exam and he was only getting a 40% first time pass.

The dean asked me to set in his classes and find out were his problems were and help him, as ground instructors were hard to find. Instead of accepting the help in the spirit it was given he became resentful and fought against it. I liked him and wanted very much to help him, but he set out to discredit me and destroy me in the eyes of the students.

I had only set in his classes a few times and had not talked to him much yet about his teaching, but he knew I was there to help him with it and turned on me right away. He started by telling the students I did not know anything about flying, which was to some extent true. But then he started trying to shame me in front of the students and the other teachers. One day we were in the cafeteria having coffee when he and some of his students came in. He came over and told me that they were going to Boise Idaho the next day to take their exams and started needling me because I was afraid to take one. It got to the place where I could not back down, so I went with them.

Knowing that I was not ready to take a pilot's exam I took the ground instructor's exam. I was a little worried about it as the instructor told me it was the hardest one to pass. But, as I was not ready for any exam, decided I had a better chance there than on any of the other exams as I was sure a large part of it would be on teaching methods.

The outcome was that I passed it, mostly on test taking skills as I did not know a lot of the material. They issued me a ground instructors licence and I returned to Ontario Oregon and TVCC.

I did not tell anyone that I had the licence as I knew that the only reason they were keeping him was that they could not find anyone with a ground instructor's licence to replace him. Then one day I was setting with some fellow teachers in the cafeteria and he came strutting up with some of his students and confronted me. It was a mistake, he should have asked me in privet, but he was sure, as I had not said anything, that I had failed the test. And he wanted to embarrass me in public. The whole thing with him was so unfortunate as I truly wanted to help him. If he had of accepted my help and worked at it he could have become a fine instructor. But, as it was, this was the final straw, and I just set there and let him ridicule me then, without a word, laid my licence on the table for everyone to see.

The result was dead silence. Then he slunk away. The Dean heard about what happened and that I had a ground instructor's licence and called me into his office. He told me that they had wanted to let that instructor go for some time, but had not been able to find someone with a ground instructor's licence and asked me if I would take over until they did. I told him I knew very little about the subject, but he felt if I worked hard I could do a better job than was being done, as I was intelligent enough to learn the material on my own. As the spring quarter was almost over we agreed that I would take over in the summer. That would let him finish out his contract as that would look better for him.

I studied as hard as I could to get ready to start teaching Aviation that summer. It took a lot of midnight oil, but we got through that summer class with a 90% first time pass and from then on I was the ground instructor. This meant teaching my self all I could about flying. It seams that on the whole I was doing a good job as the first time pass average remained above 90% and we had a number of ex-military pilots that had gotten out of the military to become airline pilots and thay were satisfied with the program and said so.

One time a ex-military pilot with over 1200 hrs of flight asked me how many hours I had flying. I asked him why he asked. And he said I have been through some of the best aviation training schools in the Navy and you are the best instructor I have ever had. You not only have good command of all the facts, but explain things so it is very easy to understand and in a way that it is easy to remember. I had to tell him I did not even have a privet pilot's licence.

This exchange did not hurt my standing with them as an instructor, but motivated me to move on from book learning. I started taking flying lessons working on my pilots licence and decided to rebuild a plane for experience. I was teaching navigation, meteorology, aerodynamics, aeronautics, as well as teaching methods for flight instructors, and thought rebuilding an airplane would give me some hands on experience in aeronautics.

This time I went about it right. I went to see Lee Coch the old German mechanic in Caldwell Idaho and told him what I was doing and he agreed to help. Then set out to find a plane to rebuild. I found a Piper Tri Pacer (PA-22) in Vale, a small town in Eastern Oregon, that was run out and could be bought cheap. The fabric was so bad one could put their finger through it and the engine needing a major overhaul. A mechanic friend and I looked it over and decided that it would hold together long enough to ferry it to Hubler field near Caldwell Idaho where Lee Cock had his shop. So I bought it 2 March 1968 and on 16 March 1968 set out gingerly for Idaho and made it. (See photos of the airplane at Vale)

That started a year of spare time work and commuting from Ontario to Caldwell. It, with Lee's help, turned out very good. I did the work and he did the bossing. When we had it open we found dates on the parts that showed it was built before Piper got the air worthiness certificate for Tri-pacers, so it must have been one of the first to be built.

On 22 March 1968 I started by striping the plane down to its frame. First removing the control surfaces and then took the wings off. striping the fabric off as each part was worked on, as it gave some protection to the parts. When working on the wings I lengthened them and put Ferguson droop wing tips on them.(See photos).

After finishing cleaning up the wings and control surface and recovering them (Photo)and spraying them with gray dope,(Photo) it was time to start on the body of the plane . As it was too early a model to have a baggage compartment; I rebuilt the frame to have one and a baggage door. Then came the recovering of the body.(Photo)

What I thought would be the easiest turned out to be the hardest. That was putting in the head liner in the cockpit, but the fabric on the body went easy enough. Then reassembling of the plane was a learning experience, especially getting it all alined correctly.

After the plane was reassembled, recovered and checked for alinement, it was time to paint it. A big job. Put on a coat, hand sand it, put on another coat, hand sand it and so on and so on. Till finally we had a beautiful finish and the plane was ready to go.

