Cockpit Follies by Garth Wallace (Click on cover to order this book) (Scroll down for sample chapter)
		With over 40 drawings by Francois Bougie www.bizzart.com

Cockpit Follies is a humorous look at the world of aviation from the best seat in the house: the pilot’s seat. This is #4 in the Garth Wallace series of funny flying books.

This book is the sequel to Derry Air, Garth Wallace’s hilarious tales of his days as a flying instructor in the mythical City of Derry. Bull Muldoone, Marathon Melville and Skid Sicamore are joined by more crazy characters including the Phantom, Edgar the Astronaut and Elmer the Snitch.

Cockpit Follies

Soft cover - 185 pages of laughs

$18.95 CDN / $18.95 U.S.

Sample chapter - Cockpit Follies

Chapter one / Pink Fuel

Bull Muldoone booked his wife on Derry Air’s “Pitch Hitter” Course. Muldoone was the blowhard owner of a Piper Twin Comanche hangared at Derry Air. The Pitch Hitter Course was designed for pilot spouses. It taught straight and level flying, map reading and radio work so a pilot’s companion could participate in a flight. The course also taught how to radio for help and to land the airplane in case the pilot became incapacitated in the air.
Angel told me I was booked with “Mrs. Muldoone” for a Pitch Hitter. I wasn’t sure why Muldoone wanted his wife on the course. The overweight, cigar-chewing loudmouth was a good candidate for incapacitation but his wife never flew with him. I had never met the woman.
“On their Twin Comanche?” I asked excitedly. Multi-engine flying time was gold for flying instructors with their sights on the airlines.
“No, on a Derry Air Cherokee.”
“Oh. Does this lady have a first name?”
“Mrs.,” the church-going receptionist replied, “Mrs. Muldoone.”
On the day of her first lesson, I was waiting for “Mrs. Muldoone” by the flight desk when she strutted into the Derry Air office. She was a tall, shapely woman on the other side of middle age. Her hair was bottle blonde and her high-mileage face was covered in industrial strength make-up. A pink sweater and skirt were purposefully too small and the spikes on her hooker heels would have dimpled the strongest aluminum. I assessed her as an air-headed trophy bride.
She zeroed in on me right away. “Good morning,” she said cheerfully before Angel could introduce us, “are you my instructor?”
“Mrs. Muldoone? Yes, I am.”
“Gin,” she said immediately, holding out her hand. A collection of bracelets rattled on her arm. “Please call me Gin.”
“Okay Gin, pleased to meet you.”
“I’m really looking forward to this,” she said immediately. “I’ve always wondered why Bull liked flying around in little airplanes.” She waved her bracelets toward the Cherokees parked on the flightline and wrinkled her nose when she said, “little airplanes”. I felt I was about to waste her time and her husband’s money.
“How do we get started?” she asked. She made it sound like she was interested.
“First, we’ll sit down over here and I’ll outline the course,” I said, motioning toward a briefing cubicle.
I sat Gin across from me at a table and showed her the lesson plan for the Pitch Hitter course. She propped her elbows, meshed her fingers together and rested her chin on them. She watched me with a steady stare. I spoke slowly hoping she could follow what I was saying.
“I’ll show you how to read an aviation map and how to talk on the radio,” I said.
She was probably wishing she was at the mall and not the airport. “Do I get to fly the plane?” she asked.
“Yes. In fact today I’ll have you steering the airplane straight and level but don’t worry, there are dual controls so I can fly along with you.”
“Good, but I’m not worried,” she replied quickly. “If you knew me, you’d worry for you, not me.”
I wasn’t sure what she was talking about but I smiled in case it was a joke. I finished outlining the course without asking questions. I didn’t want to overtax her minimal interest in aviation. We headed outside.
“I’ll show you some of the things a pilot checks on the airplane before flying,” I offered.
“Okay.”
I started at the door on the right side. “The airplane is made of aluminum,” I explained, “which is lighter and more corrosion resistant than steel.”
“Like my Cobra,” Ginny commented.
“A Mustang Cobra?”
“No, a Shelby AC Cobra,” she replied. “The aluminum is light but body gets dinged bad if I take it to the mall.”
If she had it right, Gin was driving what had been the fastest production car in the world and one of the most expensive.
I continued the walkaround and showed her the basic aircraft controls. At the front of the wing, I removed the fuel cap. “Look in and you’ll see the fuel level. The tab indicates about two-thirds full.”
“The gas is pink,” she exclaimed.
