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This is the third and last part of the Gremlin Interview. Chasity Ballard, VP of Plane-Girls.com, interviews Doc Googins, Crew Chief for the Plane-Girls.

CB: Look, Doc, I’m pretty confidant that you’ve lost your mind, but I’m OK with that as long as you do your job, OK?  So we’re just going to finish this little fairy tale…

Doc: Not fairies, gremlins…

CB: Right. So the last time you saw your Miss Fifinella, you pee’d your pants…

Doc: I said “almost”…

CB: Right. So that was the last time you saw her?

Doc: No, I saw her last month, that night I put the tanks back on the Piper…

CB: So that accounts for the bruise on  your forehead that I saw…

Doc: Seems like everytime she shows up, I get hurt somehow…

CB: So tell me what happened.  (more here!)

It is Christmas eve, 2008. A time to reflect on the past and the future.

There are some lessons that last a lifetime. In the early ’80’s I had been in the US Air Force for about 8 years. As one of the newest Staff Sergeants in the Air Force, I had the pleasure of working for a man who was about the oldest Captain in the Air Force. Captain Worley had spent a 20 year career in the AF as an enlisted man, and then crossed over into the officer ranks to start anew. Officers with prior enlisted time are known as “mavericks” in the AF. They’ve jumped the fence, no longer one of the rank and file, they are older and more experienced than their new officer brethren who have college diplomas where the ink is not quite dry. They are considered a little odd, and Capt. Worley was a little odder than most. He was in his 40’s when most Captains are in their mid 20’s. He was a grizzled, gray haired, skinny combat veteran, with a deep Texas accent, lines and scars on his face, and a gravel filled voice scarred by cigarettes, whiskey and a lifetime of shouting orders. He was stern but fair, faithful to his NCO’s, and Air Force blue all the way through. He was the squadron Executive Officer, and the man to see when a situation didn’t fit the rulebooks. I was, on the other hand, young, passionate, aggressive and cocky. With an overabundance of enthusiasm, and a minor deficit of common sense, I would often throw away the rulebook. When it worked, and it usually did, (because I was smart enough to avoid the obvious bear traps), I was congratulated and cited for “innovative, original, leadership thinking” by the squadron commander (he was NOT a maverick). When things didn’t work out, which was rare, I got to see the Exec. On those occasions, the conversation normally started with, “Get in my office, dumb ass!”.

On one particular occasion, I had thoroughly busted a lot of policies, a handful of memos, and at least one, no kidding, regulation (the kind that are written “Thou shalt not ever…”). The old man (who was actually quite young), was considering how many of my new stripes to take, and I was both disconsolate and remorseful (I was and still am Air Force blue, and I knew that I had done a bad thing). Feeling mighty low after the hearing, I was in the Exec’s office at parade rest. Chastened and chastised, I remarked to him that I had really screwed the pooch this time, and that my career and my life were both shot to hell. Sir.

Jumping right up out of his chair, he got in my face and in that deep Texas drawl, he growled, “I don’t tolerate whiners and losers in my presence, young man. Before you go shoot yourself, you better remember Rule Number One. That is, Life, is a temporary condition! And the only dang gaurntee is, that you will surely die! But not today!”

And then he hauled back and punched me square in the chest. Staggering backward, clutching my chest, he said, “Did that hurt?”

“Hell yeah, dammit, uh…I mean, Yes sir!. It hurt… Sir!”

“Good! Yer still on this side of heaven! Ya ain’t dead yet, and that means you got work to do. I’ll tell you when yer life and yer career are over, and it ain’t gonna be today! Now get out of my office and take care of your men, Sergeant!” “DISMISSED!!”

Well, as most tempests do, that one blew itself out with no serious harm done, probably due to Capt Worley’s advice to the old man. He never told me that he did anything, but I suspect that he might have convinced the Major to exercise his discretion.

More than thirty years later, I’m still on this side of heaven, and still have work to do.

Segue

We say repeatedly, that the best part of being a Plane-Girl is in making new friends. We have been so fortunate, and so blessed over the years. We have met the most wonderful new friends and our lives are made better for them. But invariably, Rule Number One comes into play. Some of our friends are no longer with us on this side of heaven. General Davy Jones, Master Sergeant Ed Horton, and Erica Hoagland-Simpson have gone west, and we miss them.

Davy Jones and Ed Horton were Doolittle Raiders, whom we met at their 65th reunion in San Antonio. The Plane-Girls photo team, Doc Googins, Kelly Garvin and Chasity Ballard were the official photographers for the reunion. We came to know them as men of extraordinary courage, humility and great good humor. Erica was a biplane air racer whom we met at NBAA in Orlando. She was a charming, kind and gracious lady, and a great pilot. She had a beautiful smile and a wonderful, generous heart.

