• PING

    From Mike Luther@1:2320/100 to Ward Dossche on Wed Apr 11 12:27:02 2007
    1.71.5.204-B20160823
    Chuckle .

    Per my book and notes with Jinks Caldwell Howard Hughes President of Charlotte Aircraft, the holding company for his airline fleet, from long, long ago, this is almost like Howard Hughes request for his last flight at the controls of an airplane! They let him have that flight in the nude,

    So he could more intimately feel the effects of it and address the gravity of the situation!


    Sleep well; OS/2's still awake! ;)

    Mike @ 1:117/3001

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  • From Ward Dossche@1:2320/100 to All on Wed Apr 11 13:48:02 2007
    1.71.5.204-B20160823
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  • From Tim Schattkowsky@1:2320/100 to Ward Dossche on Thu Apr 12 00:06:02 2007
    1.71.5.204-B20160823
    //Hallo Ward, //

    am *11.04.07* um *13:48:56* schriebst Du in der Area *AVIATION*
    an *All* eine Mail zum
    Thema *"PING"*.

    PONG

    -+- D'Bridge 2.70
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    Bis denne ...
    Tim Schattkowsky

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  • From Mike Luther@1:2320/100 to Ward Dossche on Thu Apr 12 06:07:02 2007
    1.71.5.204-B20160823
    Hi Ward!

    Was that TWA or the Yellow Banana?

    Without looking back through all the stuff at the 1:117/3000 remote site, it's my memory that it was neither of them! It was in a rented DH125 they brought in from England or something like that!

    So he could more intimately feel the effects of it and address the > gravity
    of the situation!

    The gravity of the situation or "his" situation? ;-)

    The creativity of the above line was mine in this case. I meant both of them in humor here. You properly interpreted my thoughts! ;-)

    It sure wasn't the Spruce Goose, wink!


    Way back all those years ago when I was flying our company Beech Baron, that company was in the modular housing business, an outfit called Hanover Modular Homes -- and eventually it morphed into an International Shelters corporate mess. Late in 1968 when I was the IP out at Easterwood Airport, a brand new N7826R Barron showed up in the prized hanger position next to the doorway, but it never went anywhere! The guy they had flying it had 10,000 hours, an ex-navy pilot who was fished out of the water after the last flight off the Midway which he led a flight of six patrol planes. He lost all five of his buddies in a horrific squall line during that flight. When he got back to the Midway, it wasn't. Spend two days beating sharks off in his life jacket floating in the drink until he got picked up.

    His name was Richard Harris. Turns out that he actually has a far bigger aviation history for you than just this. If you've ever seen the couple of old
    World War II movies where the Navy S2 hits the deck of a carrier, skids on it and slams into the conning tower and bursts into flames, that is *NOT* stage work. It is actual footage. Dick was the pilot of that plane, his gunner dead
    from the Japanese attack on him, he lost the rest of the crew of the S2 in the
    fire, but he survived. Paid his $1.50 for the loss of the plane and then was re-assigned to the Midway.

    I traded my multi-engine certificate with Houston Beechcraft for time toward his flight training toward his civilian rating - which he never would take the written! Unhappy with Texas weather and whatever,twenty-one hours into the 'training' burn he handed me the keys to the new Beech Baron and gave it to me!
    In the strange seance of a deal that followed, I wound up flying for this corporate monstrosity .. then got promoted and promoted until total disaster set in.

    The principal of that outfit, his boss, had placed a single quarter page ad in the Wall Street Journal hawking a $100,000 franchise for owning your own patented process Hanover Modular Homes plant - build houses for $8.92 a square foot. I didn't know it at the time, but that single week's ad brought in over 14,750 replies! And I spent the next three years flying everyone and their whatever's all over in the mess.

    The Howard Hughes part of this came from the fact that he bought the airline as
    only a part of a far larger plot! The intent was to use it to attract European visitors to the Carribean on vacation. And to take over the housing and complete tourist trade there via this channeling! The early part of the conversations with him started when he was still in the penthouse in Nevada. I
    never personally spoke with him there, but did make a number of repeat phone calls sort of as a 'secretary' for the boss, Dr. Ruble Langston, who did. Somewhere in my notebooks is still the actual phone number for the crew there in the penthouse, the LDS group which fronted him and kept him alive through blood donations and whatever.

    Huges sent Jinks Caldwell and the then Prime Minister of Jamaica to tour the housing plants, among other people, who I wound up flying hither and yon in the
    Barron. I'm not actually sure who all was part of this Hughes foray into 'us'
    for sure, but the names are all in my flight logs still intact from it; whatever. Then came the news to me that my boss and his wife were to go to visit Hughes in the Carribean to seal the deal wherein he would make his investment in us .. as well as start a string of new manufacturing plants in the islands for all this.

