Michael Stump
Member
Hello! Remember me? I hope so. It’s good to be back! As a gyro CFI? Nope. As a Rotax engine overhaul shop owner? Not quite. As an Experimental/Ultralight aircraft maintenance/fab/repair shop owner? I don’t think so. As a Bell 47 helo driver? Maybe… But for today, just as plain ‘ol Mike, a quickly-aging, rapidly-graying man terribly humbled and exhausted by the overwhelming act of having twins at a relatively late age in life, and losing the valuable second income that my wife consistently delivered for years. I never had kids before; I was terrifically afraid of the thought. Well, I have ‘em now and it appears that I’m not turning back. And, I am flat-ass tired.
I’m sorry I’ve missed out on so much, but I had to take a couple of years away from aviation to help grow my family and it has been beyond-difficult to actually free-up even a small amount of time for this forum and a few other relaxing activities. Even then, there still isn’t much opportunity but I’ll give it a good shot. I guess it’s a good thing I type pretty quickly.
So, twins girls, no less. The next two decades or more are going to be tough. I hope I actually survive them because I have a suspicion (call it gut feel) that I might not. I think I’ll be dead by 50, and I am 40 now, but this is in my heart yet I don’t want it to be. I want to be there for my girls forever, but my body tells me otherwise. I shouldn’t be so trashed at my age, but I am. I expected too much out of SkyTech, I guess, and ran myself into the ground. I hope I didn't dissatisfy anyone by my rapid departure.
I’m seeing a lot of familiar names out there and a few new ones on the forum. I am very pleased to see the forum as strong as always and that the gyro community keeps on tickin’…. A great job by Todd and the users for keeping this THE place to talk rotors, or whatever else. I am so pleased that it is still here.
My apologies if it is inappropriate to start a new thread for this kind of non-rotorcraft “fluff,” but please excuse me because I am still not familiar or comfortable with proper “forum etiquette” (look at my number of postings; I am not an expert by any means). I needed a place to say hello and let the world know that I am not dead yet. I’m doing the best that I can with the knowledge that I have. Ripping me a new one isn’t necessary. Please don’t hurt me; rather, use constructive criticism if I am out-of-line.
Somebody recently asked me outside of the forum if I would return to flying, specifically as a Gyro CFI. My answer is “Only as an act of sheer desperation. Even then it would take a hell of a lot for me to even remotely consider it, and even if I did think about it, the answer would still be “no,” so I guess I will never fly as gyro CFI again.” It simply can no longer fit into my life anymore because of the kids, my hellatious job, my wife, my house full of unfinished projects, and the blatant lack of money. We’ve become rather poor, to be honest and blunt about it. The way to make a small fortune in aviation is to start with a large one, right?
As a gyro CFI, I found that on occasion, a student would ignore my advice and do things that got them into trouble when my back was turned, in their own machines and at locations that I elected generally not to visit (such as El Mirage, because I had a nice paved runway at my disposal that was close to where I lived…who needs a crappy, dirty-ass dry lake bed when you have a real airport with real avgas and real airplanes and a real café and a real Unicom and a real hangar with electricity, concrete floor and bathrooms with real running water?).
These students are adults and are going to do what they want to because they can….they have had between 1-5 hours of dual logged and are immortal gyro-drivers that can’t get hurt because they know everything there is to know and they’ve read the damned Bensen manual and they think that the minimal amount of training just to get going is all they need. Yeah, right. “Who needs a CFI anyway? Bensen didn’t have one….” Whatever. Don’t invite me to your funeral.
I couldn’t contribute to that situation any longer….too emotional and I felt responsible, even though I wasn’t. It is hard to sleep when you hear that your student has rolled their machine and destroyed it. “He only became a paraplegic….look at the bright side, at least he has use of his arms and hands…” OK, so maybe I exaggerate, but still. I think you can appreciate my perspective.
Mind you, sometimes this happens only after a handful of hours and no solo endorsement and without the CFI “permission,” but it happens anyway and you wear it for the rest of your life. Well, at least I do. More so, especially if they had been hurt. I once had a student do the high-speed-taxi-acrobatic-rollover-act in a new RAF 2000 and fortunately there were no injuries, but there could have easily been a fatality if the dice rolled just a little bit differently and this yahoo had first gone airborne. Why the hell were you even taxiing?
