About the Editor

July, 1952: TWA Constellation, Idlewild to San Francisco, via Midway and K. C., my sister in a pink party dress, me in long pants and my very own clip-on tie. Jeanne couldn't handle the "air pockets" and Mom failed the immediate, emergency, air-sickness bag opening test. As I remember it now, I managed to retain the fried chicken box lunch they served that day.

July 14, 1976, AA-1B, N7110L - Private Pilot Flight Test, Satisfactory; 3-M Airport, Bristol, PA (R.I.P.).

Since then I've dreamed about a new Lear 31, a Ted Smith Aerostar and a '78 Mooney 231. For a long time I had to settle for McGarr's CD-ROM version of FlightSim 5.1. Now, I fly a Travel Air open cockpit biplane.

I spent much of my youth at JFK, snapping blurry black and whites of Viscounts, Vanguards and Electras. I single-handedly ruined a family vacation in 1962 by throwing a tantrum in order to visit what was then the world's longest runway at Logan Airport. Near Kill Devil Hill, I tramped each of the first four flights made by the Wrights on that day in December, 94 years ago.

I've worshipped the Spirit of St. Louis at the Smithsonian, admired the Blue Angels at the Reading Airshow, walked the San Diego Aerospace Museum with an Air Transport Command pilot father-in-law, who flew every airplane built in WWII.

I've watched controllers rack shrimp boats at New York Center, schmoozed with supervisors at Kennedy Tower and Greater Pitt, hung out with the fine crew at San Diego Tower, observed the Port Authority track noisy neighbors at the Port District Noise Office and toured the Mike Monroney Aeronautical Center in OKC. I've studied icebergs in the North Atlantic from 38,000 feet on the flight deck of a KLM stretch DC-8, watched John Huston's "The Dead" in the economy section on an Aer Lingus 747 to Dublin. I've rocked and rolled from Newark to Pittsburgh, via Wilkes Barre and Harrisburg, on an Allegheny F-27 in a driving snowstorm in early January.

I've flown in Beech 1800's, Boeing 707's, 720's, 727-37-47-57-67's, DC-7's, 8's, 9's and 10's, MD-80's, Convair 440's and 880's, de Havilland Twin Otters, Lockheed 1011's, Nord 262's, a Vickers Viscount, a Bell Ranger and a UH- 1D, Huey. I've piloted Yankees and Warriors, Skyhawks and 150's, Archers, Arrows, Mooneys, Decathlons, a Schweizer glider, one, cherry '68, V-tail Bonanza, a Grob 103A Sailplane, a sweet, fogiving, red and white Citabria, a red, white and blue Great Lakes open cockpit biplane, Rocky Hill's dazzling purple, modified Extra 300 and the most beautiful blue and orange 1929 Travel Air aloft.

I've written about aviation locally and nationally, and on-line. Questions? Contact Sister Mary Euthanasia, St. Dorothy's Academy, Staten Island, New York. If she's passed onto her final reward, check out the office, I know my picture's there somewhere, the Courtesy Award winner from the graduating class of 1962. Cute smile, huh?