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All,
I got a contact overnight last night through LinkedIn. A Lupita Wisener wanted to know if I took my Private Pilot Airplane Single Engine Land check ride from Robert Henry Wisener? I told her that I did and she sent me the front and back pictures below.
That took me back down memory lane. My mentor (Colonel Philip Harrison) was a retired USAF 05 who started out in P51’s late in WW2 and retired off of the Thud (F-105) following Vietnam. He was a teacher at my high school (Skyline) and would take on one student a year. He already had one, but I begged him to take me on because I thought my current instructor was a loser. He relented, but he took the other guy to go and pick up a brand new Cessna 152 II at the factory…a disappointment to this day. As an aside, that guy was a “rich kid”, his dad was a doctor, so he never had to figure out how to pay for anything. My parents were not rich, so I had to do anything I could to make the money to pay for flying and I was always hustling to get a ride with someone. In any case, he and I were friends, got to be really good friends and ironically enough I helped him to get hired at AA. Further, I have known his wife since elementary school. Copilots are amazed to learn this. Anyway, Harrison had paid $37,000 for a brand new plane, partly because the US Congress had passed a tax incentive that if you bought a plane you could write a lot of the purchase off of your taxes. It was called an investment tax credit as I recall. He put it on lease-back with a little operation at Addison Airport. He also told that place to hire me…and they did. Before it was over I had built that place into a powerhouse with dozens of planes. Anyway, Congress was trying to goose the manufacturers because lawyers were killing the industry and that program got the plane I learned how to fly in. Now get this – That airplane is still flying out in California! LOL
https://www.flightaware.com/resources/registration/N48204
What memories. I have written back to Lupita asking what she is doing and haven’t received a reply yet. If I get one I will make a follow up post.
73
Phillip Beall (W5EBC)
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