INDUSTRY PROFESSIONALS
Dana Kerrick demonstrates the hover stability of a properly-maintained Bell 47 G5. Note that all occupants have their hands raised. Stockton, CA, March 1989
to Lackland AFB in San Antonio, TX. His aptitude tests showed he would do well in electronics, so thus began a “free, 12-year education in avionics,” specializing in bombing and navigation computers. “I am, however, the world’s worst navigator — I can’t navigate worth anything,” Kerrick jokes. It was in the Air Force that Kerrick finally got his
opportunity to take wing in 1965. This was not as an Air Force pilot, but through the Castle AFB Aero Club, where Kerrick learned to fly in a Cessna 150 and a Cessna 172, and got his private pilot’s license in 1966. While his experience in the Air Force might not have had him in the pilot’s seat of the big B-52 bombers, he did spend time aloft as a crew member for eight sorties from Guam into Vietnam to ensure that the navigation and bombing computers worked properly. After leaving the Air Force in 1970 with 12 years of
service, Kerrick says, “A wonderful thing happened. It was called the GI Bill. If you got your private pilot’s license, the GI Bill would pay 90 percent of all your further ratings — commercial, multi-engine, instrument, rotor, instructor, everything!” Kerrick spent the next 10 years working days as a copier salesman for Savin Corporation in Stockton, CA, while going to flight school in the evenings in San Jose to get every rating he could. He credits Savin for teaching him great sales skills, though his affable ways and outgoing personality likely helped just as much. Kerrick added ratings for twin-engine,
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HelicopterMaintenanceMagazine.com October | November 2015
rotary aircraft, instrument, and commercial, with instructor certificates for all. Early in his civilian flying career, Kerrick was a chief pilot for San Joaquin Piper in Stockton, CA, and later at Hawke flying service in Modesto and Merced, CA. Kerrick says his all-time favorite fixed-wing airplane is the Piper Super Cub and his favorite helicopter is the Bell 47 G5. He loves showing the photos he has hovering Keith Harvey’s 47 G5 with all hands in the cockpit raised. “That was a really stable bird,” Kerrick says. At San Joaquin Piper, Kerrick had taught Keith Harvey, founder of Composite Technology Inc. (CTI), to fly and helped him get his private pilot’s license. Kerrick and Harvey became friends during Harvey’s flight training and Harvey had a collection of aircraft, so to help Kerrick make the trip from Stockton to San Jose for his advanced ratings, Harvey allowed Kerrick to fly his Rallye Minerva. Kerrick flew many aircraft for Harvey, including ferrying a 1941 de Havilland Tiger Moth from Albuquerque, NM, to Stockton, CA. “It took four days, one engine failure and one emergency landing in Holbrook, NM, to get there. That plane flies really slow,” Kerrick says. “It was depressing to look down and see the 18-wheelers going uphill and still passing me.” One of the highlights of flying a de Havilland Tiger Moth
was being “one of the two Yanks” invited to fly into the “Gathering of the Moths” at Woburn Abbey in Bedfordshire,
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