Capt. Elton E. Dyal ANG

Born in Palestine Texas, July 9, 1929. I am often blamed for the market crash which occurred approximately three months later.

Attended elementary school in Palestine and Buffalo Texas. The Palestine airport, at that time, was located beside the road between Palestine and Buffalo. A Pitcarin Autogyro was based at the airport and as approaching the airport I was always anxious to see if the Pitcarin was out for a flight that day. This is one of my earliest interest in flying that I can remember.

The move to Buffalo Texas took place in January 1939. There was only one school in Buffalo that covered grades 1 through 12. I was in the middle of the 5^th grade. My parents operated a motel, and I was able to have a horse, since there was enough land as part of the motel property. This worked out really great since I was able to deliver papers on my newspaper route on horseback. Everything was great until December 7,1941. After the war started my parents thought travel would be greatly restricted and the motel business would suffer. The opposite was the truth. The motel was located on U.S. Highway 75, the main route between Houston and Dallas and travel increased significantly.

One of my father’s sisters and her family lived in Pasadena Texas and defense jobs were plentiful, so off to Pasadena we went in the summer of 1942. I had to give up my horse but I had three cousins to be with in Pasadena. At this time I began to build control line model airplanes. Due to the war balsa wood and other material was in very short supply especially engines.

I attended Jackson Jr. High School, which was just across the street and later Pasadena High School just two blocks away. In my senior year I lived with my sister, Reta, and her family in Longview, Texas. Her husband Roy was a Petroleum Engineer with a major oil company. My association with Roy made me lean toward engineering. I had wanted Aeronautical Engineering but the course was not available at my local university.

After graduating from high school in 1947 I enrolled in a mechanical engineering course at the University of Houston. In 1949 I joined the Texas ANG and was also enrolled in the Army ROTC at U of H. During my second year in ROTC a precision drill team was organized. The name of the drill team was The Cullen Rifles in honor of H.R. Cullen, who had donated $88,000,000 to the U of H. We were equipped with silver helmets and chrome plated 1903 Springfield rifles. In addition to regular practice the Rifles performed in parades and special events.

When a parade was to be held out of town the ANG based at Ellington field would fly the whole team to our destination in a C-47. One memorial event occurred on a flight to San Antonio. It was a very bumpy day and many of the guys began to turn green and throw up. The only repository was their helmets. The schedule was so tight there was hardly time to find a water faucet and rinse the helmets out before forming up for the parade. I felt sorry for my companions but was very glad for my self since I did not get air sick.

In September of 1950, it was announced that the 136 Fighter Wing was to be activated. I had a choice to make. Either resign from the Guard and continue in the ROTC at the U of H or drop out of University and be activated with the ANG.

Since the ROTC unit at U of H was in the Army Quartermaster Corps I chose to go on active duty with the ANG as a private rather than stay in the U of H and be commissioned a 2^nd Lt. in the Army.

We were off to Langley Field. Upon arriving I was assigned to the Air Installations Squadron. Before leaving for Langley I had begged to take the Aviation Cadets entrance exam. I was put off by being told it will go a lot faster after we are on active duty. That was not quite true since the waiting list for pilot training was then one year. My Squadron Commander, a non rated Captain, did not think much of fly boys and indicated if we were assigned to Korea I was going along even though the regulations prohibited such a transfer while waiting for a class assignment. A squadron buddy who was waiting a class assignment to Radar Observer School and I got busy and wrangled a transfer to Donaldson AFB South Carolina. We were lucky and were assigned to the Link Trainer Operation as operator trainees. This gave me the opportunity to learn instrument procedures and to fly an ANT-18 Link Trainer. Too bad the experience was not worth much since the four legged radio ranges were obsolete by the time I was in pilot training. However, learning to use the radio compass was very helpful.

In Sep.51 my orders came through and I reported to Marana Air Base in Arizona, a civilian contract school, to fly T-6 D’s in class 52G. Upon completing Basic at Marana, I reported to Webb AFB, Big Spring Texas for advanced training. At Webb I trained in T-28A’s and T-33A’s

In late august 1952, six weeks before graduation I was informed I had gone through training on an ANG quota. My options were to sign up in the Air Force Reserve and stay on active duty for five years or return to my ANG Squadron, the 111^th FS. I had not finished college and did not have my engineering degree. The 111^th had recently returned from Korea flying F-84G’s and were set up at Houston International Airport (now Hobby). The squadron had about six F-51Hs, one C-47 and two T-6G’s. This would allow me to keep flying while completing my engineering degree. I was also thrilled to check out in the F-51. What a plane. Even after Jets it was still a thrill to be flying a famous WWII fighter.

