Karl is a retired chemical engineer, major corporate financial officer, air charter manager, and computer consultant.
He started on his aviation career around the beginning of the jet age and likes to explain that back then the Private Pilots Written Exam was only 50 True/False questions.
Karl has owned a 1964 Mooney Statesman, 1979 Cessna Skyhawk, and more recently a 1948 Temco-Globe Swift. He and wife Dolly together built their current airplane, a Vans RV7.
Karl holds FAA Commercial, Single Engine Land, Single Engine Sea, Multi Engine Land, and Glider certificates collected in 3,000+ flying. His Instrument Flight Instructor rating is lapsed. Several yeas ago the Federal Aviation Agency presented him with the Master Pilot Award. He is a member of the United Flying Octogenarians. He loves to tell hangar flying stories of how he has towed advertising banners at the New Jersey shore; flown night time charter around the Northeast; served as his son’s flight instructor; landed one night at Chicago O’Hare before it was commissioned; crossed the US at night following the old mountain top beacons; and more recently towed gliders for the Tampa Bay Soaring Society. Karl has piloted 47 different models of aircraft; 32 single and 15 multi-engine.
During the 2011-2013 summers Dolly and son Len with help from Karl, completed a studs out remodeling of an apartment that is now their summer home in Michigan. In 2014, contemplating how bored he’d be without some project, they came to the conclusion that aircraft building is age independent. He and Dolly together built their Vans RV7 that first flew in 2018. It was on display at the 2019 EAA Airventure flyin in Oshkosh, Michigan.
Dolly, who also is a member of the Experimental Aircraft Association, is enthusiastic about aviation and knitting. Click here to visit her knitting pages.
Photo: At the cockpit controls of Howard Hughes’ Spruce Goose at the Evergreen Air Museum in McMinnville, Oregon
