All posts by Terry Pitts

Terry is a retired school teacher, retired Army Reservist, and retired civilian Department of the Army Civilian working about half the time as a pilot and flight instructor. He has been flying since age 19, adding gliders in 2011. He's been an FAA certificated flight instructor since 2013.

Who the heck is Ian Ogilvey?

MANY PEOPLE HAVE heard “six degrees of separation” connect us to anyone in the world. I know people in several European countries, people from India, China, and Brazil, so I could connect into some of the largest and most populated regions of the world. Does this really work?

About a year ago I was looking at some of my grandmother’s things I had received when my dad died. One item was a makeup compact with a note written on the mirror saying, “Gift from Ian Ogilvey.” I wondered “Who the heck is Ian Ogilvey? Why did G’mom keep this?” The name sounded vaguely familiar.

Several days later I found the name on my phone. I had written it! Hmm. My dad died in 2013. He had been diagnosed with stage IV esophageal cancer the year before. On one of my trips accompanying him to the cancer center he mentioned a British pilot who had been in flight school with him in Pensacola; they had become good friends, and my dad took Ian home to St. Louis on Christmas leave. (In those early post-war years it was common for British military pilots to train in the US.)

I’m an inveterate google searcher. I wrote down the name with the thought of seeing if Ian were still alive – a mathematical possibility – and maybe connecting them before it was too late. Sadly, my dad died shortly after our conversation.

Jumping forward six years, I realized Ian must have given my grandmother the compact as a Christmas or thank you gift in December 1954. Thirty-nine years later when she died she still had it. Sixty-nine years after that Christmas, my dad still had the compact! Now I was really curious to see if I could find Ian. What a story!

ENS David T. Pitts, USN, student pilot, Pensacola, Florida ~1954.

I quickly learned it was too late to contact Ian. He had died in an airplane accident near Australia in 1957. This information came from a “Testing Tornados” I found on google books. The book looked interesting; Ian and author J. David Eagles were in flight school together in – you guessed it – Pensacola!

This is Ian Ogilvey in his flight school yearbook.
This is Ian Ogilvey in his flight school yearbook.

David left the Navy and became a civilian test pilot. I was intrigued. I really wanted to contact him. I emailed the Empire Test Pilot School, the publisher of the book, and the Society of Experimental Test Pilots. He was linked online in one way or another to all three. My contact efforts started with “this is going to sound crazy, but it’s crazy enough to be true…” It worked. All three forwarded my information on to David Eagles.

I learned along the way that in the 50s the US Navy started groups of pilot candidates every few weeks for a year-long course. My dad was in one class and Ian and David started a few weeks later in the next cohort.

David responded to my email. We wrote back and forth several times. David sent me an autographed copy of his book, which I promptly took flying with me and sent him a picture! Late last fall Melissa and I met David and his lovely wife for lunch at a wonderful country pub in England!

My dad knew Ian but not David. The connection was me > my dad > Ian Ogilvey > David Eagles.

Now, here’s where it gets really crazy. Read on if you are still with me.

In 1979 my dad was still stationed in Germany (1975-1980). I decided to visit the US for a while. I flew to Boston, bounced across the country, and flew back from Los Angeles. My seatmates were a German test pilot named Ludwig Obermeier and his wife. They invited me to visit them at home the next time I was in Munich. Some months later on a weekend trip to Munich with some American friends from Tübingen I visited the Obermeyers. Some months later in a random German flying magazine purchase I saw that Ludwig had died in a crash demonstrating a prototype Tornado – a multi-national European jet fighter.

So, who else was a Tornado test pilot? Yes, David Eagles.

Here I am with David Eagles outside the Kings Head Pub. Note the Flight School book in his hand. I wonder how few/many copies of that book there are in the UK?!

The connection was me > Ludwig Obermeier > David Eagles (> Ian Ogilvey > my dad > me). Pretty amazing!

I told my dad once that I try to be on good behavior in public because I often bump into people I know or people who know people who know me. He responded that I should always be on good behavior just because it’s the right thing to do. Just another example of his wisdom that still resonates today.

Flying “the long cross county” 1, 2, 3 times…

Only the federal government could come up with a requirement for a 300 nautical mile flight with a landing at least 250 miles from where you started. If you fly out 250 and turn around and fly 50 you’ve flown 300 miles, but are still 200 miles from home. What do you do for the other 200 miles? Hmmm.

I’d like to fly part time as a retirement career. I’m doing the training to prepare for that.

The “long cross country” flight I mentioned above is part of ten hours of required solo aeronautical experience for a multi-engine commercial pilot – which is what I’m trying to become. These ten hours must also include five hours at night and ten night landings at an airport with a control tower.

It’s been a surprisingly convoluted process, but the ten hours are done. I have four of the ten night landings done. Last night, after the third try I finished the long trip.

Flight plan to Apalachicola, FL – where I didn’t make it!

Back in the fall after work one day I launched towards an airport on the Florida gulf coast. Note “after work.” Everything took longer than expected. I would be arriving at my destination after fuel service stopped. Way after. I was getting tired. If I was this tired before finishing the first half of the trip, it was going to be a really bad idea to try to find avgas and turn around and fly back. What to do?

I chose to land at Tallahassee and spend the night. It’s OK to do the trip across a couple days. So, gas in the morning, fly south, land, turn around and fly back. Uh, not so fast. A huge tropical storm was moving in from the Gulf. Not only was I not going to be able to fly south, if I didn’t fly directly home I’d be stuck in the storm for a few days. So, home I went with no credit for the long cross country. It did count for solo flying, night flight, and a night landing, so not a total loss.

I was confident the emergency gear extension would work.

Try number two was two weeks ago. This time I went north. I planned a trip to fly to North Carolina in the afternoon, eat some BBQ, and fly back at night. It was an absolutely gorgeous afternoon. The flight went great. I could see the airport in the distance. I slowed down and began to plan a descent. Lowered the landing gear. Pop! Nothing happened but the circuit breaker popped. After some troubleshooting I chose to fly home – the weather was great and I had plenty of gas. I was confident the emergency gear extension would work.

Manual gear extension eventually worked fine. I was happy to land. It was a night landing, but no control tower, so “no credit” for that. Because I didn’t land elsewhere, despite flying over 500 nautical miles, the flight counts only as “local” and not “cross country.” Not a total loss as at least it counted for total time and night time.

Third time’s the charm, right? I launched for North Carolina right on time, repeating the previous trip. Tail winds were better at 3,000 feet than higher, so I stayed low until I got tired of the bumps. Climbed to 5,500. Beautiful. I had a 27-knot tail wind and once in a while a ground speed hitting 180 knots. (I knew in the back of my mind the trip home would be against a head wind, but the wind dies down after sunset, right?)

Ellis Airport, KOAJ, airport diagram, with my location marked.

The landing gear came down fine. I landed, borrowed a car, and had a BBQ sandwich. Shortly after sunset I launched for home. Slow. Excruciatingly slow. In an airplane that can cruise at 140 I once had a ground speed of just 99 knots. 99 knots… Ground speed hovered around 100-102 for most of the flight, but slowly increased to 107. I slowed to 100 knots indicated as I hit 10 miles from home base. Ground speed went to 68 knots. Yikes. I’m paying $310/hour to fly an airplane that can do almost three miles a minute but only doing barely a third of that.

I need to go take the knowledge test, fly the last six night landings at a controlled field, and prep for the checkride. It’s slowly coming together. 🙂