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Test Pilot

Chapter 30: MUCH!
By James Collins
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About This Book

A former army aviator presents a collection of personal essays and reports recounting his rise from modest origins through flight training to a career as a test and stunt pilot. Chapters mix technical descriptions of dive testing, aerial combat, and cross-country flying with vivid accounts of crashes, near-misses, and efforts to refine aircraft performance. Interwoven are reflections on the physical and psychological demands of flying, the teamwork and rivalry among pilots, and the pull of danger that motivates high-risk testing. The narrative alternates between autobiographical memoir, incident-driven stories, and practical observations about piloting technique, safety, and the culture of early aviation.

MUCH!

Somebody asked me one day what kind of an airplane I flew. I told him any kind anybody was willing to pay me for flying.

“But don’t you own an airplane?” the man asked.

“No,” I answered. “And furthermore,” I added, “I have never owned an airplane, although I have been a professional pilot for eleven years.”

Why?

Well, I can best explain that as I explained it to a little boy once out in California.

I was at the Lockheed factory. I had been there several months, supervising the construction of an airplane I had sold to a rich sportsman pilot in the East. It was a Lockheed Sirius plane and at that time a ship which was taking everybody’s eyes as the latest and sleekest thing yet developed by the engineers. Lindbergh had just popularized it by flying himself and his wife across the country in it and establishing a new transcontinental record.

They rolled my ship out on the line one bright, sunny day and I must say that in its shiny new red-and-white paint job and its clean, sweeping lines it certainly was a beautiful sight sitting there glistening in that California sunshine.

A little boy who had crawled over the factory fence despite the “No Trespassing” sign evidently thought so too, for he was standing there gazing raptly at it with eyes as big as silver dollars when I stalked out toward the ship to make a first test hop in it. He intercepted me neatly as I rounded the wing tip and approached the cockpit.

“Ooh, mister,” he said, “do you own that ship?”

“No, sonny,” I answered. “I merely fly it. I find that that is less expensive and more fun.”