Posted on 01/04/2004 3:39:23 PM PST by SwinneySwitch
Victoria pilot breaks transcontinental record for small planes
A rather ordinary looking little airplane rolls to a stop on the runway at Victoria Regional Airport and a rather ordinary looking gentleman, gray-haired and bespectacled, slides back the plane's canopy and steps out onto the wing.
No dashing Lucky Lindy in a bomber jacket and a flapping aviator's helmet, he's wearing a businessman's long-sleeved button-down, slacks and loafers. He could be your grandfather or mine going to a friend's on Sunday for a companionable game of dominos on the porch.
But the news release just issued by the National Aeronautic Association tells you there's something more to this pilot and his aircraft than meets the eye.
It says 71-year-old Fred Coon of Victoria and his 1976-vintage Grumman Cheetah airplane have just broken the United States transcontinental air speed record for small planes.
It says Coon - accompanied by a Long Island doctor who was his co-pilot - flew the little red, white and blue Cheetah coast to coast in just under 15 hours.
That's faster than anyone else has ever flown from the Pacific to the Atlantic in one of the small, piston-engine aircraft typical of the kind favored by weekend pilots everywhere.
Coon and his co-pilot bested the old record by almost two and one-half hours, averaging a speed of 159.78 miles per hour, according to the press release.
"We flew wide open all the way," Coon said.
Quite a feat, especially when you consider that Coon, an aviator since the mid-1950s, had lost his pilot's license in 1990 for medical reasons (he suffers from diabetes) and might never have flown again if not for something he happened to read in the newspaper in 1995.
The news story on the front page of USA Today told how the effects of a certain prescription diabetes medicine are enhanced if the user also takes high doses of a certain over-the-counter supplement.
"I started taking them and my blood sugar dropped down so low that it was well below the Federal Aviation Administration's guidelines," Coon said.
Medically acceptable as a pilot again, he began working toward regaining his pilot's license.
In 1997, his license once again in hand, Coon - a former Univac Computer technician who had owned the Radio Shack on Airline and other electronics stores in Victoria and operated a one-pilot charter flight at Victoria Regional - decided to retire from the world of retail and dedicate himself to flying.
"That same month I got my license back, I closed up business and went and bought my Cheetah," he said.
He continues to use his prescription medicine/supplement mix for his diabetes.
"It still keeps me well below the FAA guidelines," he said.
And well above the ground.
Coon's "record run," as he calls it, was born of a conversation on the Internet.
He belongs to a group of Grumman aircraft owners, the "Grumman Gang," who chat daily on the Web.
One day last September, the subject of the then-current transcontinental speed record for small planes weighing between 1,102 and 2,205 pounds came up.
One of the Grumman Gang pointed out that the then-record holders had problems in their Diamond Star aircraft making the 2,205-pound limit. They had even gone on diets and flown with a half-full gas tank to make the weight.
"Somebody wrote in and said someone ought to take a Grumman Tiger and go beat this record," said Coon.
That night, Coon got a call from fellow Grumman Gang member Mark Stolzberg of Long Island, a psychiatrist and owner of a Grumman Tiger the pair had once flown from Victoria to New York.
"Mark said he'd been doing the calculations and thought we could beat the record in his Tiger," said Coon.
But Coon had a better idea. Why not take the Cheetah, which weighs less than the Tiger and sports a souped-up engine almost as powerful as the Tiger's?
Stolzberg agreed.
After their record flight, Stolzberg would say that Coon's Cheetah, with its overhauled and modified 160-horsepower engine, is not only lighter and more fuel-efficient than his larger Tiger, but is "the fastest Cheetah around" and "every bit as fast as the Tiger."
The pair began planning their record run.
To qualify as a transcontinental record, their start and finish points had to be within 60 kilometers, or 37.3 miles, of the ocean shorelines.
Because they would be flying in the year that marked the 100th anniversary of the Wright brothers' historic first powered flight at Kitty Hawk, N.C., in December 1903, they decided they'd end their flight at Kitty Hawk's First Flight Airport.
They'd start at John Wayne Airport in Santa Ana, Calif., and would fly the same Santa Ana-to-Kitty Hawk route followed by the pair of flyers who then held the record.
Coon and Stolzberg used the Cheetah's on-board Global Positioning Satellite gear to scribe across the United States map an arcing red line that was the most direct route from the Santa Ana airport, just a couple of miles inland from the Pacific, to Kitty Hawk on the Atlantic Coast.
Since the record clock continues to tick during all stops, the pilots chose to make just two brief fuel stops.
To cut time even more, they chose to refuel at two airports directly beneath their route map's red arc: one in the Texas Panhandle town of Dalhart, the other at Murray in Western Kentucky. "The distance without the two stops is one mile less than the distance with the stops," Coon said. "They are right on our course."
They would fly the route in three legs: Coon would fly the first from Santa Ana to Dalhart. Stolzberg would take the second leg, from Dalhart to Murray. Coon would fly the final leg to Kitty Hawk.
Few modifications had to be made to Coon's well-kept Cheetah.
The fliers shaved five pounds off the plane's flying weight by removing its sidesteps and another three or four by yanking out the back seat.
