Soon after, I got a call from Red Wallis, the Chief Pilot at North Central Airlines in Minnesota. He offered me a job and I took it. This was in 1965 and the frozen north was very different from Florida by a long shot- twelve feet of snow for months at a time!
When I got to Minneapolis’s and checked in with Captain Wallis. I had a warm weather type rating and very little money. He paid for a motel for month and loaned me a company car. There were only six of us in the class. Our class room was an old school house near the Minneapolis airport not too much different from the one in Island Heights. I felt right at home-except for the snow which was something you just don’t see much of in Florida!
The North Central instrument instruction was interesting- a “link Trainer” located in the dusty dim basement of a local high school. This is a little miniature aircraft designed by Ed Link, who, in the thirties, operated a flying school. Because of the economic depression at that time, flying lessons were too expensive for most people. Link got the idea to shorten the lessons by using a ground trainer. His father ran a factory where organs and pianos were made. He got the idea to use the suction vacuum techniques of these instruments for the construction of an aviation trainer. The vacuum pump and bellows could be used for simulating the pitching, turning and banking of an aircraft.
Link constructed a machine, more or less resembling an aircraft, which could imitate its movements around its three axes. In the beginning, the trainer was meant for instruction only of visual flight. Link used it in his flying school but it raised no demands from other schools, although he did sell some of his trainers to amusement parks. Nevertheless, he continued improving them by adding instruments for blind flying.
Because many accidents occurred during the nightly Mail flights, the American Army Air force took over these flights from the many private operators in 1934. Utterly failing by the way, and having even more accidents. The importance of flying instruments during night flights and in clouds became evident. Link got his first order for the trainer. The benefits of the Link trainer had become clear.
Interestingly, the second customer for the Link trainer was the Japanese Imperial Navy in 1935. Many Japanese pilots were trained in these and used their skills and knowledge fighting the American planes in WW-II. At the end of the thirties, a number of airline companies, including the Dutch KLM, and many air forces used the Link. During WW-II half a million pilots got their flying training in the Link trainers.
When I finished training, Captain Wallis offered me a deal on a used uniform, a Jacket, two pair of pants, overcoat and hat for twenty bucks. What a bargain- you could hardly notice the missing stripe on the sleeves. One of the Captains had quit to join Pan Am as a co-pilot. Years later, working for the “Homeless News” on 36th street, he must have realized how stupid his career choice was. Pan Am went out of business while all the North Central pilots were flying captain on 747’s for North West.
I had rented a small one room apartment in Minneapolis and, after the security and first months rent, had enough left over for a blanket, a pillow, a box of dry milk , some cereal a bowl and a spoon. The next door neighbors, two flight attendants, made the days off through the long winter interesting. Both gals were blue eyed blondes with Scandinavian heritage and had grown up in Minneapolis. In the case of Janet and Patty it was lots of snow, no where to go, a warm room and rum and coke.
Winter months flying the DC-3 was interesting- The -3 will carry a lot of ice- probably more than most modern aircraft. The wing has a significant lift component created by the differential pressure that makes any aircraft fly. Air moves faster, sliding as it does, over the curved top of the wing than the flat bottom where is moves at a speed only equal to the forward speed of the plane. This creates a differential pressure of a fraction of a pound per square inch with the lower pressure being on the top surface. With the aircraft’s huge wing, 105 ‘ long, it only takes a small difference in pressure over those many hundreds of thousands of square inches of wing to lift the planes 25,200 lbs into the air at just sixty knots.
One day, flying directly into the face of a monster Canadian blizzard, we flew for an hour and didn’t move a mile - the company ordered us to return and we whizzed back to Minneapolis with a 300 knot ground speed which I think is some kind of all-time, over the ground speed record for a DC-3. When we landed the wind was really kicking up with gusts to sixty knots. The aircraft touched down at about twenty over the ground. Truth be told, we shouldn’t have taken off at all- That was dumb.
I bid on a lot of three day trips with North Central, Bemidji, Brainerd, Thief River Falls and on into Minot North Dakota where we spent the night. The next day we made our way south to Omaha and the next day back to Minneapolis through Hibbing, and a lot of other tiny Midwest towns that I have forgotten.
The Captain on the North Central birds had a little 8” x 4” electric anti- icing -panel fastened to his windshield to keep the ice from completely covering his view and give him some forward visibility. The co–pilot didn’t have this luxury- not like the heated windshields of today’s modern aircraft. In really bad icing conditions the co-pilot had no visibility. We flew like this many times all winter long. The cabin and cockpit were heated by a gasoline heater (janitrol) which was a truly cranky, temperamental and dangerous device. The First Officers job was to keep it running- watching the ram air and adjusting the controls. If it quit and couldn’t be started, this was an emergency. You had to land and soon, before you and the passenger’s froze to death. A co-pilot in the North Central DC-3’s who couldn’t keep the dammed thing running was worthless.
North Central did something that, in 1965, was different than any other airline that I am aware of. They taught their pilots how to fly the “Range Adcock Approach.” Minot ND was the only US airport that had one of these cranky cumbersome and decidedly difficult approach systems still operable. In the 40’s and 50’s they were more common but in 1965, with ILS and VOR’s, the “Range” had had its day. Why this one was still running in a mystery. I think it was just to torture North Central FNG’s.
Anyway, the idea is that there are four radio defined legs that can be identified by compass headings and flying several types of approaches. One is the “fade parallel” that tells you if you are flying toward or away for the center of the signal ( airport) by steering a heading matching one of the legs, preferably, the one you think you’re nearest to and seeing if the signal fades or strengthens. Once you determine more or less, where in the hell you think you are, you then fly a “fade perpendicular” which calls for a turn to a heading ninety degrees to one of the legs. Continuing this heading, you will hopefully ( theoretically) hear a “dit” or a “dit da,” ( morse for “N” dit or a single dot or dit da , a dot followed by a dash, for an “A.” After hearing one of these followed by a steady buzz, you knew that you were passing through the center line of one of the 4 legs of the approach and because of your heading you should know which one. Now, you can fly a heading toward the station, as you get closer, the steady buzz becomes stronger and any drift to the left or the right delivers the “A” or “N” to tell you which way to correct. If you hear an “A”, turn a little right for the steady buzz of the center line and if you hear the “N,” correct left. I think!
I learned how to do this, we all did- but it is not easy and very confusing. The older North Central captains
