Sam: Thank you, it’s good to be here!

Jeff: I love how you are doing it from your studio too, this is where the magic happens!

Sam: Ha ha, this is my man cave!

Jeff: My goal is for people to get to know you, your artwork, and really, what a wonderful person that I have always found you to be. And I’d like to start with an understanding of how you got connected first to aviation. What got you into our world?

Sam: Well, it goes all the way back to my Dad, he flew B-24 bombers in WWII and he flew 31 missions and brought
the crew home when they got done. And so, I’ve been around aviation for a long time. I got hooked on model building and built some stick and tissue paper models, which changed into plastic models. I got into the artwork through that. I actually owned a hobby shop in Atlanta for 10 years called Historical Hobbies and through that . . .

Jeff: That’s pretty cool!

Sam: Yes, and that’s where I started showing my paintings so to speak; I’d do a painting and hang it up in the shop to see what people thought about it. They liked it enough to where I started doing prints.

Jeff: So which came first, was it your involvement in aviation or was it your artwork?

Sam: Well a little of both; I was one of these kids who always drew in my notebook in school when I should have been paying attention. I started doing some paintings and I wanted to do something that would be photo-realistic, which is not easy to do. I tried real hard to do some and it never really came out right. When I was in college I needed one credit to get out of college, and they offered me ‘Marriage and Family’ or ‘Art’. So I took the art class. So I got hooked on the art and began to see where I could do some of the things I wanted and make the painting look real. I wanted you to feel like you could walk right into the painting and be part of it, you know?

Jeff: Got it. Tell me a little about your first foray into aviation itself. I understand that your first way in was through gliders?

Sam: Yes, when I was in college I watched a Walt Disney show, it was on Sunday night and they had a story on there about this kid who saw some gliders. I think it’s called Soaring with the Condors. I was looking at that and he ends up flying a glider and flying up there with the condors. I was thinking how I always wanted to fly, this is really cool! And my buddy who I played tackle football with, and he played end, said “Where I live, it’s about 70 miles from here, they got a glider school”. And I said “Let’s go”, you know. So I went up and paid $15 for 15 minutes, came down and said “Let’s do this again”, and the second time I came down I said “Okay I have to do this”. I signed up and took lessons and got my glider license. That was my first license and it was glider pilot only. So that’s how it started. Later I got my power rating. I did that because I was getting so many flights in so many different airplanes with people and getting a little stick time with this and a little stick time with that. So I had a commission job from Pat Epps at Epps Aviation in Atlanta, Peachtree Airport. We did a deal where part of the commission was he gave me enough time in his flight school to get my power sign-off. That worked out real well.

Jeff: I’ll say! A little sweat equity and artistry to get you there.

Sam: Yep and it was funny because I started leaning in like a warrior and during the time I was training I bought the Stinson 108-3. I had a little grass strip where I had the airplane and there were some guys on there who had Stinsons. They showed me the ropes on how to fly the Stinson. So then I got it signed off that I could fly the Stinson down to Peachtree Airport and take lessons. Because I didn’t have my pilot’s license. And the kid that I was taking lessons from, well he wasn’t tailwheel certified. So we had to get him tailwheel certified so he could fly my airplane. Which I was already flying, on the side. I had a lot of time in it. It was fun.

Jeff: that’s pretty wild, the Stinson is a cool plane.

Sam: It was on of my favorite airplanes. It’s very forgiving. You can do a slip in it but it doesn’t have a lot of rudder. It’s got a big tail and coming into the grass strip where I had it, it was uphill at both ends. So you had to come in down the hill, and I did a slip coming all the way down, crank it around straight, and land on the grass strip.

Sam: I’m sure it gave some people – the road was right across the bottom of the field and I’m sure I gave some people some thrills when I came down the hill and they weren’t expecting to see me cross the road while they were driving down the road!

Jeff: Is that all metal Stinson?

Sam: No. Air Acres in Woodstock, Georgia.

Jeff: No, I meant is the aircraft all metal?

Sam: No, it’s fabric.

Jeff: Oh they are gorgeous. Maybe I was thinking Lipscomb or something. But people rave about Stinsons.

Sam: Well many people didn’t realize, but the one I had was basic fabric wings, fabric fusilage, over the tube you know.

Jeff: That’s great that you had an aircraft while you were still learning! (Laughs).

Sam: Yeah, I had to teach the guy how to fly my Stinson so he could teach me how to fly!