    Well .. the same thing happened to Langston and his wife for that trip that happened to them and also with me on his foray into Mexico to try to free up his mess with the IRS here in the USA .. a HUGE issue. Move manufacturing of his Hanover Trailers out of the USA. IRS tailed them into the Carribean on their flight into Mexico on Trans Texas and I got to see this seance personally, grin! Though I wasn't invited on this Carribean one, I assure you I know the details of the other snoop doggie dog and MANY other aviation related skirmishes including bullet holes in the N7826R, gas contamination, the
    works which are all documented! Whatever.

    So told me, when Howard came down from the penthouse there to the casino to seal the deal, Ruble and his wife met him - with his protection - at a Blackjack table for 21. During the process they would finalize the agreement for the whole housing investment and plant deal. However, the IRS and Fed agents that had tailed them in on the commercial flight also somehow wound up at the table .. courtesy of the mob connections in the convolution of a deal they worked out with the mob that time for their convenience. The enemy of your enemy is your friend of course, grin. You know the process, I'm sure.

    My Uncle Abe Mailman, Meyer Lansky, and Herbert Allen from New York were the group that brought all the casinos and gambling into the Carribean but that's another story and it's not aviation .. grin! And neither are the Morman LDS crew who took care of Hughes, were in the middle management of this housing operation gambit as well via Dick Harris and others I knew nothing about when I
    started into this flight into the wild blue yonder. Which apparently under the table is how more of this may have drilled it's way into the useless stratosphere. And which I knew NOTHING about in all of this.

    Whatever. Hughs blew up at the snoop doggie dog session and went back to the penthouse. The deal never went through. There was follow-on contact with Jinks Caldwell and so on and I'm thinking that my notes and phone records from back then contain some of this. I eventually bought the book which I'll check on the title where it is at the remote site. I know that when I read it much later, Jinks Caldwell's name is mentioned in that book. Memory says the title is something like 'The Real Life of Howard Hughs', but its been decades since I've looked at it. I'll dig it up in a day or so and check the title.

    My recollection of all this is that it was a rented DH125, brought in by the LDS crew .. as part of Howard's last request(s).


    Sleep well; OS/2's still awake! ;)

    Mike @ 1:117/3001

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  • From Ward Dossche@1:2320/100 to Mike Luther on Thu Apr 12 09:37:02 2007
    1.71.5.204-B20160823
    Per my book and notes with Jinks Caldwell Howard Hughes President of Charlotte Aircraft, the holding company for his airline fleet, from long, long ago, this is almost like Howard Hughes request for his last flight
    at the controls of an airplane! They let him have that flight in the
    nude,

    Was that TWA or the Yellow Banana?

    So he could more intimately feel the effects of it and address the
    gravity of the situation!

    The gravity of the situation or "his" situation? ;-)

    \%/@rd

    --- D'Bridge 2.70
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  • From Ward Dossche@1:2320/100 to Tim Schattkowsky on Thu Apr 12 09:39:02 2007
    1.71.5.204-B20160823
    P@TH: 2437/40 2432/200 774/605 123/500 140/1 292/854

    Interesting ..

    Germany - Germany - New Zealand - North Carolina - British Columbia - Belgium

    \%/@rd

    --- D'Bridge 2.70
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  • From Jason Vierik@1:2320/100 to Ward Dossche on Thu Apr 12 21:47:02 2007
    1.71.5.204-B20160823
    Re: PING
    By: Ward Dossche to All on Wed Apr 11 2007 02:48 pm

    PONG

    =-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=
    | Jason - W8ZZU |
    =-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=
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  • From Vince Coen@1:2320/100 to Ward Dossche on Mon Apr 16 16:07:02 2007
    1.71.5.204-B20160823
    Hello Ward!

    11 Apr 07 13:48, you wrote to All:

    @MSGID: 2:292/854 00049736
    @PID: DB 2.70
    @TID: DB 2.70


    SEEN-BY: 140/1 257/0 3
    @PATH: 292/854 140/1 257/609

    rec.d,

    First msg in months.

    Vince

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  • From Mike Luther@1:2320/100 to Ward Dossche on Fri May 4 13:31:02 2007
    1.71.5.204-B20160823
    Well Ward, I've had time to dig out a book .. while at the remote site for a number of hours chasing the prized Scarborough Reef BS7H ham expedition across the dawning here on 40 meter CW. For the only couple days that it will likely ever be available for the rest of my ham radio life!


    Was that TWA or the Yellow Banana?


