My grandfather, James E. Butler Sr., with my plane at the airstrip at the farm. He was in his nineties in this picture. He flew fighter planes off carriers in World War II.
Grandpa flying my Cessna 182 over the farm.*The avionics in my old Cessna 182. Round gauges like this are sometimes called “steam gauges,” as opposed to the more modern “glass cockpit” of the Cirrus.The view from a high-wing Cessna is hard to beat.Anne and I upon our return from Oxford, Mississippi where we picked up our dog Lou in 2016. (As to the markings – the previous owner, whose last name was Kelly, had flown the plane to Ireland in 1999. When he landed in the U.S. again, the people who worked for him presented him with these stickers and he felt obliged to put them on the plane. We thought they were cool so we kept them.)
*To other pilots who may watch this video – I don’t weave in and out of clouds like my grandfather did here. He was an old Navy pilot and had a more relaxed attitude about the regulations of civil aviation than I do . But he was in his nineties and I thought (correctly, as it turned out) that this might be his last chance to fly, and there was no traffic in the area, so I didn’t interfere.
Jeb Butler 