Jeff: And then at the same time you basically got so much experience from the gliding side of things. How did that translate into your command of the tailwheel aircraft. Do you think that the fact that you had been flying gliders helped a lot?

Sam: Tremendously! My instructor would get up and when we were flying, well he would pull the power and say “Can you make the airport?” Well yeah! It was right there, and he didn’t understand that with a glider, you can’t go around. You have to do it right, you know. I’d drive him crazy! One time I was coming in at Charlie Brown Airport and we were flying and I thought we were going to fly over it. We were about 2,000 feet over the end of the runway and he says “Alright, land there”. So I just cranked that thing around sideways and went down the hill and cranked it back around and put in the numbers . . . and he said “You could’ve gone around, you could’ve gone around!” I said “Didn’t need to, you told me to put it down here.” So it kinda blew his mind a little.

Jeff: Schooled your instructor a little bit in slipping and energy management.

Sam: With a glider that’s the first thing you learn is how to slip an airplane, cause you always try to come in a little high and fast when you’re coming in cause you want to make sure you make the field; and when you cross over the threshold, you just crank it around sideways and ride the elevator down.

Jeff: That’s awesome! So during this time – it sounds like you have both of these things happening at the same time; you’ve got the artwork starting to move up at the same time as your love of aviation is growing. Tell me a little bit about how you learned the art of painting, I know you said you took one class, but so much of it you describe as being self-taught.

Sam: It’s kind of interesting; I had a friend who had a friend, and the friend’s name was Jerry Crandall. You may be familiar with his work, he’s done a lot of aviation stuff and he’s done a lot of Western stuff. Unfortunately he’s no longer with us, but this friend of mine asked him about painting airplanes. So he (Jerry) showed him what he knew, and I was over to the side looking at him, and I picked up some pointers here and there.

My friend would do a painting and then he would call me up to come over and critique it. However, he didn’t want me to come over and critique it, he wanted me to come over and tell him how good it was! So I’m going “Well if I can see the problems that’s in his painting, why couldn’t I do a painting and do it right?” So I did a couple paintings and they came out pretty good and I did a couple more paintings and they came out pretty good, and I thought “Well I’m pretty lucky this is working out!” I decided, well maybe I can do this. This is when I had the hobby shop. I started doing prints and it was real tough – you take your stuff around to galleries and you show it to them. Nobody knew who I was and they would look at it and say it was real nice; but why don’t you come back when you have some more stuff. They wanted someone who had a known track record. So I managed to find one guy who had a gallery/frame shop. It was in a little shopping center that had a little restaurant – lunchtime type of restaurant that had sandwiches. It was right across the street from Dobbins Air Force Base.

So a lot of people who worked at Dobbins AFB would come over and have lunch there. (The owner of the gallery/frame shop), he asked me if he could hang a couple of my paintings up. You know, my prints. So he framed them real nice and hung them up and all of a sudden he started selling my prints hand over fist. So he started buying ten at a time, then twenty at a time and then he started buying forty at a time. He got me enough money that he got me over the hump. I could re-invest in more prints, and then I stumbled over this thing called OshKosh. I said to myself, “Well if I can’t sell aviation art to 50,000 crazy aviation idiots, I can’t sell it.” so I got a booth there (OshKosh) and did well, and got into Sun’n Fun and did the same thing. I had a booth in both places for years.

Jeff: Wow, when you were getting started at first, at that first location outside the base, were you doing more military type things or was it still General Aviation?

Sam: I did a little of both. Back then I painted florals, I painted a lot of different stuff, I painted cars. I had a lot of different stuff in my bag of tricks. But I got well known in the aviation community, so that was my niche. So I moved right on in there.

Jeff: But it wasn’t just GA or Military when you were there.

Sam: No, it was mostly just pretty airplanes, whatever I could come up with that would make a pretty scene.

Jeff: What made you decide on a specific type of painting? Acrylics vs. watercolor vs. oil?

Sam: I tried different mediums, and I’ve done quite a bit of colored pencil stuff, that I’ve turned into prints. I tried oils and I was too impatient – I couldn’t wait for them to dry! So that did not work out well for me. Acrylics dry very fast, and you can pretty much do whatever you want with them. I got into airbrushing some of the artwork too. Airbrush lays down some beautiful gradiated colors. You can do a lot with an airbrush. I have owned over a half-dozen airbrushes over the time that I’ve been painting. Acrylics is where I got hung into.

