PerryNews

PRESIDENTS CORNER

The last meeting was our Holiday Party which was at the French Quarter Restaurant at the Dog Track. The
tables were laid out beautifully and we had seating for 100 people. Our party overlooked the race track and
the dogs were running. That was an added treat. For those of you that didn’t, or couldn’t attend it was an all
you can eat Prime Rib Buffett. They also had fried cod for those of us that don’t eat red meat… the buffet
dinner seems to work out best for us. We had two serving lines and everyone was served within 10 minutes
of starting. They cut the prime rib any way you wanted it, and it was bone in. They remove the bone for
serving and carving but I asked for my bone and it was terrific. A lot of people, including me and Tony
Restaino, said that it was some of the best prime rib that they had ever eaten. The club also provided Wine
for everyone, and the bar made a really nice drink. There was also a band and singer and dancing for us to
enjoy. 95 members attended and people didn’t want to leave. There was a lot of work put in to this party by
Dee and Patty as usual. It was a little hectic with a lot of people coming at the last minute. Normally this is
not a problem, but for some reason the restaurant gave us a hard time about more people. Some of our
members, Steve Meadows and Dan Mauch and their lovely brides, had to be seated in the restaurant area
because of this. Personally, and on behalf of the Aero Club we apologize for that. By the way, the French
Quarter restaurant has the prime rib special every Friday night, all you can eat. It used to be for $10.95, but
it has gone up to 14.95. It is well worth it at that price. I have taken my family there several times and it has
always been terrific.
This month’s meeting will be held at the Lobster House on the N.W. corner of Pine Island road and Oakland
Park Blvd. I-95 to Oakland Park Blvd, then West, or Tpk. to I-595 W exit at Pine Island Road and go three
miles North. We met there back in March. It is a beautiful restaurant and they have bent over backward to
accommodate us. They have assured us that service will be no problem. The meal is $20 and lobster will
also be available for a three dollar extra charge payable to the restaurant. This is what they are doing for us.
The meal comes with choice of potato or rice, and vegetable. The menu will be:
· Beverage, soft drink or tea
· Salad
· Lobster Pasta (Linguini) White Sauce
· Honey Garlic Chicken
· 10 ounce Salmon Fillet
· There will also be an 8 ounce lobster tail available for a three dollar additional charge.
· Desert, Ice Cream &Cookie
· Coffee
There is a full cash bar and prices are as follows:
· 6.95 for specially drinks, (Margaritas, Pina Coladas etc.) 5.95 for normal drinks (call brands) 4.50 Wine
3.50 Beer.
On a more somber note, we had a death in the Aero Club Family this past month, Robert (Bob) Heckman
from Barefoot Bay Chapter. He was a big contributor to General Aviation. He was the FAA Safety Manager
at FSDO #17 and he was the founder of The Cayman Caravan. Our Condolences to his family…He will be
missed. Jim Scroggins and I may add a new feature to the Aero Club Web Site. A pilots Corner with
interesting pilot stories that are too long to put in a news letter. Look for a synopsis of the Air France Air Bus
crash from the cockpit tapes. The story takes you from 38,000 feet to the eventual crash into the Atlantic.
We will also be putting on an ATC cockpit recording of an aircraft going down in Canada from Icing. They
are both Excellent!!!!
Let me leave you with a few words to make you smile.
Words of Wisdom For Aviators
- Flying is a hard way to earn an easy living.
- Both optimists and pessimists contribute to society. The optimist invents the airplane; the pessimist invents
the parachute.
- If helicopters are so safe, how come there are no vintage helicopter fly-ins?
- Death is just nature's way of telling you to watch your airspeed.
- Real planes use only a single stick to fly. This is why bulldozers and helicopters (in that order) need two
sticks.
There are Rules and there are Laws.
- The Rules are made by men who think that they know better how to fly your airplane than you.
- The Laws (of Physics) were ordained by nature.
You can, and sometimes should, suspend the Rules, but you can never suspend the Laws.
About Rules:
a. The rules are a good place to hide if you don't have a better idea and the talent to execute it.
b. If you deviate from a rule, it must be a flawless performance…(e.g., If you fly under a bridge, don't hit the
bridge.)
Tony Restaino is always taking a copilot along flying, and these are his three rules for anyone who flies his
right seat. The only three things the copilot should ever say are:
1. Nice landing, Tony.
2. I'll buy the first round.
3. I'll take the fat one.
Now this is for the Ladies:
It's not that all airplane pilots are good-looking. It's just that good-looking people seem more capable of flying
airplanes.
As always, if anyone needs assistance, or a cup of coffee, and we now have espresso, please stop by A.T.
A. Flight School. We always have a few club members there talking about flying and drinking coffee. I am
here to help any Aero Club member.
Fly Safe,
                       Mike Punziano

