Quality Facetime

The cool early morning breeze was from the south. That meant that the wave-off point was going to be opposite the mid-field concessions tent. Which meant I could get to watch the morning departing traffic while having breakfast. So it would be worth the extra walk. Great!

I love Oshkosh.

Oshkosh is aviation’s Glastonbury. A very quiet, slightly sleepy location which – for one week of the year - is a vastly entertaining and hugely overcrowded jamboree. And, occasionally, very muddy and miserable physically. But mentally highly enjoyable with something for everybody and anybody, even if it is in a slightly over-commercialised setting. Glastonbury for contemporary music, Oshkosh for (mostly) smaller aeroplanes.

Each trip I made to Oshkosh had its adventures. But 1997 was also particularly educational.

That year, the trip was made possible by my frequent travel between the Bombardier facilities in Montreal and Wichita. I managed to organise the return leg of this particular trip from Wichita to go through O’Hare and give me a weekend stop-off in Chicago, from where I would rent a car for the four-hour drive north to the show and have three-nights in a tent at Camp Scholler to shack up close to the airfield. I mean, this is Oshkosh. Time on site is a premium. I wasn’t going to waste a minute. No way was I staying in a dorm down-town. It was the one and only place in the world where I was prepared to camp voluntarily, since a little personal discomfort would increase exposure time aeroplanes and (more importantly) aeroplane people. I always learn something interesting here from unexpected sources.

Travel between the Bombardier facilities was an essential part of my present contract. I’d been offered the chance that April to become one of the RJ700 Lead Flight Test Integrators for the evolving RJ700 design. It meant yet more personal dislocation in my itinerant life-style and leaving a really great test crew on Global Express Ship 2 in Wichita. But the brief was extensive and worth it. On paper, it meant being integrated into the programme management team to look after testing, operations and crew certification. In reality, it meant doing whatever it took with whoever was involved to minimise test and certification difficulties and problems on all aircraft systems. Nose to tail. For engineering, maintenance and flight operations. Everything. Magic!

Though I was just a couple of months into the RJ700 assignment, it was a great team in a really well-run project with a lean management structure, which gave active encouragement to get involved wherever we thought we could help. However, a few of our early higher-level programme discussions simply didn’t make sense to me, as I couldn’t quite see the significance of some of the strategic issues driving the project. But it was definitely going to be a highly productive blast, especially with the characters involved.

Speaking of aerospace characters, back in Wichita, Don(*) occupied the desk next to mine. He was a very talented Flight Test Engineer (as well as being a very capable flight instructor) with a wicked sense of humour and a very mischievous imagination. No goof-up went uncommented, no zinger missed. His witty retorts brought at least a smile, even if you were the recipient. Mercifully – up to that point anyway - I hadn’t had to take many.

On this particular trip, departure day in Wichita was going to be busy. To maximise work time, the previous evening had been spent carefully squeezing all the Oshkosh camping gear into the backpack in addition to the trip clothes, as there was a lot to combine. To get ahead of the long hit list of meetings that people wanted, I was in the office by 7am. I dumped my backpack behind my desk and headed off to go through all the discussions on issues that required attention as soon as I hit Montreal.

That long list grew longer during the day, lunch was abandoned and mid afternoon rolled round way too quickly. Having left it as late as I possibly could, I rudely cut the final session short, dashed back to the desk, grabbed the backpack and scarpered for the short trip round the airfield from Learjet to the ICT terminal. In those pre-9/11 days, it was literally six minutes from the car through the terminal to the gate, where I had the heavy backpack tagged and onto the gate-check cart as I dashed to the flight to be the last person boarded. I settled into the seat mighty relieved at getting away with cutting it so fine. At least I had 90 mins rest on the flight up, even if late lunch was only a bag of Delta pretzels.

O’Hare isn’t really my favourite airport. My flight always seems to arrive at the last gate on any of the Y-arms, leaving me to trudge the entire length of the terminal concourse and out the gate before then having to transit to wherever terminal my connecting flight is leaving from and trudge down the full length of that concourse. And it’s not a small place, as you might notice.

This flight was no exception. We arrived at the farthest gate. Picking up the back-pack from gate-check, I was at least relieved that the trudge was only to the car rental desk, which was half the usual torture. But carrying the backpack meant I was still pretty knackered when I got there, and I began to wonder if I was feeling my age, even though I rarely acted it.

The walk from the rental car park bus to the car made up for the missing walking distance, though. O’Hare rental parking areas are massive, and the car was difficult to find as the space numbers were rather worn, especially in the fading evening light. But eventually, knackered, I found the car, deposited the backpack in the trunk and started the long haul north to Oshkosh, anxious not to get there excessively late.