Jeff: When you are airbrushing, is that airbrushing acrylic?

Sam: Yes, airbrushing acrylics.

Jeff: Do you still use airbrush as part of your techniques?

Sam: Yes, it’s interesting, it’s just another way to get paint on the board. You can use brushes, you can use airbrushes, you can use anything you want to get paint on the board. Sometimes I use a sponge and dab it on the painting to make trees. So you use whatever makes it happen.

Jeff: Was there any specific aviation artwork – people that you look to for inspiration for certain techniques?

Sam: Well there have been a lot of people that I’ve admired. Everybody from Keith Ferris to Nicholas Trudgian to Robert Taylor. Those guys are out of England and they do some really nice stuff. For awhile I belonged to the American Society of Aviation Artists and there are a lot of really good artists in there. Gil Cohen – and Ren Wicks was one of the founders. Believe it or not he did a lot of Pin-Up art for a casino in Las Vegas. So there have been a lot of people that I have watched and learned from. You can look at somebody’s artwork when it’s hanging up, and you look up to it, and you’re like “Ok, I see what he did there, OK I got that one, yeah.’ It’s funny because when I had my booth and I had artwork hanging up, I’d find people staring and I’d say “Are you taking a lesson?” (Laughs) Because I knew what they were doing, they were trying to figure out how I did that and everything.

Jeff: That’s got to be a big compliment when somebody comes over and is actually learning your technique by looking at your paintings!

Sam: Yeah, that is definitely true. I used to have some ads in aviation magazines and I’d get these calls from people “Look I saw your ad in there and I’m really interested in becoming an aviation artist.” I’d say “What do you do now?” “Well I’m a brain surgeon now or I’m this or that.” I would tell them “Don’t quit your day job!”

Jeff: I want to give people a sense of and get a little background for you, so I want to bring up a couple of these (displays slide of painting ‘140 Perfection‘). I’m very drawn to your General Aviation, and vintage paintings and those pieces. Tell me a little about the 140 that is here in this slide.

Sam: I did that for this customer that had me do it for his son. That was his son’s 140, so he wanted me to do a painting of it that he would give to his son. What’s interesting is that the background, is OshKosh with no airplanes.

Jeff: Aha!

Sam: The red barn back there and the different things that you see at OshKosh, that I used for the background – but usually that would be full of airplanes!

Jeff: That’s fascinating, didn’t even occur to me!

Sam: Yes, next slide is (‘Amelia’s Wheels‘). This is what I did for somebody who wanted to donate it to the Smithsonian Museum because they’ve got the original airplane that Amelia Earhart flew up there, on display.
So we had a presentation there in front of the airplane when I donated the painting. But (referring to print) that was when she landed in Ireland. There’s a picture I worked from of her standing along the side of the airplane like that. But you couldn’t see the airplane because there were so many people crowded around it. So I managed to score a model of the airplane that I used to draw the airplane from. Then I just stuck her up there where she needed to be.

Jeff: I love that. That is very cool, and the next one (shows slide for ‘J3 Morning‘). This is my personal favorite, this one really touches my heart. Tell me about this one.

Sam: That was basically based on a photograph that my wife took in the hangar behind our house. I already had the J3 sitting there. I thought most of it was really good subject matter, but there was a lot of clutter in the background. You know how airplane hangars are! (Laughs)

So I did the painting of the airplane, cropped it, did it while eliminating all the background and hung all the important parts together. It came out very nice I thought!

Jeff: One of the things that’s so striking about this, in my opinion, is that it’s intentionally asymmetrical and not centered. You don’t see a lot of that in aviation artwork. Can you talk us through that decision?

Sam: It’s a technique that I use every now and then, but this is just the way this one needed to be. It just needed to be one-sided, you know? It did show off the airplane very well. I had the airplane at the time so everything you see in the painting is correct, down to the screws and everything that is on a J3 Cub!

Jeff: I especially like the window light comes up to the bottom of the wing and you’ve got the inspection panel showing and the rib stitching. . . and all that, it’s really quite nice.

Sam: Thank you. It was a fun one to do. it took awhile.

Jeff: I can imagine! (Jeff shows another slide, ‘One Six Right‘) And this is one of the most famous ones, I think, simply because of the movie. Tell me about being connected to ‘One Six Right’.