Why is it that at class reunions you feel younger than everyone else looks?

NORTH PERRY CRUISE NEWS
December turned out to be a big flying month for us. We just returned from a trip to Atlanta (12 hours) in
honor of Pattys 85 year old uncles graduation from Kennesaw State with his Masters Degree. We had a few
weather challenges along the way but all in all the trip went well. God Bless the Garmin 496 with weather.
Our first overnight was at our favorite FBO in Moultrie (MGR). They waited for us to arrive on a Sunday
night and had the crew car gassed and ready to go! Our dining choices were limited on a Sunday and we
ended up at Applebees. Most of you know I don’t indulge in alcohol very often. The one time I wanted to
order an exotic drink, the rule was NO LIQUOR ON SUNDAY COME BACK TOMORROW NIGHT!
Charming Savannah was our overnight stop on the way home. We stayed in the historic downtown district
and had a delicious dinner at one of the many river front restaurants. The ride home on Thursday was
slower due to a head wind but the skies were severe clear all the way. I was back in the air again for
breakfast at Banyans Runway Café on Saturday morning. Eric Bratter and I have been taking advantage of
their two for one breakfast special during the month of December. The food value was superb...watch for
future promotions. Sunday was the North Perry fly-in to Marathon (MTH) and Cabana Breeze (See pictures
below) on Key Colony. Members took a much needed break from holiday shopping. Twenty-four members
and guests (arriving in nine planes) enjoyed fresh seafood specialties of the Keys along with many other
culinary treats. New member Tom Roses and his family joined us for the first time. In addition, Tom Powers
had a couple of guests from Vital Flight who fly out of Lake Worth. Also joining us was member and ATA
CFI, Frank Masino who flew a couple on an introductory flight. Hopefully the trip will result in a new student
for Mike. Tony and Dee were cruising with their grandkids. To quote Tony, We had a good time without
you! Next month on Sunday, January 22 we will be flying to Everglades City. The ETA is 11:30 am. Watch
your email for the restaurant location. Any takers for the North Perry Cruise Director?
Call me at 954-648-4769. Happy, Healthy and Prosperous New Year to All -
                                      Arnold

Car Radio, an Interesting Quincy, Illinois Story

CAR TUNES
Radios are so much a part of the driving experience, it seems like cars have always had them.
But they didn’t. Here’s the story.

SUNDOWN
One evening in 1929 two young men named William Lear and Elmer Wavering drove their
girlfriends to a lookout point high above the Mississippi River town of Quincy, Illinois, to watch
the sunset. It was a romantic night to be sure, but one of the women observed that it would be
even nicer if they could listen to music in the car. Lear and Wavering liked the idea. Both men
had tinkered with radios – Lear had served as a radio operator in the U.S. Navy during World
War I – and it wasn’t long before they were taking apart a home radio and trying to get it to
work in a car. But it wasn’t as easy as it sounds: automobiles have ignition switches, generators,
spark plugs, and other electrical equipment that generate noisy static interference, making it
nearly impossible to listen to the radio when the engine was running.

