After a lot of time and effort, I came to the date of my checkride. I was certainly well prepared. As usual the first step was the oral exam. The examiner was a gracious man from an old line flying business based at Cleveland Hopkins. He accommodated me by driving clear over to the field where I trained, CGF in Richmond Heights.

He checked my paperwork and we began. We were in a large conference room. I answered a number of questions about FARs and then we broke out the Cleveland sectional. This involved cross country flight planning to the limit of the 152’s range while the examiner excused himself, leaving me to do this on my own. I finished within the allotted time and he pronounced himself satisfied.

Decision time. It was kind of a lousy morning, blustery with erratic gusts of wind.

The examiner said it was my call, since I was pilot in command for the flight, but he said if it was up to him he would reschedule the flight test due to the wind conditions. He was offering me a graceful way out, and I took it. That was the direction I was leaning and the suggestion came as an affirmation. I hated to drag him back for a second day but the decision seemed best. He assured me that it wasn’t a problem and praised my good judgment.

We reconvened the following morning. It was worth the wait: the weather was nearly perfect, and nowhere near as distracting as it had been the previous day.

We began, starting with a short field take off. The examiner was competent and fair, and he really put me through my paces. I remember particularly unusual attitudes and an unplanned diversion to an unfamiliar airport. The flight was going well, and I was confident.

He asked me to set a course for Lost Nation Airport (LNN) in order to do some pattern work. The flight suddenly become far more interesting. I thought I noticed an odd smell in the cockpit, something  unfamiliar in the context of the trusty 152.

Suddenly there was smoke on the cockpit. The examiner directed me to proceed direct to LNN and expedite the landing. He began pulling circuit breakers in an effort to trouble shoot the the source of the smoke.

I put the airplane on the ground and cleared the active runway. A process of elimination had located the correct circuit breaker and the smoke was gone. The examiner laughed and said that there was no need to create an artificial cockpit distraction on the grounds that I handled the real one capably.

We took off and returned to CGF, where the adventure had begun two and half  hours earlier.

I parked the airplane and the examiner asked me how I thought I did. I started off on a tangent. He stopped me, and said, “You did fine! Let’s go in the office so I can type up your temporary certificate.”

It was a very expensive autograph, and the realization of a goal extending back to childhood. Back at the flight school office I found myself in a receiving line, accepting the warm congratulations of my peers. It was a proud moment and I drove home with the usual cautions ringing in my ears: don’t be complacent; recognize this as a license to learn, a proposition that will never end.

The next morning I was on the phone signing up for a ground school leading to a tailwheel endorsement, the point where I really learned to fly.

The whole thing was a lesson in perseverance, and it’s important to recognize how your success might benefit others. Shortly after this I took a child up for his first ride. Many years later that wide-eyed little boy went to a lot of trouble to look me up. He isn’t a little boy anymore. When he found me he was US Air Force captain, flying hurricane relief in a C – 17. Earlier this year he was promoted to the rank of major and he’s instructing in Texas.

We never know how far our influence might extend.

September 11, 1996, will always remain in my memory.

We had recently departed Terre Haute, Indiana, and were now cruising eastbound toward the Atlantic Coast at Flight Level 210. A young captain (me, at 40 years old) was still on his proving runs with a check airman when there was a problem. We had an engine fire warning on engine number four.

I could recall another engine fire warning on engine number three at precisely V1 (takeoff decision speed) when departing Kodiak, Alaska, the previous February. I was still a co-pilot then and it was my leg, so I would continue flying until after we had completed the engine fire checklist above 1,500 feet (Kodiak is barely above sea level).

After completing all the checklist items to extinguish the apparent fire on this day, we could not get the fire warning to stop—even after shooting the only two fire extinguisher bottles available to the engine. Paul had taken over as pilot in command during this very real emergency because he was the senior captain and I was just a new captain on my proving runs. So I asked my flight crew the Billy Graham question: “Are you ready to die?”

