I learned to fly in 1964 in Denver, Colorado and spent 15 years trying to make a living flying small planes. For 7 of those years all I did was fly skydivers in C-180's, B-18's, and an old Lockheed Lodestar. For the last 3 years we even had a 49 C-195 and that is when I learned to love one of the finest airplanes ever built. I used to fly that airplane everyday commuting between Phoenix and Casa Grande, Az., then fly a few loads of jumpers before commuting back to Skyharbor Airport. On weekends we'd fly the Beech and Lodestar and Cessna up and down until sunset and occasionally till late at night. Needless to say, Monday morning we had to start maintenance on the old radial engines especially the 1820's on the Lodestar, occasionally the 985's on the Beech's but old shaky was rarely a problem. Climbing that 195 as fast as possible then diving back to the ground is a notoriously common way to ruin a perfectly good engine.

    The only problem we had with the 195 was keeping the oil temp below the red line, but after a couple of months of that we just gave up and ran the engine that way all the time. We did not ever have to change an engine or even a cylinder for that matter. I've always regretted the day we had to sell old 3451V but when we closed the parachute center, keeping a 195 for my personal transportation was just not an option. I took a job spraying cotton for the next three years and then deregulation caused some of the non scheduled airlines to rethink their long-standing policy about hiring pilots who wear eyeglasses. I found myself in Ypsilanti, Mi. engineering in old DC-8-23's flying around the country delivering autoparts. I had the job offer on Friday morning for a class that started Monday morning. That evening I was in the truck with half our household goods heading north. My wife (Charmian) and 6 mo. old daughter had to rent the house, pack up the remainder of the Larson's meager estate and meet me in Ann Arbor where we rented another house and settled in to a career of finally flying the big stuff.

    Two months later I was furloughed. In the three years of working for the airline (Rosenbalm), I was furloughed 3 times and moved 4 times. After working for Rosie for 3 years I spent 4 years running around the world at Arrow Air then I managed to get hired at New York Air in 1986. NYA merged with Continental in 1987 and I was able to move back to Denver where it all started in 1964.

    By that time I was convinced I'd never own another airplane. I was having such a good time flying those jets why bother with little airplanes. Except maybe an old 195 but they were way to expensive for me at the time I had the above conversation with Tom about his plan to buy his Beechcraft (he's since come to his senses and bought a nice 170). It was just a casual statement I made, brain in neutral and mouth full speed ahead. I didn't even mean it but Tom said, "OK, I know where a really nice 195 is available for around $35000", and I fell for it immediately. I said I'd buy it. I was really thinking of how much profit might be made if it was in fact a nice airplane. For two weeks I kept after Tom to go up and see if that plane was actually for sale. In the back of my mind I started fantasizing about flying a 195 back from California and I even thought about keeping the plane for a few months just to have a little fun before I sold it.

    By the end of the second week I had actually entertained the notion that maybe we could afford to actually keep it for a while. I begged Charmian to just say no. I told her it was the dumbest thing I'd thought of for a long time so please talk me out of it and I could get this stupid idea out of my system. To her great credit, Charmian didn't even hesitate. All she ever said to me was "Great let's get it!" Finally, two weeks later, Tom said he'd seen the plane and the owner and guess what? The price was not as stated, in fact, the owner said that he wouldn't even consider selling his beloved 195. The darn thing wasn't even for sale! I was heartbroken and relieved at the same time. Now I didn't have to follow through on my careless statement and I was off the hook. That evening though, I began to realize that I was a lot more heartbroken than I was relieved. In fact, I realized that all I'd thought about was owning a 195 for the last couple of weeks and the idea wasn't going to go away. I told Charmian the bad news and she wanted to know how much it would cost to buy a decent 195. When I told her what they were going for she was shocked. However I then realized that she had been thinking about how much fun an old 195 would be as much as I. The only thing she could say was: "Don't you think you could find a nice one for less than that?"