It would be false bravado to say that we weren’t saddened and grieved by their passing. We were, and still are. It hurts.

But they were aviators, family. We must celebrate the lives that they lived, must honor their memories, their love of life, and service to their country. We can never forget their smiles and laughter, their grace and camaraderie. They were the best among us, but like all of us, their time came due, and they moved on. Life is a temporary condition. While we have it, it is up to us to make it worthwhile before we too, move on. Davy, Ed and Erica gifted us all with their lives and their time. They showed us how to live.

Tomorrow we will celebrate another birth, another life that was a gift to us all. It is true to say that the world is a mess, the economy stinks, the environment is endangered, and it just doesn’t seem to get any better. Still…there is hope. The hand that we were dealt is the hand that we must play. But we have such wonderful friends and families to stand beside us and share their lives with us. We have important work to do, great challenges to face, new friends to meet, and children to teach. There will be pain and sorrow, because that comes with life. But there will be joy and love and laughter, because that’s part of it, too. And we have the promise of life and love that never ends. Not a bad hand to play, I think.

Have a Merry Christmas and Happy New Year.

And now, please excuse me, I have work to do.

Doc out.

You can read more about Davy Jones and Ed Horton here:

http://www.doolittleraider.com/

and see the Plane-Girls photo essay here:

http://plane-girls.com/DoolittleIndex1.htm

Erica Hoagland’s home page is here:

http://www.riraaerobatics.com/

and this works, too:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IpaBQPspLXg

Combat Helicopter Pilots Association

We got a request to put up a link to another web-site recently. We like to do that, because it’s a small world and the aviation community has close ties to each other. There are no “six degrees of separation” in aviation, you can be linked to almost everyone in two or three acquaintances. It is a small world for us, and a tight knit community. But there is always someone new to meet, and that is the best part of our job. Some new friends that we just met are the great guys and girls at the Combat Helicopter Pilots Association, CHPA. We met Rusty manning the booth at HAI in Houston earlier this year. It is an honor to link to CHPA, thanks for asking.

When Doc was young and handsome, he was a Combat Cameraman in the Air Force. He flew with Rescue and anyone else he could hitch a ride with. Six degrees? Not really. “I know a guy who knows some guys…”

Jolly Green Training Excercise

Rusty was all alone at the booth, so Sindy and Chasity stopped by to cheer him up. It’s kind of hard to tell, but he looks happy.

HAI Houston 2008

The X2 prototype was all alone at the Sikorsky booth, so we stopped by to cheer it up. It looks happy, too.

X2 Prototype

The CHPA Home Page is at:

http://www.chpa-us.org/mc/page.do

More HAI photos are at:

http://albums.phanfare.com/5467758/2449970#imageID=39615918

Plane-Girls out

CB: OK, so you claim you saw her once, and got some pictures…

Doc: Actually saw her several times, that was the first time, though.

CB: And you had a trauma to the head, and hadn’t slept for a while and…

Doc: Yeah I thought I was pretty crazy. If it wasn’t for the pictures, I’d have just written it off as a temporary brain collapse, maybe a minor stroke or something. But she has those odd eyes, you know? Crazy, but kind of sad sometimes…

CB: So when was the next time you saw her?      (more here!)

421st Tactical Fighter Squadron Reunion

The Fighting Cavaliers

It’s a little tiny place, way out in the country. If you drive through and blink, you’ll probably miss it. And the question you might ask is “Why are we on this road?” Because, to get to Willow City, Texas, you have to want to go there. It’s kind of in between somewhere and someplace else. I think they like it that way. It’s a pretty little town in the Texas Hill Country, somewhat close to Fredericksburg. On a nice fall weekend, the streets of Fredericksburg are crowded with Austin weekenders, shopping, sightseeing and relaxing with a few thousand of their closest friends. Not too many of them make it Willow City, because it’s not really on the way. And I think they like it that way.

Off a little ranch road in Willow City, there’s a lttle farmhouse with a nice big yard, a tent made from an old parachute, an American flag on a pole, and a covered overhang with a sign that says “421 Officer’s Club, F-105 Thunderchief Drive”. This Officer’s Club is restrictive, you have to be invited or earn a place there. It’s open to enlisted and civilians, family and friends. The folks who earned a place at this bar are mostly elderly gentlemen and their ladies. A lot of them wear hearing aids, and their hair is gray or thin or both. They wear golf shirts and shorts, hula shirts, sneakers and sunglasses. A lot of them smoke, although they know better. A lot of them drink, and there are coolers full of beer, and good liquor, too, for those who like a jar. They talk quietly for the most part, amongst themselves, old companions; they laugh with the grandkids and with each other. They all know each other, and have for years. If you were driving by and didn’t blink, you might see them, but probably wouldn’t notice them. I think they like it that way.

