by Norm Petersen Jerry was born in Quanah, Texas, just below the Oklahoma border and grew up there, building model airplanes in his spare time - most of which crashed, he says. Af ter high school, he spent his college years at Texas Tech in Lubbock, majoring in An imal Husbandry. It was during this time that he took a few lessons from instructor, Emmett Morris, who promptly sent him out on a solo flight in the J -3 Cub after three hours of instruction. Jerry says the flight went well until he did a rather sharp pull-up and smoke billowed out of the C-85 engine. He was just barely able to land the airplane by hanging his head out of the up per door to see around the smoke! Appar 20 JANUARY 1994
ently, leaking oil had fallen on the exhaust pipes. During the next ten years, Jerry fooled around with a Taylorcraft and a Student li cense, but didn't get serious about flying until 1964, when he bought a Cessna 180 and earned his Private license. He flew the 180 for a spell and then traded for a Cessna 195 that had spent its first three years with the State of New Mexico doing high alti tude mapping . This big, round-engined machine was followed by a Stinson 108, which was flown for a while and then replaced with a Stinson 108-2. The latter ma chine was in dire need of a great deal of help, so Jerry tore it down and commenced a total rebuild. The experience was worth "all the tea in China" as Jerry flew it to the National Stinson Cl ub convention in 1981 and ran off with the Best of Series award. The following year, 1982, was not a par ticularly good one for Jerry R oss as he went through a divorce and sold the award winning Stinson 108-2. His three children all made it through co ll ege and are now gai nfully employed. As Jerry says, " I ex plained to them, they had better get a good education or they would really be in trouble. " By 1985, he had married a lovely lady named Sandra and together, they decided to purchase a Piper C herokee 140. To make matters even better, Sandra took
lessons, learned to fly and earned her Pri vate license. They put over 400 hours on the Cherokee, majored the Lycoming en gine and then ran it another 600 plus hours. As Jerry says, " We covered a lot of terri tory!" Shopping around for something a little faster in the summer of '92, Jerry stumbled on to a Piper Comanche that a dealer in Lees Summit , MO, had in stock. It had been owned by a gentleman for twenty years, who had flown it a couple of thou sand hours. In 1986, he majored the en gine - and then suffered a stroke. After the Comanche sat in the hangar for a few years , he tried flying it one day and on landing, the Comanche ate a fence post with the wing and a lawn chair with the prop! That's when the dealer bought it. Jerry checked it over closely as the dealer explained that he had fixed the pro peller, however, the wing still ne eded work. A ferry permit was obtained and Jerry bought the Comanche and flew it home to Weatherford , OK. The fun be gan! With only 55 hours on the engine, it ran beautifully , howeve r , about everything else needed work. The Piper Comanche came in three models, the Custom, Super Custom and the Piper Autoflite, which had all the goodies plus the Autoflite auto-pi lot (built by Mitchell). Jerry's machine is the A utoflite - and it didn' t work either! He took the unit over to Autopilot Central in Tulsa, OK, and had it overhauled (they have a good stock of parts) . It now works like a charm.
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