J.L. Stubbs
irplanes...I
guess they've always been a part of me.I still remember a blue and silver hard rubber monoplane with Donald Duck's head protruding from the fuselage. I must have been 3 or 4 years old. I wish I had it today....it might be worth a small fortune.
I was born in 1949 in the same town as Wyatt Earp, Monmouth, Illinois. They haven't put my name on the "Welcome to Monmouth, Illinois... birthplace of Wyatt Earp" sign yet. I moved to Texas in 1981, so I assume that's the reason. Plus...I've been trying to cut back on my gunfighting.
I grew up on a farm 14 miles west of Monmouth. It is near a little Mississippi River town called Oquawka. Small rural farming communities back then were a close knit family. Kids spent much time together.
My best friend,Terry Miller, was three months older than me and a certified airplane nut. He had every model airplane made. From small Lindbergh Line plastics to large silk and balsa line control types. He considered a .049 Cox to be no more than a hand held fan on a hot day. The last model I think he ever had was a 1/3 scale Christan Eagle. Radio controlled with a chainsaw engine or some such thing.
One day in 1959 or 60 his mother called my mother and asked if I could go along with Terry to take a ride in a airplane. Of course....it was no surprise to me. He and I had discussed this venture long before our mothers even suspected it and had gone over every scenerio imaginable to overcome the inevitable negative reactions. There were none! Mothers sometimes have a way of knowing when it's useless to resist a well laid plan....or maybe they just love us too much to break our hearts...even when they are nervous about the situation. It also didn't hurt that my mom had heard of the pilot. A guy named Johnny Louck (also from Monmouth) "The Last of the Great Barnstormers", was giving Airplane rides in conjunction with the "Prime Beef Festival"....a State Fair like yearly occurance. My mom said yes!
In a day or two Terry's mom rolled into the driveway with their Oldsmobile and off we went. A very long 14 mile trip.
When we were nearing the airport we caught glimpses of the plane. It glinted in the sunlight and seemed huge.Contrasted by the deep green grass airstrip it was the most beautiful machine I had ever laid eyes on. Terry and I just looked at each other and grinned....we couldn't express it any other way. It was a Ford Tri-motor N414H. Terry had a model just like it, so we were already experts and knew what to expect ....why heck, we could probably even take her off by ourselves.
We climbed into the craft and made the uphill walk to the wicker chairs just behind the cockpit. We were still feeling fairly familiar with our surroundings,then it happened. Captain Louck began rolling the engines over and it sounded like all hell broke loose when they started! The smoke, vibrations, smell of fuel and oil and the noise. I guess most of all I remember the noise. Two grade school kids sitting not 3 feet from each other, screaming our observations back and forth and we never heard a word the other said!
The plane started moving and shaking. I'd seen enough of this on television and knew what to expect. The plane would rumble along the ground for quite some distance,then the nose would slowly rise to a pleasant angle and up we would casually go. Captain Louck gunned the engines and the back of the plane suddenly rose up. The old Ford rolled,rumbled and shook not more than 3/4 the length of a football field. Then it shot...what seemed to me...straight up! So much for television!
Everybody had a window...we knew this from reading about the plane in the magazines that Terry collected...and we watched the earth fall away at great speed. We were expressing profound feelings to each other..... or we could have been screaming "WHAT...huh...?", who knows, because we couldn't hear anything except the roar of the engines. I guess there were other people on the plane, but it didn't matter because we couldn't hear them either. We circled the city a few times and it could have been any city. I had no idea where we were and didn't care.
Too soon we saw the earth coming back up. We were heading for a tiny green patch which could be seen out Terry's window,but not mine. Upon reflection I imagine this was my first experience with a cross control slip, although I had no notion at the time. It wasn't like I'd seen on the SKY KING SHOW!
As we hurtled toward the ground, at the last second, the plane straightened around and lightly bounded onto the grass. It was barely rolling in no time, and stopped right back where it had started. Then...all at once...dead silence, except for two grade school kids still screaming to each other at the top of their lungs.
With ears ringing and faces red,our wobbly legs took us back down the narrow aisle and out the oval door.
At this point most people have the desire to kiss the ground. I wanted to kiss the airplane. It was the most wonderful experience I had ever had. Maybe it still is.
I decided that day I would learn to fly an airplane. I never pursued it until 1978.
My brother in law Ora Kent Smith and my sister Sandra began taking flying lessons. I paid little attention until one day they turned up with pilot license. Until then I figured something like that was out of my reach. Now, here were these people I had known forever and suddenly they were airplane pilots...everything changed.
I started making inquiries about it and the next thing I knew I was sitting in a 1977 Cessna 150 N704PT over Monmouth airport. A guy named Mel Lynch was sitting beside me saying, "Watch thine airspeed, lest the earth arise and smite thee mightily."
Many times after a lesson my brother in law, Ora, would be waiting for me in a Cessna 172 from the flying club he had joined. I would get out of the trainer and into the 172 and go off again. I learned much in the informal sessions along with the ones I paid for. Times were great then.
Ora and I would sometimes fly to Burlington, Iowa. This was the location of his flying club...and also the location of my friend Terry Miller.