Sam: When I met Brent who did the movie “One Six Right” at Sun ‘n Fun and we got to be friends, he asked me to do this painting based on a photograph that he had. In the photograph, in the background where the hangars and things are, there were jets and you know, more modern aircraft back there. So when I did the painting, I did it without any of the new airplanes in the background. All the airplanes back there, I think they’re all older airplanes. I think there’s a DC-3 back there and a few other odds and ends. It was a fun thing to do for Brent.

Jeff: Hmm, so he brought you in when the movie was already pushing through it’s last stages? I always remember seeing this image attached to the movie.

Sam: Yes, we did prints based on the movie and everything and Sporty Pilot Shop used to sell them. I think they did very good, the prints. They would sell the prints and the movie together sometimes.

Jeff: This is another really, really gorgeous one, of course Swifts, GA News recently did a story on their Fly In, and they are gorgeous aircraft to begin with.

Sam: Yes, this was up in Lee Bottom Airport, they have a Fly In every year that’s a lot of fun, so I used the airport as a background. And I had an aero shot of the Swift and I thought it was so shiny. Let’s see if I can pull it off and make it look shiny! What’s interesting about shiny things is there’s no silver involved in the painting of a silver airplane! It’s always other things; it’s reflections of the sky, reflections off the ground, reflections of the horizon. If you put them all together right, they come out very nice.

Jeff: I always find that to be fascinating, the idea of the look of chrome, the look of polished aluminum. It’s an illusion, really.

Sam: That’s called “I put the magic in it.”

Jeff: The one thing, what is the color of aluminum, it’s absolutely not in the paint! (Laughs).

Sam: A lot of people don’t realize that when they look at it, after all it’s such a silver airplane! Well no, it’s not a silver airplane, it looks like a silver airplane, but it’s all sorts of different colors.

Jeff: What did it take for you to learn that technique? What do you recall from that because that seems like a very advanced technique to learn. How to do a mirror, a shiny surface.

Sam: I learned it from a gentleman named Ron Gress. I was pushing Binks airbrushes, and Binks had a booth. They had Ron at the booth and they had me at the booth. Ron was a great airbrush artist, he actually painted some of the Star Trek models. I mean, physically, he was the guy that painted that big model of the Enterprise! So he said “Let me show you how to paint silver.” So he painted a silver ball, and he showed me. This is this, this is that, this is what it looks like when reflections bend around and stuff. All of a sudden I looked at everything differently! Because, you’re driving down the highway, you’re in a red car, there’s a blue car next to you and the reflection of the red car is in the blue car. But what color is the red car in the blue car? And you start going, “Oh yeah, I see what it is.” So that’s how you work around getting reflections. You had to really, really look at them and dissect them and figure out as to what you’re really looking at.

Jeff: That’s fascinationg. That has always blown my mind and in fact it’s even something, not just when you’re talking about artwork or creating a painting. It’s even something we’re thinking about when you’re deciding what color to paint the Mustang behind me. Pick a silver that you look at in a book of color, well that ends up looking like paint. But then you start exploring some other colors. Colors that are not really chrome or silver exactly and then you hold it up and you curve the sheet of metal and you start to realize “That looks like something polished” even though that’s not the color you’d expect.

Sam: It’s amazing how you can put things together like that and it changes the whole look of the thing! You think it doesn’t look silver enough, so you put something up there like red and all of a sudden “Wow, it’s silver!”

Jeff: Exactly! You start using colors that you didn’t expect and – wait a minute, dark looks light! That’s strange. That’s very cool, I love that.
(Shows next slide, “Be Back in a Minute“) This one puts such a huge smile on my face! Brent Maule was here on the show of course. The Maule family is ubiquitous with short take off and landing and all these things and this was a photo. So tell me how you came to paint this.

Sam: Brent and his sister commissioned me to do this. They had the old photographs, and the photographs were in black and white, and I had to do something in color. I went down to Maule, down in lower Georgia, Valdosta I think. That hangar was still there! There was another hangar to it’s left that is not in the picture. Just palm trees and stuff like that and a water tower back there is actually there. But I removed the hangars that were next to this hangar because back when he did this there was only one hangar there. The word “MAULE” has always been on the top of it like that. So I did it like this. He used to do that, he’d back it up in the hangar, rev that thing up, come out, snatch it and go straight up. And he did it until he snagged the tail on top of the hangar there, and his wife, Brent’s Mom, said “Okay that’s it, no more.”

Jeff: (Laughs) “You’re done!” “But we are happy to memorialize the photo of things you have done in the days of your youth.”