    From one of the most fascinating books I've ever read,

    ''Citizen Hughes''
    In his own words - how Howard Hughes tried to buy America
    Copyright 1985 by Michael Drosnin
    Published by Holt, Rinehart and Winston - New York
    ISBN: 0-03-041846-1


    The gravity of the situation or "his" situation? ;-)


    From the Chapter "The Final Days", page 438 -- I quote. Please forgive the lack of side indents - FidoNet is not the same as book architecture as you well
    know thus I'll between the lines it:

    ******************************************************************

    "He had been in London less than two weeks, however, when news from the States sent his spirits soaring. On January 10, 1973, the Supreme Court handed down its long-awaited decision in the TWA case. It was a stunning victory for Hughes. Reversing all lower-court findings, the high court dismissed the case he had lost by default when he refused to appear ten years earlier, and threw out the judgement that with interest now exceeded $180 million.


    Hughes was ecstatic. He decided to celebrate, to break free of his earthbound prison, to relive his past glory -- to fly again!


    The Mormans were shocked. Hughes had not piloted a plane for a dozen years, had rarely left his bed in the time since, his eyesight was so bad he couldn't read without a magnifying glass, and of course he didn't have a valid pilot's license. No matter. He was going to fly. He sent his aides in search of the proper outfit, a leather flight jacket and a snap-brim Stetson, like the one had worn back in the 1930's when he had broken all the records. He also started to watch a steady stream of movies -- Zeppelin, Helicopter Spies, Doomsday Flight, The Crowded Sky,and Skyjacked.


    Months passed while Hughes readied himself for the big event. Finally it was set for Sunday June 10. The night before he watched Strategic Air Command twice and that morning called in an aide to groom him. It took four hours to cut his hair, trim his beard, clip his long nails, and get him dressed, but shortly before two P.M. he slipped out of the hotel and headed for Hatfield Airport, just north of London.


    There a private jet waited. Hughes inspected the Hawker Siddeley 748, settled into the pilot's seat -- and stripped off his clothes. Naked now except for the trademark brown fedora, Hughes gripped the contols and took off.


    He spent all that day flying, an experienced English co-pilot who hoped to sell
    him the plane at his side, and he flew twice more in July, by now quite at home again in the skys.


    It was during this time of high adventure that Howard Hughes discovered Watergate. He was looking at a picture of an airplane in the London Express when he noticed a story about the crisis he had unwittingly caused.


    ''What's Watergate?'' he asked. It was the first time he had seen the word. His Mormans tried to explain, but Hughs didn't understand and soon lost interest.


    A few weeks later, on August 9, Hughes got up in the middle of the night to go to the bathroom, lost his footing, fell to the floor and fractured his hip.


    His flying days were over. He would never get out of bed again."


    ******************************************************************


    I'd recalled this as a DH125 some twenty years after reading this book but then
    - my appologies. There is a WHOLE lot more in this book with which I am very familiar. But it's not an aviation echo subject such as this was.

    " Stary stary night ..
    amber fields of violet haze ..
    painted by the artist's loving hand .."


    And yes, I was present in the room in the Holiday Inn in Newton, Iowa,on New Year's eve after a flight in our Beech Baron N7826R up to Iowa for a sales closing in Baxter near there, when McClain sung his song for the very first time in public.


    Aviation both touches so much in live .. and frees one from the gravity of it in some cases. Such a treasured experience to be able to have been a part of it.


    Sleep well; OS/2's still awake! ;)

    Mike @ 1:117/3001

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  • From Ward Dossche@1:2320/100 to Mike Luther on Tue May 15 22:09:02 2007
    1.71.5.204-B20160823
    Mike,

    There a private jet waited. Hughes inspected the Hawker Siddeley 748,

    The Hawker Siddeley 748 is not a private jet but a 42-50 passenger propeller plane which was heavily used in both military and civilian versions.

    I've flown in it often.

    It was during this time of high adventure that Howard Hughes discovered Watergate. He was looking at a picture of an airplane in the London Express when he noticed a story about the crisis he had unwittingly
    caused.

    As far as I know Howard Hughes name is nowhere even near-connected to Watergate.

    I'd recalled this as a DH125 some twenty years after reading this book
    but then - my appologies.

    The DeHavilland DH125 on the contrary is a very successful businessjet also marketed as Hawker Siddeley HS125 and as Hawker Raytheon 800.

    " Stary stary night ..
    amber fields of violet haze ..
    painted by the artist's loving hand .."

    And yes, I was present in the room in the Holiday Inn in Newton, Iowa,on New Year's eve after a flight in our Beech Baron N7826R up to Iowa for a sales closing in Baxter near there, when McClain sung his song for the
    very first time in public.

    Make that Don McLean and I'm with you.

    Take care,

    \%/@rd

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