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AIRWINDS

PILOTS PATTER 
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R. L. (BUD) Baker. Chief Pilot of Pennsylvania Airlines, was bitten by the air bug on July 4, 1919, and took his first flight two weeks later. Being still "feverish," as Bud puts it, he went back the next day and put down $25 for a stunt ride, which gave him such a thrill he signed up for a course of instruction.

After soloing in November, 1919, Bud purchased a condemned Army plane, which came to an untimely end when an ex-Army student endeavored to show him how to stunt.
Not in the least discouraged, Bud promptly purchased another plane and finished that year barn-storming. He claims that the times were so lean during the winter that he was forced to live exclusively on snowballs. (See Ernie Pyle column this issue.)

In May, 1921, Baker again went barn-storming, finishing at Indiana Lake, a summer resort, where he remained until 1927, operating an airport and running the Indian Lake Aviation Company.
Bud then joined the Airplane Division of the Ford Motor Company at Dearborn, Michigan, later transferring to the Stout Air Service. In August, 1928, he signed up with Pennsylvania Airlines and has been flying mail, passengers and express for this Company ever since.

With close to five thousand hours of flying experience to his credit, he is the "Daddy" of Pennsylvania Airlines' pilots. He has flown the Pittsburgh-Cleveland leg of the Cleveland-Akron-Pittsburgh-Washington run over nine hundred times. During this service he has had some funny experiences with passengers, one of the most singular being when a well-dressed man boarded the plane at Cleveland for Washington. Upon reaching the Washington-Hoover Airport, a posse of armed detectives rushed out to the plane and grabbed Bud's passenger. This gentleman, who had been chatting with Bud at the various stations on the route, was none other than a famous Cleveland bank robber!
Bud has a wife and three children, and lives at the Cleveland, where he can be seen looking over planes and engines at the municipal Airport whenever he is not at the controls.

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