Those who taught us to fly

[BigZ]

Had a bad news day today

Sergey Kurchenko, my first CFI, died in a crash in Almaty KZ yesterday.
He came from a glider school and few years of cropdusting and his lifelong dream was to fly the heavy metal. Somehow it never worked out and, even though he kept trying, in the meantime (past 13-14 years) he taught people how to fly and was a dedicated and knowledgeable instructor. Preliminary information points to a windshear at 150' in a Tecnam 2002. Aircraft spun in, the instructor and student were killed. Once the crap in Ukraine settles I'll try to find his family and see if there's anything that can be done for his daughter, whom he loved more than life.

Browsing the APC I also came across a link to a gofundme page for the final expense of Jeff Salan just now.
Old Jeff. Jersey Jeff.
If you did any flight training around Daytona Beach, Ormond, Sanford area, chances are you bumped into Jeff at least once. ERAU alum and instructor from early 70s to mid-late 90s, he must have worked for just about every flight school in the area over the years. That fine gentleman logged over 44,000 hours of dual given - 1000 hours in a Seminole in the last 12 months alone - and had a garage full of student records.
I finished up my Instrument with him, commercial single, single sea, multi, CFI.
F*** we had some fun flying.
I might share a story or two at some later point in time.
"And the old instructor sat in the airplane soaking in aviation"
"And so, we cheat the death again!"
Just some of the things he's say after the flight.
This time he didn't.

On July 13, 2017, about 2300 eastern daylight time, a Piper PA-44-180, N2173S, was destroyed during a descent and subsequent inflight breakup near Marineland, Florida.

https://www.news4jax.com/news/florida/st-johns-county/names-of-plane-crash-victims-released

 

[BigZ]

A great gentleman passed away today. The greatest pilot I have ever met and my aviation mentor. We met when I had sixty-some hours of total time and a fresh private pilot ticket. He helped me test fly our homebuilt airplane, helped me log all that actual IMC in the instrument training ("Wake up, let's go fly!" "The weather sucks" "Exactly why you need to get up and we need to go fly"), kicked my butt to get out and fly places, gave me the intro to turbine engines, helped me build confidence to cross the line between the weekend pilot and the professional pilot that looks at the big picture, analyzes and mitigates the risks, gets into the airplane and goes flying with a mindset of making that flight happen.
One time I called him up to tell him that my arrangement fell through and now I need to figure out a way to get a tailwheel endorsement in a Cessna 185 to ferry that thing from CA to FL. All my prior tailwheel time was about 7 years old at the time and in aircraft much lighter than the 185.
Meet my friend Woody, he said. Retired 747 CA, owns a 185, might be able to help you out. Instead of hello Woody said "John told me what you want to do and I think that's stupid and you gonna kill yourself".
"How did it go?" "Woody says it's stupid and I'm gonna kill myself" "Woody is full of •. I'll meet you in Chico". Two days later I was on my first coast to coast flight and sure enough it went great, thanks to John.

Thank you for everything, John. I'll always say "centerline" in a soft voice and with the best South African accent I can manage.