Tales of the Cessna 195 - Paperback

by Michael D. Larson (Author)

"You know this is a love story."
- Larry Nelson, President of the International Cessna 190/195 Club, at the annual convention banquet

It is. But it's also the story of fifty years in the air.

Mike Larson fell in love with the Cessna 195 at age twelve, on a factory test flight he never forgot. He went on to build one of the most varied flying careers imaginable - shuttling skydivers in a Twin Beech 18, crop-spraying cotton fields in Arizona at treetop level, hauling freight around the world in a DC-8, and flying the Boeing 737 over the US, Canada, and South and Central America for a major airline. He logged over fifty years and tens of thousands of hours before mandatory retirement grounded him at sixty.

But the real story is Charmian.

She came from England as an au pair, took up skydiving to meet people, and became one of the most accomplished female skydivers of the 1970s - setting world records and jumping from planes Mike was flying. A drunk driver nearly took her life. They both walked away from skydiving after that. They never walked away from each other.

Tales of the Cessna 195 - as featured in Flying Magazine - is the book Mike's friends call a love story. They're not wrong.

Author Biography

My very first memory in life was one of airplanes. While playing in the front yard of our home on the Sioux City Air National Guard base housing I happened to look up and watch four silver airplanes in close formation fly down the runway and crisply peel off individually for landing. They were P-51 Mustangs flown by Air Guard pilots, my father may have been flying one of the airplanes, I'm not really sure. I began taking flying lessons at age 14, my first solo flight at age 17 and still fly almost every day today at age 68. Like my good friend, Wynn Baker (retired Delta Airline Captain) told me, "Mike, it's a good thing I know how to fly, because flying airplanes is alI I know how to do!" That statement succinctly applies to me. I do not expect much to change in the future. I managed to make a living with small airplanes for the first 15 years of my career and did eventually get an airline job and flew jets around the world for 27 years until I retired in 2006. In 1999 my wife Charmian and I decided to acquire our own airplane and that's where we began a wonderful journey of owning and flying a Cessna 195. I was familiar with this airplane; I flew one in the 70's so it was an easy decision over which type of airplane to buy. We were quite unprepared. However, for the onslaught of new friends we found in the form of the International Cessna 195 Club. They are a friendly group and each member is dedicated to preserving the "finest airplane Cessna Aircraft Company ever built." It has been a wonderful experience socializing with these people and learning from them the various nuances of flying and maintaining our 65 year old Cessna 195. I pass this book on to you to enjoy.