Taking flight

Waite Park man, 91, has always loved planes, flying

By Bill Vossler

A friend gave this handmade airplane to Bill when he retired from his counseling job. Photo by Bill Vossler

Bill Kreul of Waite Park loves to go out for breakfast two or three times a month. So what, you might ask? Lots of people do that. Well Bill takes his Piper Cherokee airplane and flies to Brainerd for breakfast. And Bill is 91 years old.

“When my son Bob is available I fly to wherever we’re going, and he flies back,” he said.

Bill said he got interested in flying during World War II.

“We lived in St. Paul with airplanes flying over us every day to have avionic war equipment installed,” he said. “I was eight, and thought flying was something different, so my dad bought me a couple of airplane magazines. That was new and different and exciting. I liked the new P-38 fighter plane that was coming in there.”

When the war ended, Bill was 12, and he was excited about flying.

“I read the magazines and talked about it a lot. A veteran pilot in our neighborhood who my parents trusted asked me if I would like to go for a ride. Would I?! He took me to Fleming Field in south St. Paul and gave me an airplane ride. We flew around the Twin Cities 1,000 or 2,000 feet. I was seated next to the pilot, and I realized that I wanted to fly. When you’re flying, it creates a different way of looking at the world. You see all kinds of images you can’t see from the ground. That excitement still intrigues me after all these years.”

Bill attended college, got married, had children, and entered the military.

“I just couldn’t get into the airplane business. At 40 I quit going to school, so I decided to start flying. It was a real challenge with a great deal of information to learn: instruments and the forces of flight; thrust, lift, weight, and drag; how flaps affect a flight, reading instruments and their meaning, navigation, and the complexity of weather. Also what appeared to be thousands of federal rules I had to know. The bug had never left me, and I just loved it.”

The same thing happened to Bill’s son, Bob.

“When I took my first flying lesson I asked my 16-year-old son Bob to go along. He sat in the back seat, and within three seconds of getting out of the airplane after the flight, he said, ‘I’m going to do this.’ And he became a pilot for Northwest Airlines and Delta Airlines for many years, until his retirement last year.”

Within a year after Bill starting flying at age 40, he had a private pilot’s license.

“One scary thing you had to do at the time to get a private pilot’s license, was do a spin. While in the air you stalled the plane, then pushed the left rudder until the airplane was upside down, and spun around. You had to know how to get out of that. That was pretty scary. It really isn’t that difficult to learn, but it is scary at first.”

Bill stands with his most recent airplane, a Piper Cherokee. Contributed photo

“I continued to fly for the next 20 years, and joined the Civil Air Patrol (CAP), a country-wide Federal system, including at the St. Cloud airport. If an emergency occurs, CAP emits a certain electronic radio signal, like an airplane missing or overdue. At the signal, we were given information: last time the airplane was heard from, where, and so on. Then a squadron of airplanes searched for it. While flying we communicated with a ground crew on handheld radios, and if we saw something, we’d send the ground crew there. We did find some lost airplanes, and a couple of pilots who wanted to be lost. We searched for a crashed helicopter, and because of its very different shape and smallness it was difficult to find. Pretty much everything that went wrong with the people and planes we were searching for was often caused by pilot error. Nevertheless, it was interesting work, with the Federal government providing training and gasoline, and it’s still operating today.”

At 60 he retired.

“I left my real job as school counselor and after a year, completed the flight ratings to earn a Certified Flight Instructor rating. Despite all the academic work I had done in college, getting that rating was an academic challenge: learning how to fly from the right front seat; (pilots and students fly from the left.) New maneuvers and many new rules. Then I got my commercial pilot license and instrument rating. I was 61 when I got my flight instructor license and continued to do flight instruction at the St. Cloud airport for the next 22 years.”

Bill’s first airplane was a Cessna 170.

“It’s called a trail dragger with a high wing. On a tail dragger the third wheel is under the back of the plane. It’s a pretty airplane and wonderful to fly, but presents more challenges than a nose wing plane where the third wheel is under the front nose of the plane. I had the trail dragger for nine years.”

He shared his second airplane, a Piper Arrow, with four others.

“That was a more complex airplane with retractable gear, and a propeller that could change pitch, which added power on takeoff, or more speed in the sky.”

After six years he bought another plane by himself.