SIGNING ON
One by one, Lear and Wavering identified and eliminated each source of electrical interference.
When they finally got their radio to work, they took it to a radio convention in Chicago. There
they met Paul Galvin, owner of Galvin Manufacturing Corporation. He made a product called a
“battery eliminator” a device that allowed battery-powered radios to run on household AC
current. But as more homes were wired for electricity, more radio manufacturers made AC-
powered radios. Galvin needed a new product to manufacture. When he met Lear and Wavering
at the radio convention, he found it. He believed that mass-produced, affordable car radios had
the potential to become a huge business.
Lear and Wavering set up shop in Galvin’s factory, and when they perfected their first radio, they
installed it in his Studebaker. Then Galvin went to a local banker to apply for a loan. Thinking it
might sweeten the deal, he had his men install a radio in the banker’s Packard. Good idea, but it
didn’t work – half an hour after the installation, the banker’s Packard caught on fire. (They didn’t
get the loan.) Galvin didn’t give up. He drove his Studebaker nearly 800 miles to Atlantic City to
show off the radio at the 1930 Radio Manufacturers Association convention. Too broke to afford
a booth, he parked the car outside the convention hall and cranked up the radio so that passing
conventioneers could hear it. That idea worked – he got enough orders to put the radio into
production.

WHAT’S IN A NAME
That first production model was called the 5T71. Galvin decided he needed to come up with
something a little catchier. In those days many companies in the phonograph and radio
businesses used the suffix “ola” for their names – Radiola, Columbiola, and Victrola were three
of the biggest. Galvin decided to do the same thing, and since his radio was intended for use in
a motor vehicle, he decided to call it the Motorola. But even with the name change, the radio still
had problems: When Motorola went on sale in 1930, it cost about $110 uninstalled, at a time
when you could buy a brand-new car for $650, and the country was sliding into the Great
Depression. (By that measure, a radio for a new car would cost about $3,000 today.) In 1930 it
took two men several days to put in a car radio – the dashboard had to be taken apart so that
the receiver and a single speaker could be installed, and the ceiling had to be cut open to install
the antenna. These early radios ran on their own batteries, not on the car battery, so holes had
to be cut into the floorboard to accommodate them. The installation manual had eight complete
diagrams and 28 pages of instructions.

HIT THE ROAD
Selling complicated car radios that cost 20 percent of the price of a brand-new car wouldn’t have
been easy in the best of times, let alone during the Great Depression – Galvin lost money in
1930 and struggled for a couple of years after that. But things picked up in 1933 when Ford
began offering Motorola's pre-installed at the factory. In 1934 they got another boost when
Galvin struck a deal with B.F. Goodrich tire company to sell and install them in its chain of tire
stores. By then the price of the radio, installation included, had dropped to $55. The Motorola
car radio was off and running. (The name of the company would be officially changed from
Galvin Manufacturing to “Motorola” in 1947.) In the meantime, Galvin continued to develop new
uses for car radios. In 1936, the same year that it introduced push-button tuning, it also
introduced the Motorola Police Cruiser, a standard car radio that was factory preset to a single
frequency to pick up police broadcasts. In 1940 he developed with the first handheld two-way
radio – the Handie-Talkie – for the U.S. Army. A lot of the communications technologies that we
take for granted today were born in Motorola labs in the years that followed World War II. In
1947 they came out with the first television to sell under $200. In 1956 the company introduced
the world’s first pager; in 1969 it supplied the radio and television equipment that was used to
televise Neil Armstrong’s first steps on the Moon. In 1973 it invented the world’s first handheld
cellular phone. Today Motorola is one of the second-largest cell phone manufacturer in the
world. And it all started with the car radio.

WHATEVER HAPPENED TO
The two men who installed the first radio in Paul Galvin’s car, Elmer Wavering and William Lear,
ended up taking very different paths in life. Wavering stayed with Motorola. In the 1950’s he
helped change the automobile experience again when he developed the first automotive
alternator, replacing inefficient and unreliable generators. The invention lead to such luxuries as
power windows, power seats, and, eventually, air-conditioning. Lear also continued inventing. He
holds more than 150 patents. Remember eight-track tape players? Lear invented that. But what
he’s really famous for are his contributions to the field of aviation. He invented radio direction
finders for planes, aided in the invention of the autopilot, designed the first fully automatic aircraft
landing system, and in 1963 introduced his most famous invention of all, the Lear Jet, the world’s
first mass-produced, affordable business jet.

(Not bad for a guy who dropped out of school after the eighth grade.)