Yeah, somebody told the FSDO that I was the CFI. I had to explain myself to the local FAA/FSDO guys for about 6375 hours and luckily for me, they understood and agreed with my angle. I got the old “you didn’t do anything wrong, but don’t do it again” kind of response. Don’t they call that something like a “709 checkride?” I don’t recall, but I passed the exam/interview/checkride and they agreed that it wasn’t my fault and there wasn’t much I could have done to prevent the situation. They threw out something like “Solo flights are traditionally supervised. You should have been supervising this activity...” I threw out “Yeah, according to tradition and as a stretch, Advisory Circulars, but not regulations. There are no regs that require me to supervise solo.” They said, “Uhhhhh.” “Uhhhhh.” "Uhhhhh." It ultimately doesn’t matter anymore anyway. So, what’s a CFI to do? Lesson: Don’t be afraid of the FAA; they are actually very nice people. Homo-sapiens, just like you and me.
This commentary should not be interpreted as “Mike will never fly again.” Granted, I did let all of my ratings lapse. This should really be rephrased as: I am still Commercial gyro and helo rated, but don’t have a current medical certificate and thus am not legal to fly right now. I need my medical and BFR and I can be back in the saddle tomorrow if I so choose. As much as I would love to, I just can’t right now. Maybe later.
I miss my first gyro, a single-place “classic-style” Air Command Commander tremendously (she started as an early, dangerous, banned-in-England-eventually Fetters model without the CL thrust—pre-Commander Elite era. An early-80’s bird. She was even equipped in the beginning with the super-short-coupled tail group, the single 2x2 mast, and even the pump stick. And, she was equipped with the sweet, inverted Rotax 532, my favorite engine on the face of the earth--she was so reliable!). Of course, I did upgrade later to the longer rear keel tube, redundant mast, 6x6 spun aluminum wheels with hydraulic brakes, late-model cyclic and an awesome SkySports instrument pod. And heck yes, I kept the 532, upside-down! Who says inverted Rotaxes aren’t reliable? They can be if you know what you are doing. Mine never skipped a beat after 3.14 billion flight hours. I guess I knew what I was doing.
As an unrelated side note, my first CFI was Tony Stone (shhhhh….currently residing in Wales….shhhhh…. I know somebody that insists they spoke to him fairly recently…shhhhh…. Tony was disliked by many but was a good friend of mine at the time. I helped build one of his last machines before his departure, an EA-81-powered side-by-side. I am going to make an effort to contact him someday soon just to see what’s up. One can easily fabricate “fatal bar room brawl” stories to hide themselves, but that’s another story….so shhhhh for now….). I’ll let you know what I come up with, if anything.
I went on to get my ratings from a “real” instructor-slash-designated pilot examiner, one Mr. James P. Mayfield and his partner, the very pleasant Terry Brandt (I hope I got that name right). Jim. My hero. The greatest gyro pilot/CFI/Examiner on the planet, IMHO. Flew his Parsons-type with the Mazda rotary as well as the RAF 2000. The Parson’s had extreme balls, by the way. Scared the crap out of me at full-Monte. I wonder what happened to it. Jim?
I soloed in the sickest piece of gyro hardware in existence…the killer early Commander. I soloed at Bear Creek Airport (a.k.a. Thompson Airfield) in Murrieta, California. Tony Stone’s home base at the time and a place that I am sure Mayfield will remember, because I think he flew-in there in his military days out of Camp Pendleton (my apologies if I am mistaken). It’s long been closed down and is a fenced-off overgrown mess at this point with nothing on it…no buildings, no runway….just simply gone. It is a field, not an airfield.
A bad-ass piece of machinery that Commander was, but Jim could have taught me how to fly a broomstick handle backwards with a turbine engine on it safely, for Pete’s sake (who is Pete, anyway?). For those who don’t know Jim, he is simply the best, IMHO. Hands down. He’s on this forum. He saved my ass from PIO-induced fatalities many times in my Commander and he doesn’t even know it yet (well, I guess he does now). Smart son-of-a-gun.