Sam: Sometimes you can take things back if you pick up the right stuff. When I’m knocking around an old airport, some neat old hangars, I’ll take pictures of the hangars because one day I might put it as a background in a painting.

Jeff: Another thing I really love about your work is that so many of them are bright, sunny beautiful days with puffy clouds. There are also some that you really indulge yourself with some color experimentation and depth. (Shows slide for “Misty Morning“) And this is one of them. Can you talk me through this?

Sam: That’s a Taylorcraft on floats. I had a deal with the Seaplane Association, and they put it out to all their members to send me their best photographs of seaplanes. So I got tons of photographs from these guys and I finally settled on this one particular scene because I thought it looked really neat. It had a lot of atmosphere going on, it had a neat reflection, so I cranked it out and it turned out wonderful. There’s a lot of airbrushing on this one, in the sky and in the water.

Jeff: Tell me a little about reflection because that plays a big role in this one. What did you do tecnique-wise to create it. You’ve spoken about metal and chrome, but doing reflections is interesting as well in the water here.

Sam: It’s another one of those: look at what’s there and duplicate. You have to dissect it and figure out what’s there. If you have ripples in the water, you have ripples in the reflection. So if you look at the wing . . . in the reflection it’s distorted and everything. That’s because of the movement of the water.

Jeff: Yes, this is very, very beautiful! I love the serenity of it; it sucks you into the moment!

Sam: You feel like you could just walk down the dock and get in it!

Jeff: You really do! That’s the best compliment any piece of artwork can have.
(Shows new slide, “The Legend Begins” ) This is another great one, because you’ve done a lot of Cubs and this is really kind of showing one coming out of an airpark.

Sam: Yes, that’s a Legend Cub that a friend of mine had. He ended up giving it to his son. But before that he wanted to have a painting of his son in the airplane. I had pictures of his airplane from OshKosh one time when they had a framework of a Cub with no skin on it. We stuck a kid on it in the front seat and I took pictures of it so I could get the angle of him in an airplane. So that when I painted him in an airplane he would look right.

That grass strip is where I used to live and my house is on the . . . see the one with the blue roof near the hangar? Mine is the one next to it. It’s Air Acres. I painted my Cub, if you look right off the tail of this airplane, you can see the tail of a yellow Cub on the ground – that’s my Cub.

Jeff: So let’s come back to the things you hide in your paintings my friend; but before we do that, I want to do one more thing (shows new slide “World’s Smallest Airport“) Those people who are familiar with this airshow act, “World’s Smallest Airport“, what is the story about this painting, because this really touches me too.

Sam: I did this for Grady Thrasher who’s Dad was the one who was doing this. His Dad came back from WWII and wanted to keep doing some aviation stuff. He started doing parachute jumps and when he was coming down the parachute, he looked at all the people who are there and realized “these people are paying to see this stuff.” So he decided to get an aviation act together. I think that’s a 1946 Ford and he would do this landing at the shows. He was one of the first people who did this with the Cub. It was interesting because Grady Thrasher who commissioned this, his dad was the one who did the flying. And he was telling me that was their family car! He said they had to be real careful because when they took it downtown in Athens, Georgia, if they parked it on the curb, they might take out a light pole! Because of the overhang of that platform. So that was the “Thrasher Brothers Aerial Circus“.

Jeff: That’s hilarious! I love that was the original, that was the real thing and that was the family car! (Laughs).

Jeff: (Pulls up new slide of “Timeless T-Craft“) The last thing we were looking at you mentioned you put your cub into the painting, and here we are with another one, that there is certainly something hiding in here. And to the people who are fans of your work and follow it, know that there is a little game and an Easter egg thing that can be played with just about all your paintings. You want to tell me what’s hiding behind the little pump house, that shed?

Sam: It’s a black 1951 Chevy pickup truck. I had the truck and it needed a paint job, so I started putting it in my paintings, giving it the token “paint job”. And then people started seeing it and the next thing is they wanted to know in the next painting “Where is the truck?” So I had to put the truck in all the paintings. And it’s in pretty much all of them if you look. Sometimes it’s hidden, sometimes it stands right out.

Jeff: So this is the “Where’s Waldo” game you can play? Where the 1951 pickup truck is. Did they spot it right away and start requesting it?