It’s not for us to tell their story, because others know it far better than we ever will. The links at the bottom will give you a glimpse into their history. We met them as friends of a friend, and they welcomed us quickly and warmly. We talked about flying and family, we told them who WE were, and what WE wanted to do with our lives, our plans, our dreams. They encouraged us and congratulated us, they wished us well. They couldn’t have been kinder, or sweeter to us.

It is the nature of youth to be self-centered, and we are, and will be for a while yet. After all, we’re young and strong and the future calls to us, full of hope and wonder and great adventures. It’s hard to sit still, hard to look deeply, hard to listen. But we’re not entirely self-centered, not completely shallow and vain. We are just old enough and just wise enough to see something in these men and women. Something that you’d miss if you blinked, something that lies just under the surface, not obvious at once, but all too clear if you slow down just a little, listen just a little. Behind the hugs and the handshakes, behind the sincere good wishes and congratulations…

…they are lions. Maybe a little gray, a little worn, not quit as fast as when they were young…but still lions. These men and their mates are sharp and strong and proud. In their day, they rode the thunder. They went “downtown” and came back home, although some were left behind. In the war that wasn’t a war, they fought like lions and warriors of old. Though their victory was denied, their honor was forged diamond bright over Thud Ridge, Kep, Hanoi and Haiphong. They didn’t know us then, but we are the future that they fought for, sacrificed for, and died for. They are such fine and good people to listen so graciously to our dreams, our hopes, our aspirations. They watched us play and prattle on like cubs in the sunlight. And they smiled upon us, like a pride of lions.

Thank you Karl, Bill and Terrie, and all of the Fighting Cavaliers. Keep the honor alive.

Thud Ridge Web: http://www.geocities.com/Pentagon/7002/

Craig Baker’s F-105 Site: http://www.burrusspta.org/thud.html

This is a transcript of the Gremlin interview that was conducted by Chasity Ballard with Doc Googins, October 15th, 2008:

CB: Good morning Doc, how are you this morning?

DOC: ‘Morning, Miss B, doing just fine, thanks.

CB: Now, Doc, tell us what you do for Plane-Girls.

DOC: Well, I’m the crew chief, which means I’m the mechanic, driver, baggage handler, photographer, security, business coordinator, pretty much anything that needs to be done to support the girls, I do.

CB: And what else do you do?

DOC: I work for an engineering company by day, and do the other stuff at night and on weekends.

CB: Keeps you pretty busy?

DOC: Oh yeah. 

CB: Now you claim to have seen this gremlin…

DOC: …and talked with her and took pictures.

CB: Right, when did all this start?  (more here!)

AWAM Scholarships Available for Eager Technicians
The Association for Women in Aviation Maintenance is seeking applicants for 12 available training and education scholarships, many of which are not restricted to maintenance students or females, although applicants do have to join AWAM. The deadline for entry is November 21. Scholarships available include offerings from Abaris Training, CAE SimuFlite, Elliott Aviation, FlightSafety International, Girard Aviation, Rice Family “Helping Hand” (financial assistance for students), Horizon Air, JetBlue, Pratt & Whitney, Southwest Airlines, Tools Beneath Your Wings (honoring Richard L. Waters) and Aircraft Technical Book. Scholarship requirements include AWAM membership and an application with details on educational background; work experience; honors, scholastic achievements, community service; qualifications (certificates, ratings); an essay of no more than  200 words about the applicant’s interest in aviation; and two letters of recommendation. AWAM membership costs $15 for students and $25 for all others.

Go to the Association for Women in Aviation Maintenance web-site scholarship page here:

http://www.awam.org/scholarships.htm

Hot Tips:

1. Read the rules carefully. Make sure you have everything required in your package, follow the checklists.

2. Write your essay to address the scholarship. If you want to be a mechanic, an essay about gourmet cooking would be a little odd. Each scholarship is different, each essay should be different. Don’t just make copies, thoughtfully write each one (if you’re going for more than one). 

3. NO MISSPELLINGS OR BAD GRAMMAR! This is the worstest mistroke and the easiest to fax. Spell check can only go so far, and it won’t catch the wrong word that is spelled rite. Have someone else (a teecher perhaps) check your writing for anything obvious. Doh!