I got into vicious PIO in my Commander a few times early–on, and I would have died if it weren’t for the fact that I instantly remembered and applied what Jim had taught me, and so I recovered immediately. Never had PIO again after acquiring my Private ticket, and I am here to talk about it. I realize now that Tony hadn’t taught me squat. I flew one of the gnarliest, unforgiving pieces of hardware on earth and yes, I would not hesitate to do it again because I KNOW HOW. And yes, I still believe in that unstable-ass early Commander design. I just love it and yep, I’d fly one again. Successfully. Because I know how. Thank you Jim.
Maybe I’ll buy a more stable gyro platform now that there is so much hype around it these days (after I solve the affordability issue), but in my heart of hearts, I actually miss the ’ol Bell 47 helicopter much more significantly (my main focus, post 9/11). She and I had very good times together for what seemed like a gazillion hours. I think I put more hours on her in a couple of years than I did in ten in gyros. I flew the crap out of her every day I could. Rain, sleet, storm, hail…it didn’t matter. She was mine when I was in command. And I was keeping that seat warm as much and as often as I possibly could.
I understood her every quirk, vibration, and spurt of oil all over her drivetrain (not to mention the ground underneath her when she was parked; what a mess). She was a great “thumper” of a helicopter and performed, well, like a Bell 47 with wood blades and 200 horses or so should. Not a rocket ship by any stretch of the imagination, but still a wonderful machine that simply thumped you from one place to the next. When you heard that certain whine of the transmission, you knew that all was well. No other helo sounds or flies or whines like the Bell 47. You could drop all the gauges and just fly on the tranny-whine by itself. My guess is that some Korean-war era pilots probably did just that. Damn, what a great machine.
Makes me almost wish I was the age where I could have been Maverick and flown the Huey in ‘Nam, cuz I think I would have done it. I really do. Hueys are just bitchen. The Robinson R22? Yeah, had a few hours in that lightweight weedwhacker of a helo….too sketchy for me. Rotor inertia problems. You have to wonder about an aircraft that is so dangerous that it has its own section of the FARs just to inform you of its deficiencies…
What happened to the Bell 47, you may ask? Well, it’s unfortunate. A student elected to attempt a maneuver necessary for a solo endorsement but not recommended (and advised against) in early solo. The long story short is that, during a solo flight with an attempted run-on landing (“stuck-pedal” scenario, if I recall; not recommended to attempt in early solo flight), a bounce and an abrupt cyclic input caused rotors to meet tail boom very formally. You can visualize the rest.
Injuries? Yep, serious, but recoverable and recovered. The helo? Well, you can visualize I am sure. Probably not pretty. I did not witness the accident myself but heard about it almost immediately after it happened. It was an on-airport accident with an operating tower, so as you can imagine, there was support personnel on-scene immediately. I was some distance away at the time, but ultimately realized that didn’t have the heart to go see what was left of the machine I had become so familiar with. Let somebody else deal with it since it was scrap at that point anyway. She was, in a strange way, my baby; I couldn’t bear to see her in shreds.
I am considering getting back into the Bell 47 just for “joyriding” purposes, or perhaps some commercial activity as side job. It’s not the greatest with a permanently-attached camera mount as a photo platform (unless you want really blurry pictures; the Bell 47 was not known for the smoothest ride on the planet), but they do OK for certain other work. We’ll see. Not today, but maybe tomorrow. It’s an affordability problem at this point (and I thought kids would be relatively inexpensive!). Basically, here’s the issue: Four mouths to feed. One measly income. Nothing is affordable, including cable TV and things most of you are used to, such as electricity and running water.
I hope you all have been well. Me? I have since begun to rapidly turn gray and I am tired. Damn tired, but I have to keep it all going for the girls. All three of them. Just so you know, 9/11 is another other major factor in what killed my business. I’d love to hear a hello or two from some of you that I know (knew?) here on the forum. If not now, that’s OK, because there’s always tomorrow (theoretically speaking, of course).
