Gone Flyin'

Gone Flyin is a book of eighty stories about flying, selected from years of weekly essays I wrote for a local newspaper. Originally created to curry local sentiment to the local airport, the stories soon shifted to the delights of local private flying with a later addition of commercial flying. It is not technical, in fact it often pushes back against technology in favor of artform.

It was once described as a book that a pilot would give his wife, so that she might understand his love of flight.

The popular media typically portrays aviation as a high- ticket world where speedy and powerful machines scorch their way through a sky shimmering with radar beams and obscure radio chatter. Gone Flyin' stands as a reminder that the grass airport aviation of 1940 has not disappeared , it has merely been covered over and nudged aside by the hype, technology and regulation of the succeeding generations. Airplanes, just like cars and boats, fly quite happily without electronic gizmos, nor do they need to fly fast, far, or high to inspire the artist that lies within an airman's heart.

For years, I was a flight instructor and aircraft mechanic, and in later years I flew a nightly cargo run. I also spent several hundred hours chugging along low and slow in my 1946 Commonwealth. The book has stories of all these things. I hope you enjoy them.

Life... Enjoy the ride!
Bob.