I re-entered the U of H where I had about a year and a half left before completing the courses for a BSME. During this time the 111^th FS was assigned F-80A’s with the new fuel start system and “C” model brakes. They turned out to be real good airplanes.

Upon graduating from the U of H in Feb. 1955 I accepted a job as a research engineer at the Rocketdyne division of North American Aviation in Conaga Park California. Conaga Park was close to the Van Nuys airport where two squadrons of the 136^th fighter wing were located, the 115^th and the 195^th fighter squadrons. The 115^th, was the squadron to which I was assigned. We were equipped with 24 F-86A’s, a C-47, 2 T-33A’s, a C-45. and 2 T-6G’s. I immediately checked out in the T-6G and within month was flying the F-86A. As time went by we were re-equipped with F-86E, F-86F and finally the F-86H. My favorite was the H model. With its own start system it could go anywhere there was 6000 ft of runway and jet fuel available.

The job at Rocketdyne was very interesting and I was got to know a couple of engineers who had worked on the V2 missile in Germany. I was responsible for gas generator and gas generator system development. The engines being developed were for the Navajo , the Thor, the Jupiter and the Atlas missiles. The gas generator supplied the hot gases to drive the turbine which drove the main propellant pumps. It was amazing to get 5000HP out of a small combustor 8 or 9 inches in diameter. When the turbine design group missed on turbine efficiency it made a lot of work for the gas generator systems group. This happened on the Atlas sustainer engine.

While I really enjoyed the work at Rocketdyne one incident made me realize the chance of long term job security and promotion was risky. When the cancellation of the Navajo missile contract for which North American had both the missile contract and the rocket engine contract, it led to the lay off of 10,000 people in a few short weeks. While I was not among one of those laid off it made me realize it was time for a career change. I had been experimenting with a small flow regulator made by Waterman Hydraulics Corp. to replace a rather large complex pressure control valve in the liquid oxygen (LOX) side of the gas generator propellant system. As the result of working with the Waterman personnel I was offered a job to join the company in Evanston IL.

The change of job and relocation was major. Employment at Rocketdyne was terminated in November 1959 and I reported for duty at Waterman that same month. I had married my first wife Diane Guseman in June 1954 while still working on my BSME. By the time this move to the Chicago area came along we were expecting our fourth child. With such large family responsibility and no ANG unit close by I ended my military flying career.

I had thoroughly enjoyed the training missions both in the Texas ANG and the Calif. ANG. In Houston our very inventive maintenance officer rigged a way to stow the standard target banner in a pod under the right wing of one of the F-80’s The banner could be released from the cockpit. Our proximity to the Gulf allowed our Squadron to practice air to air gunnery and still operate out of the Houston airport. The banner could then be dropped back at the airport.

Whereas air to air gunnery practice only took place at the two week summer camps we were able to have gunnery practice very frequently. Earlier, when flying F-51’s the facilities on Matagorda Island were used for Air to Ground gunnery and low level bombing. When summer camp time came around we went to Savanna Georgia or Gulfport Mississippi. Summer camp for the Calif. ANG was always held at Boise Idaho. One memorable flight upon leaving summer camp was that we formed up in a flight of 50 F-86’s. That was a nice ending to an enjoyable two week period and probably had not been done many times since WWII. Interim gunnery missions were flown out of George AFB on their air to ground range. Following the move I was placed on the inactive AF reserve from which I resigned in 1962.

The Rocketdyne business for Waterman did not materialize since further development showed that a simple orifice properly sized in both the LOX and the RP-1 side of the gas generator propellant systems gave adequate control. It is obviously reasonable on large government funded development contracts a complexity for solution is the first thing tried rather than the simple approach.

Waterman’s business was made up of mostly hydraulic valve applications on mobile equipment. However, there were two types of valves that fit the aircraft industry perfectly. A small inline flow regulator and a quantity measuring fuse. Constant pressure systems using variable volume piston pumps had become standard for aircraft systems. The flow regulator provided a means of limiting flow rate to a branch function in a hydraulic system. The quantity measuring fuse is used in brake systems to limit the displacement of fluid in the event a brake line or hose fails. This prevents all the brake fluid from being pumped overboard.

I was with Waterman from Nov.59 until Nov. 69 serving in positions as Chief Engineer and later Sales Manager. Significant travel was required in the job of sales manager. I was able to buy a Cessna 210 and be reimbursed for my cost of operation. This was my first experience in using a private airplane for business use. I found it to be a real time saver for trips of 75 to 300 miles.

I had always had an entrepreneurial spirit. A colleague and I managed to leave Waterman and act as their manufacturers representative and distributor. To be able to solve customers problems we needed to represent complimentary products in the Hydraulics and Fluid Power field. During this time period Waterman sold the business to a larger company. This eventually led to problems with Waterman’s new management and our association was ended.