Sam: Yeah, pretty much. I just did it for fun, stuck it in a painting, because I really needed to get the truck painted. And people stumbled on it. That’s before I really hid it, really bad. I mean some of them, I’ve hidden it so bad, you really have to know where it is to see it. And some of them it’s right in your face.

Jeff: (New slide of “Indian Summer“) This is an example of where it’s very hidden. Do you want to give it away, or do you wnt people to have to find it?

Sam: (Laughs) Well it’s almost impossible to find. If you take a business card and hold it kind of at an angle and put it up on that mountain? Some of those shadows make a truck going up a mountain. Yeah, it’s made out of shadows. It’s not black, it’s blue and kind of a shadow colored thing.

Jeff: I absolutely love that! And it doesn’t just stop at General Aviation art. Here’s an example of your Military art (shows slide of “Evening Return“) It’s in here too!

Sam: That’s a painting I did for a lady who’s husband was a plane captain on the Bonhomme Richard, that was the carrier. And that carrier served all the way up through Vietnam. They put an angled deck on it by that point, but they were still using the same carrier. And my truck is in there, you have to really look for it. If you look carefully, parked up against the island, in the shadow, my ’51 pickup truck is sitting there.

Jeff: (Laughs). I love it!

Sam: What’s interesting is that the time frame for this, where this would have happened, would have been perfect for my truck and this was around the 1951 Korean War.

Jeff: So hey, who’s to say the captain didn’t find dispensation to take his brand new truck on board.
(New slide showing “Chasing the Sun“) This is also a great, great painting “Chasing the Sun“. Obviously a double entendre on the meaning.

Sam: Yep, had a hinomaru on the side. And the number three Corsair was flown by Jim Straig. They called him “Big Jim Straig“. I actually got to meet him at OshKosh and . . . he wasn’t big at all! He’d been a professional wrestler evidently, and they called him Big Jim Straig. He flew as Tommy Blackburn‘s wingman in this squadron, so I put his plane in the front and Blackburn’s in the back.

Jeff: Wow, very cool. I wanted to skip back a few here (goes to previous slides) to see if you have any other tips you can give us (shows slide of “The Legend Begins“)

Sam: Truck is in there! It may be cropped a little bit, but it’s going down the road to the left of the airplane. Need to look in the trees there.

Jeff: Aha! (He shows slide “Shadows and Mist“) it’s in here?

Sam: Yes, it’s in the pontoon – the front of the pontoon, somewhere.

Jeff: (Laughs) I love that it’s a game and I’m going to leave it to people to make sure that they go and find (shows “Be Back in a Minute” Maule painting)

Sam: It’s there, you can actually see the nose of it, it’s sticking out of the hangar door, right under the airplane.

Jeff: Even to them, did they know you were doing that?

Sam: They wanted it! They had to have it, the truck had to be in there.

Jeff: (Next slide is “Lee Bottom Bird“)

Sam: It’s actually in this several times, it’s going down the road on the far side of the airplane. When they get to be this small, they look like little black ants! But they are there.

Jeff: (Shows slide “One Six Right“) Did it make it into “One Six Right“?

Sam: Yeah, it’s parked on the hard stand by that DC-3 over there.

Jeff: (Shows slide for “J3 Morning“) And my favorite here?

Sam: Look in the reflection in the spinner.

Jeff: Oh my! I did not know that’s where it was!

Sam: It’s fun when you’re doing the painting and trying to figure out where you’re going to put it.

Jeff: Absolutely, I wouldn’t have even thought to look there. That’s another perfect example of the challenge of how to create a polished spinner. And that’s a great one.

Sam: Yes, I’ve got the reflection of the airplane in the bottom of the spinner. You can actually see the openings for the airfilter and stuff in the reflection.

Jeff: Wonderful! (Shows “Amelia’s Wheels” slide)

Sam: Hmm . . . where is it in Amelia?

Jeff: Look at how you have to think about it, that means it’s very well hidden.

Sam: I’m sure it’s in there somewhere, I’m trying to remember where it is.

Jeff: We can challenge other people to find it!

Sam: Keep looking and let me know if you find it!

Jeff: (Shows slide of “140 Perfection“)

Sam: It’s sticking out of the red barn back there, right off the wing tip.

Jeff: That’s fantastic! It’s a great game to play, looking at your work. I also want to talk a little about, little left turn, a little non-aviation: you do a lot of scuba diving?

Sam: Yes, I’m an assistant instructor with Professional Association of Diving Instructors (PADI). And I have been an assistant instructor since 1978.

