My first taildragger instructor was Wally Olsen, a true gentleman of the cloth…dope and fabric that is. Wally had more hours in taildraggers of all types than he had whiskers and he had a lot of those. Wally came from the days before intercoms, therefore, his habit of speaking loudly and wearing cotton in his ears seemed perfectly natural to him..
One of Wally’s virtues was frugality. He always wore the same Sears gray work shirts and pants every day. Because he was no clothes horse, he could pass the savings on to the struggling flight students such as "yours truly." When Wally passed away a couple of years ago, planes were still being rented at Millplain Flying Service for $30 per hour with instructors charging $15 per hour. Of course instructors never got rich there but did develop an instinct for finding the next higher paying job just as soon as the hours were accrued.
When it came to maintenance on the airplanes, the basics were always done. Some of the planes, however, were a collection of spare parts salvaged from other planes that had met with disaster. Wally never worried about repainting the "new" metal planes as he called them. As a result, the Cessna 150 that I soloed in was four different colors the last time that I saw it. That airplane probably had 20,000 hours on it and only knew how to make left turns around the pattern like a poor carnival horse in the riding ring.
Wally’s attention to the bottom line was really reflected in the aircraft in his flying school. The old aircraft, two AC Champs and two TaylorCraft had no starters or radios (of course). The "new plane," the C-150 had the starter airline pilot kit installed (one navcom). I can still hear Wally saying in that insistent voice of his: "Keep ‘em simple, less to go wrong, Yessir!"
Stay tuned for more thoughts about Classic airplanes and personalities which will appear sporadically in future issues of Aspen News.
bt John Good
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