It was an appropriate bimbo comment. I wanted to say that we provided our customers with their choice of designer fuel colors. Instead, I said, “That tells the pilot that the fuel is 80 octane.”
“I buy 100 octane in barrels from the local fuel dealer for the Cobra,” she said. “It’s green. I have to hand pump it but if I don’t the car runs like crap on the new unleaded stuff from the gas station.”
I was starting to change my first impression of Gin. I replaced the fuel cap and pointed to the engine cowling. “If you open that flap on top of the engine and unscrew the dipstick, we can check the oil.”
She readily popped the flap and looked inside. “There’s not much in here,” she commented.
“It’s a four-cylinder, 150-horsepower engine,” I offered.
“What’s the displacement?”
“Three hundred and twenty cubic inches.”
“The Cobra has a 427 V-8 putting out three times the horsepower. Are you sure this thing’ll fly?”
“It’s a training airplane,” I replied. “Bull’s Twin Comanche has two of those engines.”
“How fast will it go?”
“Maximum speed is 180 miles per hour.”
“Same as the Cobra.”
She checked the oil. It’s at five,” she said. She was sharp enough not to pull the stick right out and drip oil on her pink outfit.
“That’s good,” I said. “We add one at four.”
“Four what?”
“Quarts,” I replied. “American quarts.”
We continued around the airplane.
“Those dinky tires are awful bald,” she observed.
“Stingy Mingy won’t let the mechanics replace them until the chord is showing.” It slipped out. I didn’t normally use the Derry Air owner’s nickname in front of a customer.
“Stingy Mingy, I like it,” Gin said with a grin. “What is the Derry Air name for Bull?”
I could feel my face turning red.
“Come on,” she said. “I won’t tell him.”
“The pineapple,” I said.
“Perfect!” she exclaimed. “Prickly on the outside and a hole in the brain: I’ve got my own names for him, but I like Pineapple.”
“We don’t need much trend on the tires,” I offered, trying to bring the lesson back on track. “We don’t use them for traction or high speed turns.”
“Well, not much tread is what you got. They don’t even look like radials.”
“They’re not.”
We finished the pre-flight inspection at the entrance door. “Climb on board and slide over to the pilot’s seat on the left side,” I said.
The tight pink skirt made it a difficult manoeuver but Gin wasn’t shy. I saw acres of leg before she got the job done. While I was climbing in beside her, she looked around the cabin. “It’d be tough getting lucky in one of these things?” She made it sound like an observation and not an invitation.
“Yeah, but it’s great for teaching flying.”
“I’m just trying to figure out why Bull likes to spend every day at the airport.”
I didn’t comment. I spent every day at the airport and I rarely saw Bull.
I started the Cherokee, called ground control and taxied out for takeoff, explaining briefly what I was doing along the way. Gin continued to ask intelligent questions. We took off, climbed out and cleared the airport control zone. I had her take control. She was a natural. She quickly mastered the technique of guiding the airplane with a light touch rather than overcontrolling it. There was time left over at the end of the lesson.
“Do you want to see your house from the air on the way back to the airport?” I asked.
“Sure, it’s on the ridge east of town. Look for the biggest, god-awful monument to classless wealth that you’ve ever seen.”
“Is it a white Spanish-style villa?”
“You’ve seen it.”
“I watched it being built from the air. There was a line-up of cement trucks along the road for weeks.”
“I call it the bunker.”
The sun was out and I could see the white square of concrete in the distance. As we drew closer, I could make out the bright red roof, the cement and wrought iron perimeter fence and the two giant white cement bulls guarding the entrance.
“How low can we fly?” Gin asked, looking down at the house. Her voice had taken on a hard edge.”
“One thousand feet over a built-up area,” I replied. We were flying about two thousand feet above the ground. “Do you want to fly lower?”
“Yes,” she said, still staring at the house. “That pink Cadillac in the driveway belongs to Martha ‘the mouth’ Madden. She and Bull are in the rack. Now I know why he wanted me to take flying lessons.”
I didn’t know what to say. Gin didn’t sound angry but the discovery couldn’t have made her happy. I didn’t say anything.
“I want to buzz the place so they know that I know they’re there.” Her cheerful tone was returning. She was forming a plan.
I didn’t want to be in an airplane flown for the first time by a vengeful wife buzzing her two-timing husband. I didn’t reply. She turned and looked at me. She must have seen fear. She smiled and said, “Come on, it’ll be fun. He does this to me all the time. It’s a chance to get him back. One quick low and over..."