Flying with Jack

Having the right mentor may change your life forever

By YVES A. DIDIER

“Chicks dig pilots.”

That is just one of the many “valuable insights” my first flight instructor shared with me early on.

OK, that’s great, I thought, but how about that fuel burn calculation on the E6B again?

I don’t consider myself a prude, yet our priorities obviously differed.

And our personalities were not really compatible either. My fault, though. After all, I signed up with the first CFI I was introduced to at the local FBO.

And while my dream was to earn my private pilot certificate, Joe’s was to ascend through the ranks quickly, build time, and then land a fat, well-paying airline job. If hooking up with some “chicks” along the way was part of that equation, even better.

As we were both not happy with each other, what should have been an exciting, joyful experience became more of a burden. I was Joe’s first student and things were not going well.

Then Jack entered the picture. Mutual friends mentioned my plight to him and he immediately invited me to come by his hangar at Fullerton Municipal Airport (KFUL) south of Los Angeles.

And yes, if I was up to it, there would be some flying involved.

A decorated World War II Army pilot, Jack Harloe never bragged about his flying days in Morocco or Italy during the 1940s.

“I primarily delivered the General’s whiskey supplies to the front in my L-5,” he would jokingly say.

Now in his mid-70s, he certainly looked more like a British Spitfire pilot than a former spotter-plane driver: Tall and lean with silver hair and a mustache, he nonchalantly introduced me to his flying machine, N3823F, an orange-red Great Lakes open cockpit biplane.

“This is yours?” I asked, gasping for air.

“Yes, it is. Wanna go up?”

Less than 30 minutes later I was strapped into a parachute (a first) and we were airborne.

Amazingly, with my instructor out of the picture, a lot of the aeronautical concepts I struggled with before now fell into place — made sense even.

With Jack, there were no raised eyebrows or audible sighs over yet another dumb question from me.

On the contrary: Laugh all you want, but initially I was sometimes confused when ATC directed me to fly a certain heading. Soon, Jack’s voice came over the intercom: “Turn right and the numbers get bigger. Turn left and the numbers get smaller.”

Why, of course! Why hadn’t anybody told me that in such simple, genius terms before?

Just a small example, sure, but over the years — and long after I found myself a different instructor and passed my check ride — I found that when flying with Jack the learning never stopped.

Our trust in each other grew, as did our friendship. Eventually I mastered flying the Great Lakes biplane, and taking off and landing the highly maneuverable taildragger no longer presented a challenge to me. Tricycle gear airplanes? Boooring!

I would often spend my weekends at the home Jack shared with his wife Marion, with some early morning flying planned on the following day. On those occasions, I would find a hand-scribbled note in the guest room on retiring for the evening: “The dawn patrol takes off at 0615.”

With more than 50 years of flying under his belt, my mentor never looked down on me. The opposite was true. We were now flying and — dare I say it? — even learning together and from one another.

“I think we should turn left to avoid Riverside airspace,” I heard Jack say over the intercom one day. “Sure,” I confirmed from the front cockpit, fat, dumb and happy.

A few minutes later he came back on the radio, again bringing up that left turn. Once more I acknowledged. Two minutes later there it was again: “How about that turn now?”

“Not sure why you are telling me this,” I replied. “If you want to turn, turn — you are flying the plane.”

There was silence, followed by a quick, decisive turn and some scratchy static in the intercom.

“Oh. I thought you were flying the plane,” Jack said.

Cockpit Resource Management? Yeah, let’s revisit that some time…

How many loops, barrel rolls and Immelmans we flew together over the years, I don’t know. (I sure remember the ones I fell out of, though).

Never have I had greater admiration for a fellow aviator and mentor, nor have I ever again experienced such happiness and joy, as during those moments when we were inverted, on top of a loop, in that open cockpit biplane with the Pacific Ocean glistening below us.

As always, Jack would calmly talk me through my maneuvers, offering critique or praise, whichever was due.

I still remember the smell of the air rushing by the cockpit on those crisp fall mornings.

It was not easy for me to accept Jack’s decision to hang up his goggles sometime later. However, now in his early 80s and after 10 years of owning 3823F, he felt it was the right and responsible thing to do.

Not because his flying skills had diminished, but he didn’t want to put his wife into a position where she might have to deal with the sale of an expensive airplane if something were to happen to him unexpectedly.

Thinking it was my turn to provide a pair of wings, I ended up buying an old Piper Cherokee.

I think Jack flew it once.

“It’s just not the same,” he said apologetically.

And no, it wasn’t.

My friend’s flying days were over for good and for me that happened way too quickly.

Today, however, I take solace in the fact that when the time came, I was able to scatter his ashes over California’s Channel Islands. It was a gorgeous day.

And somehow I know my friend and mentor is still out there, probably doing Immelmanns and barrel rolls.