In the event, I arrived after midnight. This is – shall we say – a sub-optimum time to try and find a pitch spot in Camp Scholler with the show already two days old. The place was, as usual, packed. But eventually, after several frustrating circuits in the dark of the bumpy camp perimeter track, I finally found a postage stamp of free space by the fence where I could pitch my pup-tent by the light of the car headlamps. With not a little colourful language, I assembled the tent, put down the ground sheet and, rather fragrant, tired and hungry, mentally and physically exhausted, gave thanks as I finally unfurled the sleeping bag just after 1am.

The last of the sleeping bag unrolled to reveal two, very large, very thick, very heavy, Wichita area phone books.

Anybody awake within earshot would certainly know that I’d been Don’d(*).

But at least I knew why I felt more knackered than usual. Which was small consolation.

I did sleep solidly, though.

Waking up the following morning sore and tired (a first night expectation for an occasional camper), I was able to see the funny side but only after the hot shower had loosened me up. I even managed a wry smile on the walk to breakfast. Which is why the wind direction mattered. That defined if it was worth walking the extra distance to eat in my present, starved, state. With the wind from the south, it was.

The food concession tent concerned was a 100ft long open-sided marquee halfway along the north-south runway, where the tent west end had the cooking area and the east end had a good view of the runway 200 meters away. And, more importantly, the departure wave-off point. Even at 8am, there was still two lines of small aeroplanes on the runway waiting to depart. But this is Oshkosh, so it’s not just any line-up of aeroplanes. Here, the usual smattering of traditional spam-cans were intermixed with experimental, vintage, warbird and classic aeroplanes, all heading off for a morning jolly before they closed the airfield for the airshow. It was a great spectacle for those of us into that sort of thing.

The resulting aeroplane traffic at Oshkosh makes it almost impossible to use the normal radio. So they don’t. They rely on people’s intelligence and good common sense (a bit of a rarity these days) to respond to standard hand signals from the myriad of volunteer marshals around the airfield to be flagged into place and then flagged off, alternately, from two side-by-side line-ups on the runway in timed intervals.

Sitting there at the bench table at the east end of the tent, watching this kaleidoscope of aircraft types line up, I ended up playing a little game of trying to remember as many anecdotes as possible about each aircraft type in the 30 seconds between when it rolled to the front of the line and it was flagged off. So I didn’t see him approach.

“This seat taken, son?”

Startled back into reality, I looked up to see an older, lean, clean-cut gentleman with a breakfast tray gesture to the seat opposite me.

“No, not at all” I replied. “Please do.”

There’s this certain something about people who don’t have to try too hard. It might be the confidence of motion, the economy of words, the understated but sharp dress sense, might even be the quality of haircut. You see it in people of class. I mean real class, not just the wannabes or the Trust Fund or the New Money types. There’s always tell-tale signs of really special people if you’re looking.

I was intrigued, but didn’t want to interrupt his breakfast, so drifted back to my little game. After a couple of mouthfuls, he broke the comfortable silence first.

“How’d you get here, son?”

I was slightly flattered at the age reference. “Oh, just stopping over for a couple of days on my way from Wichita to Montreal”, I replied.

“Work for Bombardier, then.” It was a statement, not a question. I was a bit taken aback at his speed in connecting the dots. Must have registered on him.

“I used to work for Lockheed Aircraft myself”, he continued.

Eh? What? Nobody’s called it Lockheed Aircraft in decades. This was intriguing, and required more investigation.

“And how did you get here yourself?” I asked.

“Flew in with the Bonanza Caravan. Do it every year I can.” Ah! Not only a pilot of advanced years – no mean feat in itself - but an owner of one of my favourite aircraft types with a most interesting history, good and bad.

“Which one do you fly?”

“The P35. First of the good ones.”

“Done anything to it?”

“Not much. Updated the panel with new radios, but I keep it stock. No point in gilding the lily.”

“I take it you’re an old timer from Palmdale, then?”, I continued after a few seconds contemplation.

His face warmed slightly at the reference. “Yeah, you could say that. I retired in ’68 but they brought me back for a while in ‘72”.

Whoa! Did I just hear that right? This guy was really interesting.

Amidst many other problems that Lockheed had in the early seventies, the Tristar airliner programme was probably the biggest, and not just because of the RB-211. But it wasn’t the only one. Both the C-141 and C-5 military transports had major issues and several missile programmes were in difficulty. In the push to get cash in, some – shall we say - “creative” proposals were made to airline execs (and others!) to expedite Tristar sales. That led to a bribes scandal in 1971 that in turn led to a top exec clear-out and a fundamental re-building of the entire Lockheed senior management. So his dates were very significant.

“I take it you were part of the clean-up team after the bribes scandal, then?” I ventured.

He smiled, and gently waved an appreciative fork in my direction. “You know your history as well as your airplanes, son. Very good.”

“Well, I like to understand the past failures to prevent future disasters. Gives me perspective and reference points.”

“I like that. Yep, I was part of that ‘clean-up team’ - as you put it…..”.