4. Be prepared to meet the requirements. If you need to provide your own transportation and lodging, have at least a realistic expectation of being able to do that. But even if you’re broke, hang in there. You just need to take the next step…

5. Ask for help. Really, it’s OK. This is for your education, you’re not panhandling for cigarettes or beer money. If you don’t ask, the answer is always no. If you DO ask, the answer is often no, but, sometimes it’s yes! We’ll have more advice on how to ask for sponsorships soon.

Good luck!

Something dangerous.

And when a hero falls, someone always asks… “Why”?

Will Rogers and Wiley Post lost in fog

Lady Be Good

Roald Dahl's Gremlin

Happy Halloween. Fly safe.

Note: Gremlins aren’t real of course, the movies and stories are all just silly fantasies and spooky fluff. Yet one man claims to have encountered a gremlin, spoken with it and survived! In a stunning revelation, he even showed us photographs of the bizarre creature. Next week, in a Plane-Girls News exclusive interview, you can read about his harrowing ordeal. Read the story, look at the pictures, and then YOU decide.

Dawn's Early Light

Best in Show 2008

I love the smell of napalm in the morning…it smells like…wait a minute. It smells like a line from Robert Duvall in Apocolypse Now!     

Let me start over.

 I love an air show in the morning. Before the sunrise, before the grills fire up for the barbecued turkey legs and fajitas. Before the crowds, before the noise and thunder and heat, before the frantic activity of launching and landing and marshalling, before the complex dance of flying smoke and acrobatic whifferdills. There is peace and calm, the sky is still dark but brightening, the dew and condensation gently drip off the wings and noses of the chocked airplanes. Only a few crews are about, the mechanics and pilots and the first vendors beginning to set up. In this quiet time, in this golden light, if you look, you can see another side of the great airplanes that we love and nurture.

All airplanes have personalities. They are alive. In the air, they are growling, powerful, graceful beasts in their natural element, miracles of engineering and faith in unseen physics. On the ground and in the harsh light of day, they are complicated marvels on display, poised, perched, intimidating, huge. They are the ultimate technological expressions of their respective ages, mechanical life created by man. Perhaps no other handiwork of ours is so complex and so simple, so powerful and so frail. Great works of high art, their form and function entertwine like yin and yang. Even tattered and gutted gate guardians retain the memories of flight in their sleek forms and postures. Their spirits may be grounded forever, yet they still strain for the sky.

In the morning, in dawn’s early light, she is sublime. In that transient, temporal light, she is no longer a powerful hulking beast. She’s a riveter’s devotion, a seamstress’ prayer, a metalsmith’s rosary. Thousands of human hands have touched her, formed her, shaped her, polished her, and caressed her. There is no smallest, most hidden and sealed away part of her that has never known a human touch. She is a mechanical life, a functional and useful tool of art, war and commerce. But still human for all of the metal and fabric and glass. In the morning, bathed in dawn’s early light, every man and woman who ever touched her is still here. She isn’t just an airplane, isn’t just a machine. She’s the gentle beat of a thousand human hearts, a thousand dreams, a thousand spirits of both the quick and dead. She is alive.

The two photographs are from the Midland Air Show. Click on them to download, and share as you like, these two gifts from the Plane-Girls.

A whifferdill is an Air Force slang term for an unspecified aerobatic maneuver. Usually used by C-130 drivers when referring to fighter pilots’ airmanship. It’s generally respectful. Sort of.

Promotion for Flight Cru 92

If you’ve been fans of the Plane-Girls for any length of time, you know that we started out as a calendar company, peddling bikini girls and airplanes. And when the girls began to fly, they changed the course of the company from cute girls posing with airplanes to real women who really fly.

A lot of fans, male and female, applauded the change and wished us well, and have been in our corner ever since. Thank you for that, you are true friends. Along with that friendship and our growing popularity, we have had some interesting feedback. One very distinguished gentleman counselled us early on, advising that there was a lot of money and stature available if we concentrated on the educational aspects of our work, built a professional and respectable organization with serious women and stayed well clear of involvement with bimbos and other “trashy” sorts of people. Is there a male analogue for a bimbo? A bambino, perhaps? 

A recent e-mail was particularly painful, in that it was from an old friend, but was harshly critical. The gist of the message was that they applauded our efforts to encourage women to become involved in aviation, but that our image was harmful to that effort, and in fact, was nothing more than smut. They suggested that serious professional women want to achieve success by their ability and performance, not because they are a woman and wear a revealing dress. There is a place for that, but not in professional roles of aviation or industry leadership positions. It was suggested that if we’re really serious about helping women, we should find more professional, respectable endeavors. This approach does not promote true progress for women. Sincerly, etc, etc.