Jeff: So you’ve been teaching diving since then! That’s fantastic, and as I understand it, the only reason you are an assistant instructor is because of the workload involved and everything else. If you were to step up, obviously you’re qualified.

Sam: You almost have to have a business where you get to be a full instructor. Assistant instructor I can help regular instructors and teach some things to people. If I go anywhere and I have my certification card, they don’t question your abilities. They figure if you’re an assistant instructor, you know what you’re doing. They don’t look at you weird “Come on, get the gear on, let’s go!”

Jeff: Are you still active in diving?

Sam: I haven’t been since covid. When the covid hit, a lot of the dive operations pretty much had to shut down because of the rules and regulations. So my last dive was right before covid hit. Then covid hit and I couldn’t go diving for a long stretch and I really haven’t gotten back into it. I’d like to get back into it, I just haven’t done it yet.

Jeff: One of the other things I want to cover is your notoriety and fame from your artwork has given you quite a few opportunities for amazing flying. Can you give us some of the highlights?

Sam: I’ve had a lot of friends who’ve had airplanes. I had a P-51 ride with Hess Bomberger. He owned the P-51 that was painted in the same colors as his P-51 that he flew in WWII! So this guy was a WWII pilot and he was still flying back in the 1980’s and I got a back seat ride in a P-51. Then I had another friend who had a B-25 and I got to ride in a B-25. That was a lot of fun and people appreciated my artwork and what I was doing. Then all of a sudden I realized there’s this organization called the Airforce Art Program. It’s out of the Pentagon and you do paintings, and if you donate a painting, they hang it in the Pentagon or they hang it somewhere prominent so your work gets displayed in a lot of neat places.

I had Dobbins AFB near me, and they were flying F-15. The General said “I want you to do a painting of my airplane, and I’ll get you a ride in the F-15.” And I said “OK, sounds good to me.” So I swapped off a ride in an F-15 for a painting of his airplane. And it wasn’t an ordinary ride either, we went out and went dogfighting! We went out with another guy and we got to the point where we split – he went one way and we went another way, then we turned around and came back toward one each other. It was a fur ball and man we went round and round and there were times when I looked up thinking I’d be looking at the sky, and I was looking at the ground!

I never realized that airplanes skid in air like you’re in water. That F-15 would go pop, pop, pop pop, go sideways, you know? Just skipping across, just like you’d skip a rock across the water. That was the first 9G ride I got. Then I ran into some people at OshKosh, and one of the guys had a friend who was with Mako‘s flying F-16. So he said “Come on down, maybe we can get you a ride.” So I called the Airforce Art Program and told them what I wanted to do. They gave me orders, they cut me orders to go down there and said, for me these flights are “authorized”, which meant that I could go. So I got the F-16 ride, went down through the Florida Keys, out over Fort Jefferson and came back around. We went up to 40,000 feet, he nosed it over and we broke the sound barrier going straight down towards the ocean. And the turn at the end was my second 9G turn. Then I did get a ride with the Blue Angels! I donated an original painting to the Blues, and they gave me a ride in their F-18‘s So I’ve had the F-18, F-15, and F-16 ride.

Jeff: How wonderful!

Sam: All through the artwork, you know?

Jeff: Absolutely fantastic! I really love that!

Sam: Me too! (Laughs)
It’s something not everyone can say, even people that are in the Air Force or the Navy; they may have flown 15 or the 16, but they didn’t fly the 18, you know?

Jeff: It’s the time of the show on SocialFlights that we do the “Fast Five“. Are you going to be up for that?

Sam: Sure.

Jeff: 5 quick questions so people can get to know you, it’s all about having some fun. So question number one is:
You have had the opportunity of flying a whole lot of different aircraft both yourself and as a right seater. What comes to mind as being the favorable aircraft you’ve flown?

Sam: I love the Stinson, as far as a comfortable airplane, and it’s a pleasure to fly. But then I’ve always loved the Cub, low and slow with the door open. (Laughs).

Jeff: So the Stinson and the Cub kind of tied then? For different purposes?

Sam: Yes, I like the Hatz, flew a lot like the Cub, but it was too small for me.

Jeff: Okay, Question # 2 and again you’ve had so much flying experience, starting from gliders all the way up. Was there ever a particular moment that was a little bit scary, to where you changed your flying or approach to aviation?