The then-current record holders had had to make four time-consuming fuel stops because their plane couldn't carry a full fuel tank without surpassing the 2,205-pound limit.
But Coon and Stolzberg, in the little Cheetah, wouldn't have that problem.
"We could fill it up and our actual takeoff weight was some 90 pounds under the weight limit," Coon said.
They took along very little special equipment.
"We had a little oxygen set that we took with us to use for high altitude," Coon said.
They also brought along some snacks and some drinking water.
Because they'd be making only the two fuel stops, they each also packed a special bottle to use in case they needed to go at altitude.
On Oct. 15, Coon flew the Cheetah solo from Victoria to Albuquerque, N.M., where he met Stolzberg, who had flown commercial to Albuquerque.
That evening, they left Albuquerque, seated shoulder-to-shoulder in the Cheetah's narrow cockpit, bound for Los Angeles.
Not far from Albuquerque, they experienced an equipment failure that threatened to ground the record run before it had even begun.
"We lost the transponder. It just went out," said Coon.
The transponder signals air traffic controllers on the ground with an aircraft's unique identification number as well as its altitude, which are displayed on a control tower's radar screen alongside the blip indicating the position of the aircraft.
"You're required to have one of these to fly into the major areas around the country," said Coon. "You're not supposed to go into Los Angeles without a transponder."
But L.A. flight officials were equipped to handle the transponder problem.
"I called them and explained that our transponder had quit since we had taken off and they handed us off to a special controller who was working just us and one other airplane. He took us all the way to John Wayne Airport, about halfway across L.A."
Stolzberg said there were other memorable experiences on the flight to L.A.
The little Cheetah had to divert to avoid smoke rising from California forest fires, he said.
"On the way, we passed a couple of F-18s dog-fighting nearby in an MOA (military operations area)," Stolzberg said. "It was a little too exciting for my taste."
At John Wayne Airport the next morning, the crew of the Cheetah spent four or five "really fretful hours" trying to get the transponder repaired, Coon said.
"We couldn't have made the trip without it," he said.
They eventually gave up on repairs, bought a used transponder and installed it. It was 2 p.m. by the time they had their problem fixed.
The business with the transponder had been a nerve-wracking close shave. "For a while, we didn't know for sure if things were going to work out," said Coon.
But they had solved the problem - and since they weren't planning on leaving until 11:30 p.m. until that evening, they were still right on schedule.
When the Cheetah took off from Santa Ana, Coon flew it west, not east toward Kitty Hawk.
He gained altitude and then swung the plane eastward again and passed over John Wayne Airport at full speed.
As they passed the airport at an altitude of 13,500 feet, the record run officially began.
But now the Cheetah encountered weak tailwinds rather than the stiff winds its pilots had figured would push them along at a quick clip.
The flyers had expected to arrive in Dalhart perhaps as early as 6:30 a.m. if the tailwinds were favorable.
"Hell, we didn't get there until 8 o'clock," said Coon. "The winds weren't nearly as good as we thought they'd be."
Even so, the Cheetah's record run was ahead of the pace set by the pilots who held the coast-to-coast record.
That's when Coon and Stolzberg really began believing they could break the old record.
"We weren't going nearly as fast as we thought we'd be going and we were still ahead of them," Coon said. "And we knew we were heading into an area where the winds were gonna pick up a lot."
The tailwinds were a little better on the otherwise uneventful second leg from Dalhart to Murray.
"And by the last leg we were going like crazy," said Coon.
It was a good thing, too. "Those seats get pretty uncomfortable after a while," he said.
Just as the sun was setting on Oct. 16, the little Cheetah - 14 hours, 53 minutes and 32 seconds after passing over the Santa Ana airstrip - reached First Flight Airport.
First Flight was closed for repairs of hurricane damage, so the Cheetah and its crew, new holders of a coast-to-coast flying record, touched down at an airport in nearby Elizabeth City.
The National Aeronautic Association, the organization charged with overseeing and certifying aviation records in the United States, approved the new record on Dec. 17, the 100th anniversary of the Wright Brothers' first successful powered flights in North Carolina.
The NAA will recognize Coon and Stolzberg at a springtime ceremony in Washington.
Actually, Coon and Stolzberg set two separate records.
The coast-to-coast record approved by NAA is a national record, but their point-to-point time from Santa Ana to Kitty Hawk qualifies as a world record.
The point-to-point record is awaiting approval by the Fidiration Aironautique Internationale, the organization that oversees all aviation and space records throughout the world.
Coon downplays the achievement.
"I put my pants on the same way I did before," he said, adding that it is Stolzberg who tends to get gushy about it all.
"All in all, it was an exhilarating experience for us both," Stolzberg gushed. "This was truly a cross country to remember."
How long might the record stand?
"A pretty good little while," said Coon. "Somebody's just about got to cheat to beat it."
Greg Bowen is a reporter for the Advocate. Contact him at 361-580-6519 or by e-mail at gbowen@vicad.com.
| Rank | Location | Receipts | Donors/Avg | Freepers/Avg | Monthlies | |||
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| 50 | Netherlands | 20.00 |
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12 |
1.67 |
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