    Now over the last 22 years that I've been married to Charmian I have learned to trust this woman's judgement. This is a girl who in 1969 came over to the US from England to work for six months and never looked back from there. She was around 19 years old, an unsurpassed beauty, and ready to live life as any youngster that age should be. I first laid eyes on her when she walked through the hangar at the parachute club at Columbine Airport southwest of Denver. She only had a few jumps at that time but she learned and persevered until she joined the ranks of the elite in skydiving. Charmian was part of several world record breaking all girl skydiving formations and competed in the national skydiving meets for several years. Two years in a row she won the national para-ski meets in Colorado and one year she was invited to New York to appear on the old "I've got a secret" program. Charmian learned to love airplanes during that time and eventually flew all over the West in small planes to and from different skydiving festivities. When we were married in 1977 we had a 1953 C-180 that we used to fly between Phoenix and Denver and around Arizona for a time but, when we moved to Michigan in 1979 gas had finally reached $2.00 a gallon. That was the end of flying small planes for us. But now here she was, just as upset as I was about the hot deal on the 195 that went up in smoke. As usual though, Charmian was more determined than I was and she suggested that I keep looking around to see if maybe we could find one that would work for us. "I want one" is all she would say. Well, how could I look into those beautiful blue eyes and say no to that. Never have I been able to do that and never will I be able to either.

    The search began. I talked to everyone who advertised in Trade-a-plane and everyone on every web site I could find. Finally I flew down to Alabama and looked at an LC-126 in military colors. She was a sweet airplane and ran and flew like a dream but I wasn't quite ready to buy the drab army paint scheme and the price was not negotiable. Ok, we have to come up a little on what we are willing to spend. Next airplane I saw was a blue and white beauty in Washington. This was one of the cleanest airplanes I have ever seen. She was parked on one of those grass strips outside of the owners house and just shined and smiled at me while the owner and I talked airplanes in general and his 195 in particular over a Miller Lite. The negotiations began. I made an offer and he came down a little, not enough but a little. My heart rate began to pick up. He's going to work with me. The 195 smiled at me some more and I raised the anti just a bit. He didn't say no! I knew I was on the right track, I could almost feel myself flying down the Columbia River on the way back to Denver in this beauty. Ok, time for a break, I had to go to the rest room and I asked him to consider my offer carefully while I was gone because I didn't think I could go any higher than that. On the way back upstairs I was confident that we were both in the ballpark and a deal was about to be struck. Wait a minute, what's that noise? I could hear a voice on a telephone answering machine and it said something like: "I'm still interested in your beautiful 195 you showed me, give me a call so we can talk." Needless to say all negotiations stopped at that point and I was soon back in my rental car heading back to the hotel having lost the deal. The gentleman on the answering machine, I was told later, did in fact buy the plane and we were very close in price. I believe he took her back to Atlanta and I offer my congratulations to the new owner of that fine blue and white clean 195.

    One of the first calls I had made about buying a 195 was to Goodland, Kansas to a fellow named John Collett. John runs Butterfly Aviation and there he and his guys rebuild 195's when the local sprayers don't have them busy working on their airplanes. John talked to me for over an hour about the plane he had just rebuilt and was just about ready to finish her up. The price was a little high for our finances but that didn't stop John from spending his valuable time with me offering words of wisdom and kind encouragement about joining the ranks of proud 195 drivers. The next week after the disappointing Seattle experience I decided to make the three and one half-hour drive from Denver to Goodland just to talk to the experts and take a look at John's project.

    It was kind of a blustery February day, not real cold and not real windy but wintry just the same. I arrived right around lunch and as I walked into the hangar old 66R was tucked behind several sprayers in various stages of winter repair and modification. She was stripped of all the old paint and partially polished and looked at me with a longing in her heart I'll never forget. When I walked around her I could here her say: "Come on, let's go flying, you don't need the little bit of money you'll have to give to own me. You'll be glad to be rid of it!" I resisted. It wasn't easy but I had only come out here to learn more about 195's and I wasn't about to get caught up in the temptations of some airplane that hadn't even flown for over four years. The next thing I know I'm in John's office making an offer. I wanted that airplane. The offer was ridiculously low and I knew it and John knew it but we both knew it was a starting point. Negotiating for something like a 195 is a bit of a stressful undertaking. The seller knows you want the darn thing and so do you and you know your going to pay a lot of money for it. The only question is how much. Really, how much isn't as important as you first think, more important is finding where the bottom line between the seller and the amount of money you actually have is going to fall. Neither party really knows what those figures actually are until the deal is done.

