Learning a lesson on wind's effects

By Hank Billings,  4:57 p.m. CST November 15, 2015

The effects of wind on an airplane are interesting.

That’s why, as a former pilot, I study wind direction and speed by observing smoke or flags.

My earliest lesson in wind effect came when I was a young Sunday school student at St. John’s Episcopal Church.

The teacher, Charlie Peterson, told the class he was flying a light plane back from Kansas City and a stiff headwind caused him to be passed by cars on Highway 13 below him.

Eddie Rickenbacker, a World War I flying ace, was scheduled to make a speech in Springfield.

Lester Cox sent his twin-engine Beechcraft to St. Louis to pick up Rickenbacker.

At that time, Rickenbacker was president of Eastern Airlines.

I expected a young man in leather flying togs, but there emerged from the Eastern office an elderly man, slightly stooped, dressed in a business suit.

Cox had invited me to go along to interview Rickenbacker but warned me not to pester him.

So after a brief interview, I sat in the co-pilot’s seat, leaving Rickenbacker alone.

But soon he came up front and asked, “Do you have to help fly this airplane?”

“Certainly not,” I said.

Rickenbacker then said to come back so we could chat some more. We talked all the way to Springfield and I had a much better interview.

After we landed, Rickenbacker told the pilot, “That was a wonderful crosswind landing.”

The pilot beamed with pleasure at the compliment from the World War I ace.

A wing-walking act based its Stearman airplane at the Downtown Airport, on East Division Street, during the Ozark Empire Fair one year.

The narrator of the act invited me to ride on the top wing of the Stearman. I found out it was not “wing walking,” but “wing clinging.”

My feet were in stirrups on the top wing, my back was against a brace on the wing and I held onto wire attached to the wing.

But even at the Stearman’s relatively slow speed, my goggles were rattled so much by the relative wind that I was unable to see many sights as we circled the field and landed.

The young girl who rode where I rode on the top wing was later killed when the plane crashed during a Minnesota event. The pilot was seriously injured.

- Source:  http://www.news-leader.com