Terry had been diagnosed with heart problems when he was a teenager. He was never able to obtain a pilots license. He loved aviation so much that he took a job with Ozark Airlines just to be around planes. We would stop in and visit with him whenever possible. Later on He worked at Moline, Illinois Quad Cities airport. Terry died of heart complications in 1985. He was 38. He was my best friend.
I was a farmer along with my father during those years. We raised corn, soybeans and hogs. The stock yards were just across the field from the Monmouth airport. One day on the way to sell a truck load of pigs I made a quick detour to the airport just to see what was going on. I learned a lesson that day. Pilots can turn a small incident into a lifelong event. Never take pigs to an airport if you don't want to generate every "when pigs fly" story ever imagined. Aeroswine Research Corporation was born that day.
On another day in December 1978 I stopped at the airport. I was running late because of selling some hogs, although on this occasion I neglected to bring along the pigs. Ora's pickup truck was parked outside.
He had gone along with a charter pilot to Terra Haute, Indiana and wouldn't be back in time to play with the airplanes that day. I went home. Had I been there sooner I could have gone with them.
A few days earlier I was taking a lesson in N704PT with a substitute instructor. He hadn't taught in a while and was a bit nervous. It was a terrible day to be taking off and landing. 20 degrees above zero, a single Ford tractor blade width plowed out of the snow for a runway. But once in the air on a cold windless day like that there are no better flying conditions. The lesson went fairly normal, but the wind had picked up to 20 knots direct crosswind. I tried landing but made a go-round when the plane drifted toward the wing high snowdrifts. On the second pass I still couldn't hold it where I wanted and at 500 feet out I gave the controls to the instructor. He flew us straight into the ground. Nobody had a scratch. The Cessna flipped over on her back and I saw someone running out to get us. My friend Richard Joy and Ora had been watching from the airport office.
After I towed the plane back on her wheels and into the hangar with my Jeep, Ora said to me "Don't let this stop you. You've got to learn to fly."
That was the last time we spoke. He was killed on the way back from Terre Haute along with the charter pilot.
I learned to fly.
I began writing this as a biography after Nels Anderson asked me to write it for the FlightSim.Com Who's Who feature. It has turned out to be a more involved task than I intended. I have learned something that I never realized before. I had very little to do with my love of airplanes. It was these people and their interests that rubbed off on me.There is no way to repay the debt but to remember them.
As for me....I started flight simming with an Atari 800XL and the old SubLogic wire frame Flight Simulator program. I bought the fancy control box with the little stick in the middle and a couple of buttons for brakes and throttle. High tech indeed for 1984!
We've come quite a way since then. I've had all the versions in between and this latest one is by far the most realistic and fun of them all. I look forward to future versions if the direction of customer developed software continues.
I became involved in panel design when I downloaded a add-on Spirit of St. Louis for FS98. In 1957 I went to the movie Spirit of St. Louis with ......yes...you guessed it...Terry Miller! I was hooked on the plane forever after. But to my dismay, there was no panel available that would work in FS98. I ran a search and came up with a panel for FS95 by Jorge Alsina. I downloaded it and tried everything I knew, but couldn't make it work. Everything I knew consisted of downloading it and unzipping. I knew nothing. I wrote to Mr. Alsina but received no response.
I was browsing the net one day and came upon the Simflight Special Projects Forum. They were building the Spirit of St. Louis. Jorge Alsina was one of the members.
I followed the progress for a few weeks. I read everything I could find about panel design, configuration files etc. I dug out Jorge's old panel bitmap and placed some stock gauges from FS98 about where I thought they should be. After only thousands of trial and errors....boom...it was semi-working.
I got brave and entered into the forum discussions. I know now just how stupid and totally green I must have seemed to the people who actually knew what they were doing. Jorge and the group never let me know that. They treated me as if I actually knew what I was doing! I didn't have a clue.
I had one thing going for me...I can handle the artwork in a fair manner. I have been doing freelance graphic design for a few years and it comes in handy for panels. They allowed me to become part of the team and the Simflight Spirit of St. Louis Project was the result. Not a bad place to learn.
I've been releasing a few panels since then on my own. I tend to enjoy early prop planes and off beat designs. I try to fill the voids that exist for aircraft I like. I have been know to do some on request, but mostly just whatever strikes my fancy.
Another Simflight Special Project team effort is about ready for release. This is not a promotion of Simflight...it's just the way things involving me have worked out.
I just couldn't keep myself from getting involved. It's a Ford Tri-Motor Project. I'm in charge of developing one of the planes and panels. Yes.....you guessed it...Johnny Louck's Ford Tri-Motor N414H. I've had extensive help from the son of Johnny Louck in the form of photos, blueprints and any information I have asked for. My portion of the project is dedicated to the memory of Captain John M. Louck.
So...I apologize. I cannot fill in much background and biographical information about myself. I haven't done much. It was all these other people you see.
THESE PEOPLE....I guess they'll always be a part of me.
Thank you Terry Miller, Johnny Louck....and Ora Kent Smith. You made airplanes a large part of my life. I will always remember and miss you.
J.L. Stubbs