I’ve missed you guys, the forum, flying, and the feeling of freedom and actually having money to spend on aviation. Let’s just hope the old saying that “history repeats itself” is actually true. If it is, then I’ll hear you guys on the radio near some tower someday. I’ll advise that I am maintaining visual separation. I’ll look for your rotor disk….and so that is my desire.
I’m sorry I’ve missed out on so much, but I had to take a couple of years away from aviation to help grow my family and it has been beyond-difficult to actually free-up even a small amount of time for this forum and a few other relaxing activities. Even then, there still isn’t much opportunity but I’ll give it a good shot. I guess it’s a good thing I type pretty quickly.
So, twins girls, no less. The next two decades or more are going to be tough. I hope I actually survive them because I have a suspicion (call it gut feel) that I might not. I think I’ll be dead by 50, and I am 40 now, but this is in my heart yet I don’t want it to be. I want to be there for my girls forever, but my body tells me otherwise. I shouldn’t be so trashed at my age, but I am. I expected too much out of SkyTech, I guess, and ran myself into the ground. I hope I didn't dissatisfy anyone by my rapid departure.
I’m seeing a lot of familiar names out there and a few new ones on the forum. I am very pleased to see the forum as strong as always and that the gyro community keeps on tickin’…. A great job by Todd and the users for keeping this THE place to talk rotors, or whatever else. I am so pleased that it is still here.
My apologies if it is inappropriate to start a new thread for this kind of non-rotorcraft “fluff,” but please excuse me because I am still not familiar or comfortable with proper “forum etiquette” (look at my number of postings; I am not an expert by any means). I needed a place to say hello and let the world know that I am not dead yet. I’m doing the best that I can with the knowledge that I have. Ripping me a new one isn’t necessary. Please don’t hurt me; rather, use constructive criticism if I am out-of-line.
Somebody recently asked me outside of the forum if I would return to flying, specifically as a Gyro CFI. My answer is “Only as an act of sheer desperation. Even then it would take a hell of a lot for me to even remotely consider it, and even if I did think about it, the answer would still be “no,” so I guess I will never fly as gyro CFI again.” It simply can no longer fit into my life anymore because of the kids, my hellatious job, my wife, my house full of unfinished projects, and the blatant lack of money. We’ve become rather poor, to be honest and blunt about it. The way to make a small fortune in aviation is to start with a large one, right?
As a gyro CFI, I found that on occasion, a student would ignore my advice and do things that got them into trouble when my back was turned, in their own machines and at locations that I elected generally not to visit (such as El Mirage, because I had a nice paved runway at my disposal that was close to where I lived…who needs a crappy, dirty-ass dry lake bed when you have a real airport with real avgas and real airplanes and a real café and a real Unicom and a real hangar with electricity, concrete floor and bathrooms with real running water?).
These students are adults and are going to do what they want to because they can….they have had between 1-5 hours of dual logged and are immortal gyro-drivers that can’t get hurt because they know everything there is to know and they’ve read the damned Bensen manual and they think that the minimal amount of training just to get going is all they need. Yeah, right. “Who needs a CFI anyway? Bensen didn’t have one….” Whatever. Don’t invite me to your funeral.
I couldn’t contribute to that situation any longer….too emotional and I felt responsible, even though I wasn’t. It is hard to sleep when you hear that your student has rolled their machine and destroyed it. “He only became a paraplegic….look at the bright side, at least he has use of his arms and hands…” OK, so maybe I exaggerate, but still. I think you can appreciate my perspective.
Mind you, sometimes this happens only after a handful of hours and no solo endorsement and without the CFI “permission,” but it happens anyway and you wear it for the rest of your life. Well, at least I do. More so, especially if they had been hurt. I once had a student do the high-speed-taxi-acrobatic-rollover-act in a new RAF 2000 and fortunately there were no injuries, but there could have easily been a fatality if the dice rolled just a little bit differently and this yahoo had first gone airborne. Why the hell were you even taxiing?