This advice was tendered with highest regards to the Plane-Girls, along with the comment that they are really hot chicks, but that’s not the point. The point was, women have to play by the rules and work twice as hard to achieve their professional goals.

We respect those opinions. Problem is, we’re not all that serious about playing by someone else’s rules. Don’t get us wrong, we’re deadly serious about flying and about flying by the rules, and we’re serious about getting women jobs in the industry. And we’re equally serious about building this organization into a dynamic, effective advocacy group for women in aviation. But we chose the wrong role models. In our passion to do something that no one has done before, in our excitement to be participants in this thrilling adventure, we chose some pretty trashy women to emulate (some might have called them bimbos once).

We chose to admire Amelia Earhart, a women from a broken home with an alcoholic father. Miss Earhart decided to take up flying, much to the shock and anguish of her family and friends, and then added insult to injury by driving a truck to earn money for flying lessons. In a final affront to the finer dignities of society, she wore trousers while driving her truck and while flying. She was a most undignified and scandalous woman. Some might have even called her trashy. We all know that she came to no good end, so she was probably a bad choice for us. But chose her anyway.

We chose to admire Pancho Barnes, a spoiled socialite who abandoned her preacher husband to enjoy a life of self centered, sordid, tawdry adventures. She smoked and drank and used foul language and was certainly not welcome in any but the lowest society of the day. But she did OK in aviation, which was pretty scandalous at the time. Pancho broke a couple of Amelia Earhart’s records and set a couple of her own along the way. And later in life when she settled down to run a quiet little bar in the California desert, she became a counselor of sorts to brash young men who explored the edges of aviation, the test pilots of Edwards Air Force Base. She still threw some legendary parties, but the participants we’re somewhat legendary themselves. The Air Force, certain that she was running a house of ill repute, hounded her unmercifully until her land was seized, the bar burned to the ground and her “bad influence” driven off forever. She died in wretched poverty, another bad end for a bad woman. Of course, the greatest pilots in the world still toast and honor her memory, but then, great pilots aren’t necessarily respectable themselves, especially when they’ve had a few drinks. A woman who plays by the rules might want to think before she joins in such company. But we made our choice, and Pancho lives on with us.

We chose to admire Jackie Cochrane, a foundling white trash orphan who chose her name out of phonebook, because it “sounded nice”. A woman who had no birthday, because she never knew what it was. A woman who was abused as child in the textile mills, and who learned hair dressing and makeup from low women in squalid little towns in the Florida panhandle; a tough woman who clawed her way into her own makeup business, and who discovered flying as way to expand her business. But something happened along the way, something no one could have foreseen. Along the way, Jackie Cochrane became wealthy and respectable. Along the way she set more aviation distance, speed and altitude records than any other human being in aviation history. She was a complex, enigmatic woman, who made powerful friends and more poweful enemies. But she always did things her way, and to hell with the rules. We chose Jackie Cochrane to be one of our role models.

We don’t know how many women will ever take up flying because of us, but we know a few have. We don’t know how many women will make it to the top of the corporate ladder, because we don’t know how many will walk through the door. But we know some women who never even knew that there was a door. Maybe we only showed them a back door, but it’s still a door. We don’t know how many records we’ll break, we don’t know how many corporate pilots or astronauts or airline CEOs will come from our ranks. We’re still new at this, and it’s a little early, but we’re hoping for the best.

Just about the only rule that we have in Plane-Girls is that we don’t judge each other. We don’t care about a woman’s age, or color, or religion or economic status. If she’s interested in aviation, she’s in. If she’s a bimbo who flys, she’s in. If she’s a spinster librarian who loves air shows, she’s in. No one makes us wear revealing clothes, no one makes us pose in bikinis. Some of us do it because we like to. And some us flirt and party with the guys, and behave scandalously, because we like to. Our rules, our choices, our lives. We respect your opinion, and we respect ourselves. And maybe someday we’ll be role models for young girls who are tired of hearing “be respectable, play by the rules and work twice as hard”.

Plane-Girls is not a pipeline for corporate pilots, nor a campus for industry executives. But if we do everything right, we might become an incubator for the next Amelia, Pancho or Jackie. And maybe not, but we’ll have one hell of a time along the way.

If you want to see a bikini girl with some serious attitude, check out Rocket on the web-site. Click the link below. She’s a motorcycle racer, a model, an artist and one of the nicest people we’ve ever met. We respect her, after all, she’s a Plane-Girl.  

http://plane-girls.com/home.html

Blue Skies