Then came the rebuilding of the engine. No small job in itself. Here Lee Cock did most of the work. He insisted on checking every step and even doing some of it himself.

By the time we finished the project, 1 March 1969, (Photo)I felt I had to sell the plane and recoup part of what was spent to do the job. That was not a problem as the plane came out a beauty and people were standing in line to buy it. I sold it to a flight club for $3000 and the right to fly it some times. I sure wish I still had it as it flew very well, but my goal had been accomplished and I learned a lot rebuilding it, so it served its purpose, and I had a lot of fun flying it anyway.

I had two emergency landings while flying it. Nether one the fault of the tri-Pacer. It always served well.

The first forced landing was at SeaTac airport in Seattle, Washington 28 March 1969. We were flying from Ontario to a small field close to Seattle. It had become so over cast we could not find the airport and Seattle Radio had given us as much help as they could and we still could not find it. By this time I was getting low on fuel from flying around looking for it and had gone back over SeaTac and was holding up there for landing clearance. They let me stay there until one tank was dry and the other was showing empty. I radioed them that I was out of gas and would soon be on their field, clearance or not, as I would have no choice.

They cleared me to land and had to wave off several jets so I could do so. This did not make them happy and when I landed they directed me directly to the gas pumps then sent a man out to watch them filled. He did not say anything and when the amount of gas they put in made it obvious that the tanks had been empty, he got back into his car and drove off. I never heard any more about it. They even let me tie down there for free.

When I left the next day they made me taxi to the end of the runway, when I could have taken off from the tie down pad as large as it was. Taking off on that runway I was up to altitude before I reached the end of the runway. I could have taken off crossways on the runway.

The next one was flying from Portland to Ontario 19 April 1969. Kenny Gaul and I had been to Portland, Oregon for a teachers conference and were returning to Ontario. We stopped at Troutdale, Oregon to check on something and when we landed there was a cross wind so strong that I had to land on one wheel and keep the windwards wing down in order to make a straight line. Fortunately the tie downs were to windward and I turned into the wind and taxied to a tie down, but had to keep the engine running to hold against the wind while Ken got out and tied us down.

When we finished our business at Troutdale the wind had died down and we took off for Ontario, Oregon. There was a cold front approaching, but it was not forecast to move east fast enough to give us any problems. In fact it was forecast to hang up over night west of the Cascades.

We were east of the cascades in that valley south of Pendleton, Oregon and had the mountains west of Baker between us and a clear pass to Baker or Ontario, when the clouds suddenly dropped down below the mountain tops and we were trapped in the valley. By the chart there was an airport near Ukiah, but we could not find it and so did not know for sure were we were. The weather was getting worse. As I said, when we took off there was a front approaching, but it was not expected to move east fast enough to get to us before we would be in Ontario. It was clear though that it had jumped the Cascades and was coming down on us, so prudent's dictated landing before it got too bad. We seen a small village or Forestry camp and it had a large school yard with a wheat field beside it with no fence between them. The wheat field was in stubble as it had been harvested and there was a row of Mobile homes beside the school yard so there was a good chance someone would be near.

I decided this was our best bet and landed there then taxied up to the barb wire fence just behind the mobile homes. A man came running out and stood there staring at us. I got out and said were are we. He said where did you come from and then before I could answer said this is Ukaih.

We told him we had gotten trapped in the valley as the clouds had lowered till they were lower than the tops of the mountains surrounding the valley. By this time there were a lot more people there and they got busy, one called the hotel, which was closed this time of year, and got them to open up and give us a room. Another took me to Pendleton to get some aviation gas as we were a little low from spending so much time flying around the valley. These were people that worked for the Forest Service and spent the winter there. Most of the workers only worked in the summer. The hotel did not charge us and the man that took me to Pendleton would not take anything for it. But it rained all night. The next morning was bright and clear and there was a lot of people there to watch us leave. It was a good thing they were there as the ground was so muddy that the airplane would not move and they had to push us till the airplane got up enough speed to keep moving. There must of been a lot of muddy clothes washed that day.

Fortunately the ground sloped down from the school yard were we started. The ground was so muddy that I could not get up to takeoff speed and finally had to lifted it off with the stall warning screaming and keep easing the nose down as the ground dropped away keeping the airplane in the ground effect so it would fly. The airplane was no more than inches off the ground all the way across the field and there was a fence at the end of the field. I looked over at Kenney and he was fixated on the fence and his hands were white from holding on. By the time we reached the fence it was picking up speed and I jerked back on the wheel and it soared a little into the air. Enough to miss the fence, then settle again, but the ground was still dropping away and now we were picking up speed and were soon able to clime.

After that, the rest of the trip home was uneventful and the old girl had proven herself.

An interesting aside: a few years later while teaching at Lane, a student came up to me after Christmas break. He said he had gone home for Christmas and his father was showing some slides and there I was on one of them by an airplane that had landed behind his home. That was exciting for me as I had not gotten a photo of the airplane after it was finished. The student wrote to his father and got the slide and I made copies of it. It is a little yellow as it was taken in the rising sun, (See Photo), but shows the plane off well.