Yeah, somebody told the FSDO that I was the CFI. I had to explain myself to the local FAA/FSDO guys for about 6375 hours and luckily for me, they understood and agreed with my angle. I got the old “you didn’t do anything wrong, but don’t do it again” kind of response. Don’t they call that something like a “709 checkride?” I don’t recall, but I passed the exam/interview/checkride and they agreed that it wasn’t my fault and there wasn’t much I could have done to prevent the situation. They threw out something like “Solo flights are traditionally supervised. You should have been supervising this activity...” I threw out “Yeah, according to tradition and as a stretch, Advisory Circulars, but not regulations. There are no regs that require me to supervise solo.” They said, “Uhhhhh.” “Uhhhhh.” "Uhhhhh." It ultimately doesn’t matter anymore anyway. So, what’s a CFI to do? Lesson: Don’t be afraid of the FAA; they are actually very nice people. Homo-sapiens, just like you and me.
This commentary should not be interpreted as “Mike will never fly again.” Granted, I did let all of my ratings lapse. This should really be rephrased as: I am still Commercial gyro and helo rated, but don’t have a current medical certificate and thus am not legal to fly right now. I need my medical and BFR and I can be back in the saddle tomorrow if I so choose. As much as I would love to, I just can’t right now. Maybe later.
I miss my first gyro, a single-place “classic-style” Air Command Commander tremendously (she started as an early, dangerous, banned-in-England-eventually Fetters model without the CL thrust—pre-Commander Elite era. An early-80’s bird. She was even equipped in the beginning with the super-short-coupled tail group, the single 2x2 mast, and even the pump stick. And, she was equipped with the sweet, inverted Rotax 532, my favorite engine on the face of the earth--she was so reliable!). Of course, I did upgrade later to the longer rear keel tube, redundant mast, 6x6 spun aluminum wheels with hydraulic brakes, late-model cyclic and an awesome SkySports instrument pod. And heck yes, I kept the 532, upside-down! Who says inverted Rotaxes aren’t reliable? They can be if you know what you are doing. Mine never skipped a beat after 3.14 billion flight hours. I guess I knew what I was doing.
As an unrelated side note, my first CFI was Tony Stone (shhhhh….currently residing in Wales….shhhhh…. I know somebody that insists they spoke to him fairly recently…shhhhh…. Tony was disliked by many but was a good friend of mine at the time. I helped build one of his last machines before his departure, an EA-81-powered side-by-side. I am going to make an effort to contact him someday soon just to see what’s up. One can easily fabricate “fatal bar room brawl” stories to hide themselves, but that’s another story….so shhhhh for now….). I’ll let you know what I come up with, if anything.
I went on to get my ratings from a “real” instructor-slash-designated pilot examiner, one Mr. James P. Mayfield and his partner, the very pleasant Terry Brandt (I hope I got that name right). Jim. My hero. The greatest gyro pilot/CFI/Examiner on the planet, IMHO. Flew his Parsons-type with the Mazda rotary as well as the RAF 2000. The Parson’s had extreme balls, by the way. Scared the crap out of me at full-Monte. I wonder what happened to it. Jim?
I soloed in the sickest piece of gyro hardware in existence…the killer early Commander. I soloed at Bear Creek Airport (a.k.a. Thompson Airfield) in Murrieta, California. Tony Stone’s home base at the time and a place that I am sure Mayfield will remember, because I think he flew-in there in his military days out of Camp Pendleton (my apologies if I am mistaken). It’s long been closed down and is a fenced-off overgrown mess at this point with nothing on it…no buildings, no runway….just simply gone. It is a field, not an airfield.
A bad-ass piece of machinery that Commander was, but Jim could have taught me how to fly a broomstick handle backwards with a turbine engine on it safely, for Pete’s sake (who is Pete, anyway?). For those who don’t know Jim, he is simply the best, IMHO. Hands down. He’s on this forum. He saved my ass from PIO-induced fatalities many times in my Commander and he doesn’t even know it yet (well, I guess he does now). Smart son-of-a-gun.
