The following is an excerpt from the book I'm currently writing the working title of which is "NON-STANDARD APPROACH; I was only at Embry-Riddle for three terms- one for Carter and two for Reagan"
Everything in this post is Copyright 2020 Wes Oleszewski and may not be reproduced without express written permission.
WINNING BETS
I never bet unless I’m 175% sure I’ll
win. As a corporate pilot I had a customer who flew to Vegas about once a month
and had us stay there for a day or two. I never lost a dime on gambling-
because I never bet. On one trip my boss brought his wife along and she was
really bugged by the fact that I wouldn’t gamble. I explained that the odds are
highly slanted toward the house and I was getting paid to be there- not the
other way around. As we left dinner one evening I walked right past a row of
slot machines ignoring them all. Finally she stopped me and gave me a quarter
out of her purse.
“Here!”
she said directly, “Just put this in one of those machines and pull the
handle.”
Hey, it was my boss’ wife… so I
inserted the coin dutifully and pulled the handle. Then I walked away to my
room while the wheels were still spinning!
“You
can’t just walk away like that!” she shouted down the hall, “What if it wins?”
“It
won’t.” I replied over my shoulder.
And it didn’t.
I applied that same attitude all
through my Embry-Riddle saga. When we entered the school as freshmen, the
student bookstore had lots of swag with which to relieve us of even more of our
money. Most of it was fairly high quality and we snapped it up. One such item was
the weather-proof zip up book satchel. It was made of neoprene with a heavy
duty zipper and was said to be totally waterproof. In the Florida climate, that
was a good thing for your books- which were certainly not cheap.
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| My 1977 neoprene book bag. Not in bad shape after all these years. |
I bought one- we all bought them.
They had the ERAU logo on them and they were easy to carry.
One day while we were getting off the
bus at the RSI and walking back to our room I was goading my roommate Mike that
these bags were completely waterproof and I could actually toss mine into the
pool and my books would come out dry. That turned into a bet… five bucks, a
hand shake and I tossed my book bag, with my books in it, directly into the
pool!
It sank like a rock.
Kicking off my shoes and ditching my
wallet I dove in after it. It was at the bottom of the deep end and I went down
and easily recovered the bag. Surfacing I shook off a bit and with a small
crowd watching, I unzipped the bag. Every book was bone dry, and Mike paid off.
I didn't bother to tell him that I saw one of the other guys do the same thing
earlier in the week, so I had the edge.
Mike should have known better because
he had lost a bet for $10 several days earlier when I boasted that if he gave
me anything… anything, I could make a contraption out of it that would fly. That
evening after dinner he handed me the cash register receipt and a tooth pick
and told me to make it fly. Later in Room 182 I sailed the contraption over to
his bunk and he tossed me the cash. It was simple matter of taking the receipt
and folding it in half crosswise then making to small rips in the fold and
threading the tooth pick through them. I extended the wood to give the
contraption a slightly forward CG and it flew quite well… just like the ones I
used to make when I was in high school.
That’s what we were at ERAU to figure
out. Fly something and get paid for it.
Those two little tales lead into this
one- which I think really quantifies ERAU.
While waiting for a “Nav. II” class
to begin I waved a 3x5 note card at Earl, a pal of mine who was seated behind
me, and I boasted that I could take it alone and make an airplane that would
fly to the front of the classroom. He bet me a seafood dinner that I couldn’t
do it. Considering that I was on a starvation budget, one would think that such
was a bet I’d never take. But I love seafood and I had an ace up my sleeve.
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| I decided to make one just for this blog post.Yes, it flew... I still got it, eh. |
Since the beginning of the school
year I’d been fascinated with the concept of flat plate lift. One afternoon I
had spent nearly an hour in the Avion office being informed on the subject by
one of the upperclassmen who was an engineering student. In my spare time I sat
in my dorm room and built small airplanes with flat wings out of 3x5 cards. I
had it down to a science where I could make a good flyer out of just one card.
The airplanes had a one-piece wing that ran through a slit in the “V” shaped
fuselage that was long enough so you could adjust the wing laterally for CG. The wings had small winglets and the vertical stabilizer was a
section of the fuselage that was folded upward so the “V” pointed forward. That
caused the relative wind to force the nose up and induce an angle of attack. At
the front I folded the fuselage over itself a few times to add nose weight. The
horizontal stabilizer was simply a rectangular flat piece that slid into a slot
in the aft fuselage. They flew quite well, but when you gulled the wing… they
flew great! My only problem now was that in class I didn’t have my trusty Xacto
knife.
I’d have to tare carefully…there was seafood at risk.
Our instructor in that Nav. II class
was Mr. Mike Dougherty, which was great. I’d had him for my very first class at
ERAU, “Foundations of Aeronautics.” He was a former Air Force KC-135 driver and
was as cool as they come with plenty of aviation war stories and sick jokes.
Today, that quality would come through for me.
I sat there during the lecture, passively
constructing my little flat wing glider. I made my wing slots with a pencil point and then balanced for CG on the pencil as well. When it was done I held it down low
and showed it off the Earl. He leaned over the desk and whispered,
“Okay…
now fly it.”
Hey, I said I love seafood.
I cocked back my elbow and gave her a
toss.
The damned thing not only flew, but
it took off!
Mr. Dougherty had been lecturing
toward the other side of the room and I’m not sure what caught his attention;
the glider in flight, or the rippling chorus of snickers and “whoa”s. The
little plane flew right up and plopped down gently near his feet. He stopped
his lecture and picked it up.
“Who
made this?” he asked casually as he examined the little airplane.
A half dozen fingers, led by Earl,
pointed to me as I meekly raised my hand. Mr. Dougherty eyed the airplane intensely
and then he wound up and gave it the skilled toss of someone who'd been launching paper planes since he was a little kid!
Again the little airplane took flight
and stalling slightly a few times nearly made it to the classroom door.
Everyone snickered and Mr. Dougherty just shook his head.
“Come
up after class and get yer “A” for the day,” he said pointing at me. Then he
turned to the rest of the class and said firmly, “Don’t none of y’all get any
ideas either.”
This little event, I’ve always
thought, says a lot about what ERAU is all about.
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