Page 16 - April 2022

ASK THE EXPERT
My Golden Anniversary
by Tom Clements
Ibegan as an instructor at the Beechcraft Training Center on Jan. 3, 1972. If anyone had told me then that I would still be teaching King Air pilots in 2022, I would have thought they were crazy, but so it is. To steal a line from “Saturday Night Live:” “King Airs been very, very good to me!”
The Beechcraft factory’s training center had formed in late 1964, soon after the first King Airs began being delivered to customers. It started with only two employees: Bob Nielson, the pilot instructor and manager, and Dave Howe, the maintenance instructor. It was located in a small building at the west end of the Delivery Center’s hangar. Most of the actual flight training in the customer’s new King Air was provided by the production test pilots, the guys who flight-tested the airplanes as they came off the production line.
With the demand and rapid delivery pace of the first successful small turboprop, the training center quickly expanded, moved into upstairs rooms in the Delivery Center, and hired more instructors: Scott Hutchinson
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for maintenance; Don Cary, Bruce Addington and Bud Small for pilot ground and flight training.
About 1969, it was obvious that the Training Center had outgrown its meager facility. A failed restaurant/ nightclub – Ken’s Club East – just to the east and adjacent to the Beech complex, was purchased and became the location of the Beechcraft Training Center for many years to come. It was to this locale, with Don Cary now the center’s excellent manager, that I reported. Back then, the entire staff consisted of six employees: Don Cary, our manager and pilot instructor for the entire line of Beech airplanes; Jo Ann Louie, our amazingly competent secretary/assistant; Alan Roberts, pilot instructor with emphasis on the 100-series; Bud Small,
APRIL 2022