    When I left Denver there was no way I could come up with the kind of money it would take to buy 66R from John. She had a brand new 300hp Jacobs engine rebuilt in 1994 in Page, Arizona, a newly overhauled prop, new annual, and more than I could imagine I'd want in the 195 for us. When I looked into the cowling at that new blue case on that old Jake my knees began to shake. My heart rate and blood pressure increased a good 50%. You can't make rational decisions when your in such a state of mind and that's why I was sitting across the desk from John saying foolish things about an airplane that was perfect in every way. Thank goodness John Collett is a rational and patient man. He must have sat here dozens of times with other 195 wantabes and patiently explained to them that he understands their concerns and reservations but he will not be giving you a perfectly wonderful airplane just because you want it. I can't believe he didn't just throw me out of his office.

    We spent over an hour talking about 66R and her history and her future (which, by the end of our conversation, wasn't going to include me). I left Goodland and 66R in the hangar but my head was still dizzy from the experience. I learned more about 195's that afternoon with John and his guys than I had in the whole three years I had owned one. The three and a half-hour drive went by quickly as I thought about all of the information I was trying to absorb. That old 1949 195 that John had put together is going to be a nice airplane for someone and why not Charmian and I? That night we talked it over and came, once again, to the decision that maybe we ought to spend a little more and get a top quality airplane that we could keep for a long time.

    I called John the next morning and we found the middle ground that had eluded us the day before and the agreement was made. I sent a down payment and John set about finishing the airplane with the paint design (original) and getting the airworthiness certificate back on the old bird. I was ready to go back to Goodland the next day to pick her up but as everyone knows, these things take time. February passed into March and April was approaching as John and I kept in close contact about the progress. Sometimes I'd call just to hear what progress had been made even though I knew that it would not be much. At times like this I would talk to Marilyn, John's wife and partner at Butterfly. I was just thankful for the friendly reassurance from anyone at Butterfly about how the project was going. They are a friendly group out there.

    Throughout this whole time I never felt like I was being a pest (even though I was) nor were any of my questions or concerns ever ignored. If one is in a business like this, one should try to do it like John and Marilyn do it. We finally agreed that the airplane was ready in early April except for the interior and since the headliner was already installed we would pick up the plane before the rest of the interior arrived and come back later to finish. My next days off were 3 days away so I was anxious to get going. John had agreed to fly with me to get me back up to speed flying a taildragger and I had rented a Decathlon and instructor for an hour just to get my feet back into the water.

    Mid April in Colorado is not always the best for flying. In fact the weather in February and March are sometimes better than in April and May. I've always turned around the old cliche about March and said the weather in March comes in like a lamb and out like a lion. The lion invariably continues through April and on into May. So naturally my days off fell on a good old Colorado Spring snowstorm. I went back to work again until the next weeks days off but there was another storm coming through then as well but this one moved through faster than forecast and Sunday afternoon I caught a commuter flight to Goodland. John met me at the hangar and took me around the patch one time and then we switched seats and I was finally back at the controls of a 195. I have to tell you it was not as comfortable as I remembered it. I guess in twenty years you forget a lot and I had forgotten most of it. I kept trying to flare up around 20 feet the first few landings but John kept coaching me until it started to come back. We had to head for the hangar because of a storm moving in from the west. I certainly didn't feel ready to fly back to Denver that evening so John invited me to his house for the evening and then fixed me a great egg sandwich for dinner and we had a wonderful evening talking airplanes and solving the world's problems.