That would not be the first time that a Lockheed L-188 lost a wing in flight and spun into the ground. The Electra had problems with something called whirl mode until it was fixed by engineers from Douglas, Lockheed, and Boeing with something called the LEAP Modification.

So I prayed and gave the situation to God. My mind cleared immediately and I could now recall how my father often spoke at dinner regarding the wonderful challenges of dealing with ailing airplanes in flight as a flight engineer. He was very happy and quite satisfied with the challenges he faced dealing with problems in flight.

I asked my check airman, Paul, if he wanted me to get the charts out so we could find our exact position and of course he said yes. But then I recalled that I have two eyeballs connected to my brain, and both were working. I looked down at the surrounding terrain and noticed that the Miami River was right underneath us, along with Interstate 75 gradually descending straight but sloping downward toward the Miami River area of Dayton, Ohio.

I started laughing. Somewhat irritated, Paul asked me, “Campbell, why are you laughing?”

I replied, “Who put the Miami River in Dayton, Ohio?”

Then Paul pointed straight ahead and asked what I saw. The massive expanse of Wright-Patterson Air Force Base lay straight ahead. Paul wanted to know if I could see the US Air Force Museum. There it was, slightly right of straight ahead and slightly down.

Having located our position as being very close to Dayton, Ohio, and having already completed the checklist for an engine fire, I began to contemplate what I had learned in Zantop International Airlines ground school under the fantastic tutelage of Billy Weber. Billy Weber had been the best flight engineer student during my father’s initial flight engineer class at Eastern Airlines in the fall of 1957, according to my father.

I simply recalled that Billy Weber had taught us that a flame cannot be propagated at an airspeed of 140 knots or more. So I translated that knowledge into a recommendation that we fly at maximum forward airspeed at any given altitude and temperature, better known as the variable airspeed of barber pole. We had no clue how fast air was actually moving underneath the engine nacelles because there is no airspeed indication from those locations. So the only thing we could do is fly at maximum airspeed for the airframe.

“Paul, let’s tell air traffic control that we will exceed 250 knots below 10,000 feet,” I said. The response by air traffic control to our declared emergency was eventually a frightened and shaking voice on their radio transmissions to us. (There was no airspeed limit above 10,000 feet of altitude.)

I also recommended that we fly at barber pole until we had to slow down for the ILS at the outer marker.

We had declared an emergency and explained the engine fire indication situation to Air Traffic Control. That would give us the latitude to disregard any applicable regulations where we had excellent reason to disobey regulations. Of course, there are good reasons why airplanes cannot usually exceed 250 knots below 10,000 feet, including a plethora of slow-moving traffic. But an engine fire indication is a great reason to go faster.

Then I recalled from ground school another situation. Someone had thrown a cigarette into a trash bin in the lavatory of an Air Canada DC-9, causing the cabin to catch on fire. The airplane landed safely and stopped on the runway, where they should have evacuated. Instead, everyone—including Curtis Mathes, inventor of the large screen TV—died in the flashover and all-consuming fire. So did many others.

“Paul, let’s ask Dayton Tower to get the fire trucks to chase us as we land and then report if they see the slightest amount of smoke or fire.” I thought we should go down the ropes with the airplane stopped on the runway if the fire trucks reported we had smoke or fire as they chased us during our landing. Then I explained to Paul the Air Canada loss of life due to a fire. He agreed.

By now we were pretty much convinced we had a false engine fire indication, so that caused a little back and forth as to whether or not we really needed the fire trucks to chase us once we landed, but we settled on asking for help.

We landed without further incident. Fire trucks chased us down the runway on a parallel taxiway and reported no sign of smoke or fire. We taxied off of the runway to our normal ramp and performed a normal shut down instead of stopping on the runway and exiting the cockpit down escape ropes. We climbed down the ladder as usual.

I was told that I would be commended in writing for handling the situation well. Paul felt that I had been very helpful.