Back to the Traffic Watch (temporarily)
May 16, 2005
I had to get back in the air and fly again. The FAA is still going through the banner planes, and Stuart is fixing everything they tell him to fix. This could drag on for weeks, and I need to FLY!
I took my Flight Review last Friday with Gary, the traffic watch chief pilot, and told him to start scheduling me on the traffic watch again while the banner planes are grounded. I flew today (Monday) and I'm scheduled to fly again on Thursday.
Traffic watch is boring compared to banner flying, but my passenger, WBAP 820's traffic watch reporter - Monty Cook, helps to pass the time with lots of cool stories and many funny jokes. I'd rather be flying Monty's wife, the lovely Laura Houston, but she gets to fly in the nice Bell Jet Ranger helicopter - and I'm not a chopper pilot. That's okay though, Monty tells me that he'd rather be flying with our new female traffic watch pilot whom I'm told is quite a looker.
The typical traffic watch afternoon mission begins with a 3:15pm takeoff from the Arlington (GKY) Municipal Airport. We fly the beat-up Cessna 172 (with crappy radios) over to Dallas Love Field and wait for Monty to arrive. We usually get in the air at DAL no later than 4pm and drone around the Fort Worth skies at 1,000' AGL looking for mayhem and congestion on the Tarrant County highways and byways. Tarrant County drivers are much more behaved and courteous than those nasty Dallas County drivers, so we usually just enjoy the scenery.
That's me flying the traffic watch C172 (notice I shaved the goatee off dad)
This is Monty Cook.
He doesn't look anything like he sounds on the radio does he? He always
has that crazed look in his eyes - he served in the first Gulf War and was an
artilleryman in the U.S. Army. I think he stood too close to the artillery
without wearing any hearing protection :-)
FYI, that's a highly modified David Clark headset he's wearing. One ear
and mic is for the radio broadcast, and the other ear and mic is for aircraft
communications.
This is Monty's wife, Laura Houston