LETTER from
"Ted Bohrer" <f8baron
@ sbcglobal .net>
Subject: Larry Story, Ted Bohrer
Date: Mon, 6 Nov 2006 07:50:08
-0800
Here's a story about Larry as
best I can remember.
Larry wanted to go to CES (think
that was the event) in Las Vegas one
year (winter time of course)
and I had just gotten out of the service
as a Naval Aviator.
He wanted me to fly him and
two engineers (good friends whose names
also escape me at the moment)
from San Jose to Las Vegas and back.
No problem going down, Larry
sitting next to me as co-pilot and the
two friend engineers in the
back seat.
But coming home was a night
flight (winter, remember?) and we did
fine until about half-way back.
Then we ran into weather (I
was already on an instrument flight plan
but we were flying a Cessna
182 totally unequipped for anything but
warm and clear).
In the clouds, freezing cold
outside, pitch black, I asked Larry to
turn on the flashlight and look
at the wing struts.
Sure enough, all we could see
was snow flashing by and about an inch
of ice buildup.
I knew if the struts were icing
up, so were the wings.
Larry was completely calm, as
if icing up at night in a snow storm
over mountains in a small plane
was perfectly normal.
I radioed for lower (requested
Air Traffic Control ATC for a lower
altitude to get out of the clouds)
and they cleared me to descend
until out of the weather.
We were not able to maintain
altitude anyway with the ice buildup all
over the plane so all I wanted
to do was alert ATC that I was no
longer going to be where they
thought I was.
We broke out about 1,000 feet
above the mountains as best I could
determine in the near pitch
darkness.
In the next 15 minutes or so
Larry kept the flashlight on the wing
struts to see if we were shaking
off any ice.
If not, we were going to make
a night landing (of sorts) in the
mountains.
As tense as the last 30 minutes
or so were during our impending doom,
Larry seemed fascinated with
the damn ice plus he kept wondering out
loud how anyone could fly in
pitch blackness.
It seemed more an intellectual
curiosity to him as he certainly
wasn't nervous.
While this was going on I managed
a few glances back at the engineers
and they seemed engrossed in
their conversation unrelated to anything
we were doing.
Hopefully they did not notice
what was really going on, but how they
couldn't have seen Larry and
his flashlight shining outside I'll
never know.
The ice began to break off and
we stayed low the rest of the way into
San Jose for a radar vector
to an instrument landing approach.
We all said goodnight and Larry
and I headed for the nearest bar.
Larry bought.
Ted Bohrer
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