I got into vicious PIO in my Commander a few times early–on, and I would have died if it weren’t for the fact that I instantly remembered and applied what Jim had taught me, and so I recovered immediately. Never had PIO again after acquiring my Private ticket, and I am here to talk about it. I realize now that Tony hadn’t taught me squat. I flew one of the gnarliest, unforgiving pieces of hardware on earth and yes, I would not hesitate to do it again because I KNOW HOW. And yes, I still believe in that unstable-ass early Commander design. I just love it and yep, I’d fly one again. Successfully. Because I know how. Thank you Jim.
Maybe I’ll buy a more stable gyro platform now that there is so much hype around it these days (after I solve the affordability issue), but in my heart of hearts, I actually miss the ’ol Bell 47 helicopter much more significantly (my main focus, post 9/11). She and I had very good times together for what seemed like a gazillion hours. I think I put more hours on her in a couple of years than I did in ten in gyros. I flew the crap out of her every day I could. Rain, sleet, storm, hail…it didn’t matter. She was mine when I was in command. And I was keeping that seat warm as much and as often as I possibly could.
I understood her every quirk, vibration, and spurt of oil all over her drivetrain (not to mention the ground underneath her when she was parked; what a mess). She was a great “thumper” of a helicopter and performed, well, like a Bell 47 with wood blades and 200 horses or so should. Not a rocket ship by any stretch of the imagination, but still a wonderful machine that simply thumped you from one place to the next. When you heard that certain whine of the transmission, you knew that all was well. No other helo sounds or flies or whines like the Bell 47. You could drop all the gauges and just fly on the tranny-whine by itself. My guess is that some Korean-war era pilots probably did just that. Damn, what a great machine.
Makes me almost wish I was the age where I could have been Maverick and flown the Huey in ‘Nam, cuz I think I would have done it. I really do. Hueys are just bitchen. The Robinson R22? Yeah, had a few hours in that lightweight weedwhacker of a helo….too sketchy for me. Rotor inertia problems. You have to wonder about an aircraft that is so dangerous that it has its own section of the FARs just to inform you of its deficiencies…
What happened to the Bell 47, you may ask? Well, it’s unfortunate. A student elected to attempt a maneuver necessary for a solo endorsement but not recommended (and advised against) in early solo. The long story short is that, during a solo flight with an attempted run-on landing (“stuck-pedal” scenario, if I recall; not recommended to attempt in early solo flight), a bounce and an abrupt cyclic input caused rotors to meet tail boom very formally. You can visualize the rest.
Injuries? Yep, serious, but recoverable and recovered. The helo? Well, you can visualize I am sure. Probably not pretty. I did not witness the accident myself but heard about it almost immediately after it happened. It was an on-airport accident with an operating tower, so as you can imagine, there was support personnel on-scene immediately. I was some distance away at the time, but ultimately realized that didn’t have the heart to go see what was left of the machine I had become so familiar with. Let somebody else deal with it since it was scrap at that point anyway. She was, in a strange way, my baby; I couldn’t bear to see her in shreds.
I am considering getting back into the Bell 47 just for “joyriding” purposes, or perhaps some commercial activity as side job. It’s not the greatest with a permanently-attached camera mount as a photo platform (unless you want really blurry pictures; the Bell 47 was not known for the smoothest ride on the planet), but they do OK for certain other work. We’ll see. Not today, but maybe tomorrow. It’s an affordability problem at this point (and I thought kids would be relatively inexpensive!). Basically, here’s the issue: Four mouths to feed. One measly income. Nothing is affordable, including cable TV and things most of you are used to, such as electricity and running water.
I hope you all have been well. Me? I have since begun to rapidly turn gray and I am tired. Damn tired, but I have to keep it all going for the girls. All three of them. Just so you know, 9/11 is another other major factor in what killed my business. I’d love to hear a hello or two from some of you that I know (knew?) here on the forum. If not now, that’s OK, because there’s always tomorrow (theoretically speaking, of course).
I’ve missed you guys, the forum, flying, and the feeling of freedom and actually having money to spend on aviation. Let’s just hope the old saying that “history repeats itself” is actually true. If it is, then I’ll hear you guys on the radio near some tower someday. I’ll advise that I am maintaining visual separation. I’ll look for your rotor disk….and so that is my desire.