In 1973 we joined with a person who had considerable experience in the design and manufacture of cartridge type hydraulic valves. While cartridge valves were not totally new in the hydraulics business, this new approach had many advantages over past designs. It was not a design of one valve at a time but whole families of valves with many common parts. The valves could be classified by valve function, but also by the number of ports to accomplish the valve function. For instance pressure control valves normally have 2 to 3 ports. Directional control valves have 2 to 4 ports. The cartridges consisted of threads at the top to secure it in a valve body or manifold, “o” ring glands spaced along the cartridge with decreasing diameters for each gland . Spaces between the glands had radial holes to allow oil flow into and out of the cartridge.

This approach allowed picking the control functions needed to accomplish the machine tasks required, designing a hydraulic circuit, selecting the appropriate cartridges, and then designing a manifold with the required cavities and inter-connecting flow paths with threaded ports to get the hydraulic fluid to where it needed to go. The manifold, usually aluminum alloy, was then machined on a computer controlled machining center. The manifold would be de-burred inspected ,anodized and made ready for cartridge installation. After cartridge installation the manifold would be connected to a test stand and tested for proper function before shipping to the customer.

During much of this time period a Bonanza N3736Q and a Cessna 340 N401MC were kept busy servicing our customers and distributors. In 1987 we sold the business to Vickers, Inc, a company which had pioneered the Fluid Power Industry.

In late 1977 Diane and I separated, then divorced. There were a total of 5 children, 3 boys and 2 girls. On my birthday, July 9, 1978, Gwendlyn Friendship Tucker, and I were married. Our families had known each other for over 10 years. Gwen and her former husband Ken Tucker had adopted two children. The kids mixed together very well and I consider that I have seven children. What a lucky guy, with the problem they are scattered all over the US and Canada so we do not get to see each other very often. The internet and phone sure helps to keep in touch.

Not really being ready to throw in the towel after selling the cartridge valve business, in 1993 a group of us purchased a small hydraulic business from United Technologies. The larger U.T. had neglected this business and with corporate charges it was losing money. We had a good management team ready to turn things around. In five short years sales increased 9 fold. We sold the business to Parker Hannifin in 1998.

After selling the first business in 1987, Gwen and I took a cruise to Alaska. On the way back we stopped in Nanaimo B.C. to visit friends. The place is so beautiful we bought a home. This became our summer home. Since we still had a condo in Wooddale IL, something had to be done since Chicago area is no place to spend the winter. I had always liked Arizona since spending May through October of 1951 while training at Marana. We had friends in Sun Lakes and stopped by to visit. We liked the place and bought a house in the spring of 1998.

The Cessna 340 was sold in 1986 . The first Bonanza was lost in a crash in the mountains east of Missoula MT with 3 on board. Two of them were key employees. I then bought a 1/3 interest in an A-36 Bonanza, since I still had a need to travel for business. My 1/3 interest was sold to one of the partners and I was in need of another Bonanza. I had by this time sold the second business and was in the process of leaving the Chicago area. The person who found the first bonanza for me N3736Q was a farmer in N.E. Illinois. He had an airport and a Bonanza N9588Q. Unfortunately he had a massive blood clot which caused his heart to fail while working alone at his airport. I arranged to buy his Bonanza from his estate. After having a major upgrade in the avionics, Gwen and I flew the plane to the Chandler airport, where it has been based ever since. In 1990 it got a new paint job. N9588Q made the trip from Chandler AZ to Nanaimo B.C. every spring and back in the fall for 13 years.

Due to Gwen’s failing health we sold the home in Nanaimo in 2001 and now spend all year in Chandler. A year after moving into Park Regency Retirement Village we sold the house in Sun Lakes. I fly N9588Q as often as possible to get those $300.00 hamburgers.

OTHER COMMENTS ON FLYING: During the summer of 1953 I tried my hand at crop spraying in a Piper Super Cruiser. I was hoping to supplement my college money, but what I really did was prove my skills at dead stick landings in a cotton field after I had accidentally turned off the fuel valve when operating the spray control valve.

The above is the only reciprocating engine failure in 55 years of flying. I experienced a flame out in both a F-80 and a F-86. Both were easy to restart.

Military Aircraft Flown: T-6 D&G, T-28A, T-33A, F-51H, F-80B&C, F86 A,E,F &H, C-47, B-25, F-104D, C-45H Total Military Time 1156hrs Total Jet time 583 hrs

Civilian Aircraft Flown: Aernoca, PA-28, Stinson 10, BE-35, BE A-36, C-170, C-340, T-34, PA-48 Malibu, J-3CUB. Total Civilian Flying Time: 4023

Life has been very kind, but the Golden years could use some polishing.