“That was my current airplane, a Piper Cherokee, which I’ve had for 26 years. No retractable gear, but fixed wheels, with no pitch change for the propeller, and it isn’t as fast.”

Flying cross-country is a different challenge than flying in more local areas, Bill said.

“You have to do it correctly, and plan the flight thoroughly. It’s a challenge and just plain fun. You have a lot to learn and know, and have to talk to other people out of your area. There are many traffic controllers to provide cross-country pilots with the proper information. One service they provide is called ‘flight following,’ and because every plane has an instrument that sends out messages, the ATC will have you on radar, with your altitude, speed, information about other nearby small airplanes, which you have to look for. So the challenges are multiple: look and see where you’re going, maintain altitude, listen to directions from the ATC, which might send you over other ground than you actually want. Don’t worry about emergencies, which rarely arise. So the entire challenge is to do it right, and pilots have a fair amount of pride in being good at what we’re doing.”

Bill said others also fly to Brainerd or other places for breakfast.

“Many other pilots from St. Cloud fly there at the same time. Brainerd is only 60 miles and has a very nice restaurant right on the airport. The breakfast had previously been referred to as ‘the $100 breakfast,’ but with increasing prices it’s more like a $200 breakfast, as gasoline, maintenance and other things have gone up. My airplane burns eight gallons of gas an hour, more if you go faster.”

Before flying, two inspections have to be made.

“First is the pre-flight, to make sure the airplane is okay. You need to know exactly how much gas your plane burns--mine is eight gallons per hour--and how much fuel is needed to get there and back. You check all the moving parts: the ailerons, rudder, the flaps. You’re familiar with all of them, so you don’t always use a list. But you check that everything is working properly, including air in the tires.”

And a second checklist.

“Before you take off, you make sure that all the mechanical switches of the airplane are in the proper position. Pre-takeoff requires crossing off everything that’s on it.”

The highest Bill has ever flown is 14,000 feet, though not intentionally.

“I was going over the Rocky Mountains, flying my Piper Arrow to the Reno Air Races when a severe updraft pushed me up that high. On top of the mountains a severe downdraft dropped me nearly 5,000 feet. I came pretty close to those rocks.”

The greatest distance he has flown was from St. Cloud to Dawson Creek, Canada.

Bill’s daughter found this photo of a P-38 fighter, which Bill liked so much as a kid, and helped him get into the idea of flying. Photo by Bill Vossler

“Our intended destination was Fairbanks, Alaska. Four of us pilots were in two small Piper airplanes. The weather was very bad all the way from St. Cloud, so we had to fly on instruments until deep into Canada. Every three or four hours we had to stop for fuel. At Dawson Creek the deteriorating weather required us to file an instrument flight plan, which requires enough fuel to get to an alternate airport, and still have 45 minutes of fuel left. In Canada airports are very, very far apart, so we couldn’t carry enough fuel. So we never made it to Alaska. But I have flown to Florida, southern Arizona, and the Reno Air Races.”

Once a year Bill and Bob have the airplane checked.

“The mechanics at the Sauk Centre airport know my airplane, and us. The inspection takes the better part of a day. They take everything apart and examine it, and then put it back together.”

Bill said he’s never had any close calls.

“That’s part of working harder and following the rules. You know your airplane is solid, because when there’s some little glitch, you have it fixed. Now many new avionics devices in the airplane give me a great deal of information I didn’t have years before.”

Now an iPad on the steering wheel will show a little spot, which is an airplane.

“If you touch that little spot, the computer will tell you where it is, how fast it’s going, and its altitude. Magic. You can talk to the pilot and ask how close you are to, say, the Brainerd airport, how you’re going to enter the airport and what runway you’re going to use. It’s a wonderful piece of safety.”

So flying has changed a great deal, Bill said.

“So much electronic navigation equipment is available that gives you everything you need to know, the weather, and the prediction, how high the clouds are, what the wind speeds are at different altitudes, if the wind changes direction, that will change the direction of the airplane. Before, you had to get all that information yourself, and now with GPS it tells you everything you need to know, and gives a running account.”

“I don’t fly a lot anymore, but when I do that excitement is still there. And I still enjoy so many friends developed because of flying, and though some don’t fly anymore, when we get together, we still talk about airplanes.”