Okay, I couldn’t resist it any longer. I had to ask.

“Any involvement with the Skunk Works? I mean, I’ve always admired how they did things on the 104, U-2 and SR-71. Kelly Johnston must have been your greatest designer.”

His eyes narrowed slightly. “Gotta tell you, son, Kelly wasn’t my best designer, not by a long shot. I had much better designers working for me. But he was the best Project Engineer that I ever had.”

I sat there, stunned. Kelly Johnston was one of aerospace’s biggest legends, egos and characters, the front man for several iconic aircraft projects in the fifties and sixties, images of which are still used to this day to represent the white heat of the technological progress of those decades. And the guy across the table had been his boss. For years.

I was all ears. I was talking to an ALL. At breakfast. In Oshkosh.

He saw my jaw metaphorically dropping, and I thought I caught a facial expression that he was working out mentally if it was worth his while elaborating. Like all the true greats, he was clearly short on words but long on meaning. But since I’d established just the tiniest bit of credibility with him, he almost shrugged as if to say ‘What the heck, why not?’. So he started.

“Let me give you an example……”

And he was off and running, reeling off moments from his life in Lockheed, none confidential or controversial or more than a couple of minutes long, many very cryptic, most requiring a lot of background knowledge and all highly enlightening. And he effortlessly segued from one to the next, anecdote after anecdote, all while working his way nonchalantly through his breakfast.

I kept up – just. When his train of thought began to run dry, I’d fire in another prompt and we’d be off on some other thread of similar ilk, just as deep, just as informative. He seamlessly coasted through the monologue (since for once in my life, I wasn’t saying much) and seemed to appreciate the attentive audience of one.

It was just fascinating. Many of these anecdotes were like finding a small key piece in a big jigsaw. Several big jigsaws, in fact. A Mother Lode of Information doesn’t even begin to describe it. Pivotal moments in programmes, personalities, designs, politics, competition, strategy, markets, airlines, the future – he covered it all with an insight and clarity which I simply had never seen before. He may have been well into his eighties, but he had the sharpest memory and most concise recall skills of anybody I’d ever met.

And then, just like that, he was done. His breakfast was over. Mine was cold.

As he effortlessly got up from his seat while I sat there dazed from the information firehose that had just been turned off, he suddenly stopped, and turned to look me in the eye.

“My apologies. I’ve been very rude. I haven’t introduced myself. I’m Willis Hawkins.” and he held out his hand.

I got up and shook it. “Dave Curran”.

“Well, son, it’s been a pleasure.”

“No, sir, it’s been an honour”, I replied, and with that he smiled and was gone.

It did take me a little while - and eating a cold breakfast with lukewarm coffee - to recover from my slightly dazed condition. When it finally did occur to me to look at my watch to check, he’d been talking for 92 minutes.

To say that it had been a formative conversation would be an understatement. To say that I viewed aerospace from a slightly different angle afterwards would not be an exaggeration. It felt like I’d had a glimpse of the entire industry from orbit, a vantage point reserved for the few. As I slowly digested and began to piece his anecdotes into the parts of the picture that I’d had up to that point, I suddenly become aware of a vastly broader perspective for how everything related and interacted way beyond my (by now rather narrow) focus of designing, building and testing aeroplanes.

I was able to see much broader issues by taking that metaphorical two steps further back. Even my usual activities at the show – attending the forums, checking out the research tents, talking to designers – had a different feel to them as I began to see a much deeper context of what was going on and why. The key jigsaw pieces that he had let me glimpse allowed me to make sense of what that bigger industry context really looked like.

Those previously mysterious RJ700 project strategic discussions now made a lot more sense. I could now begin to comprehend what strategic issues were driving the tactical instructions that flowed down to the detail design levels of the programme pyramid. Those seemingly weird requests were now much more relevant. Rather than react immediately, we began to take a little bit more time to see the broader issue at stake and then formulate solutions, not just respond to the local specific instruction. We could react better. It helped. Lots.

But that’s another story.

If you’re interested, I recommend you look up Willis Hawkins. He has a heck of a bio. But then again, he was a heck of a man. In an industry replete with TLAs, there is one particular acronym that definitely applied to Willis Hawkins. He was a genuine ALL – an Aerospace Leading Light.

That light finally faded out on 28th September 2004, aged 91.

Gone but not forgotten, least of all by me after Oshkosh 1997. It was my most memorable show amongst many great ones, where in that most enlightening of conversations a door opened to reveal a whole new way of seeing things, a perspective that I still use every day. All from that simple, single conversation. There are still some things that simply just can’t happen on Facetime.

Oh, and I did finally forgive Don(*) when we met up at the Dubai Air Show in 2011, by which time he was a highly capable and very successful Sales Demonstration Pilot. No better man for the job.

Honestly. No joke.

(*) – not her real name