Sam: There have been several! (Laughs) I’ll give you one that was fun. The guy who did my annual on the Stinson, he had a grass strip next to his house. I had never been there before and he explained to me what it looked like. There was this house over here, junk cars over here; and at that point I had Loran, I didn’t have GPS. So it wasn’t all that precise. So I got up to where I thought his airport should be. I looked around and I saw this grass strip, and yeah, there were some cars parked over here and some houses over there, yeah that all matches up! I guess that must be it, but gosh he said I had 1500 feet, that doesn’t look like 1500. But anyway I set it up, came in and put it right down at the end. I’m rolling down the runway and all of a sudden I realize that there’s a dog leg turn at the end of the runway. And there’s a pole sitting up there that I said “If I go up that way I’m going to hit that pole with my wing”.

So all of the grass that was in that field was really tall, so I just mowed through the grass, came out, turned that thing around, and this elderly gentleman came out and says “Can I help ya?” And I said, “Well, I was looking for George Leamy’s place” and he said “Well it’s about a mile over there.” I said “Well this is the only place I found it.” You know what he told me, he says “Well I fly my radio control out of here.” Six hundred feet that thing was!

Jeff: So you got back out of there?

Sam: Well, I called George up and he came over. We took everything out of that airplane we could to get out of there. And I said to the gentleman on the property “You evidently have a Bush Hog, right? Could you mow me a little more runway?” So he mowed me another 300 feet, so then I had about 900 feet. The plane was by now very light, so George just said “Give it all it’s got! When you get close to the end drop the flaps down, then you’ll bounce up and you’ll get it into enough airspace that you can get outta here.” Because there were no trees at the end of it, it’s all high grass. So I got it out and rode it over to George’s place.

But every year that I’d get my annual, I’d buzz Mr. White’s field, and he’d come over to where I had the annual done, hang out and say hello and everything. Kinda fun!

Jeff: Oh man! That’s a good story! I’m glad you made it.

Sam: I learned that you could put a Stinson in 600 feet!

Jeff: (Laughs) Alright! Question number 3: if you had an opportunity to go back in time and re-experience a moment in your life; not to change things in the future but just to be there, what comes to mind?

Sam: Well, I bought a Cub that was out in Seattle, Washington. And I flew it back to Air Acres back in Atlanta, Georgia. That was 7 days, 7 hours a day, and boy you talk about seeing the country! I don’t think I got over 1,500 feet in the air at any one particular time. And a lot of times, you’d be flying along and watching the cars pass you. So that was a very meaningful trip and interesting trip!

I flew right by the Golden Gate Bridge, I got to fly over Edwards Air Force Base. You know I called them up, asked them if I could cross over and they said “What are you flying?” and I said “Piper Cub” and they said “Come on!” They loved it, you know!

Jeff: That’s fantastic! Okay: Question Number Four! If you could go back and say something to your younger self in your teens or your twenties and give a piece of advice, what do you think you’d say?

Sam: That’s a good one. Probably that I should have got my power ticket earlier. You know I got my glider ticket when I was in college and that was in 1967, 1968. I studied for my glider written at the same time I studied for my power written because I was using the Pilot’s Handbook of Aeronautical Knowledge, which is power stuff. And so back then, you didn’t need to have somebody sign you off to go take the test. You could go down to the local FAA or whatever it was and take the test.

So I went down to Baltimore one day (I was stationed in Maryland near Baltimore) and I took the written test for the power and you know I said “I think I did pretty good on that so I’ll take the glider test.” So I took both of them and passed both of them at the same time.

Jeff: That’s very cool. So you’ll go back and recommend that you take both of them at the same time then.

Jeff: So our last question in Social Flights Fast Five is: If you could choose anyone, alive or dead, someone that you know or never met, or read about, to spend an evening with, have a drink with . . . is there anyone in particular that comes to mind?

Sam: My Dad! He would be the one I’d love to do that again with. He was a pilot in WWII and flew B-25s, he flew sub patrols down to Cuba and off of West Palm Beach and stuff. He’d flown a lot of places, he was really interesting and that’s how I got hooked, you know!

Jeff: That was a wonderful answer and makes sense in making you who you are today!
Thank you so much for taking time out of your evening to join us here on SocialFlight!

Sam: Thanks for having me, I sure appreciate it!

Jeff: Let’s make sure everyone knows how to find you online:
https://lyonsstudio.com

I’ll tell everybody you can see this wonderful collection of General Aviation artwork, Military artwork, and other things as well. And you can play the game of finding the 1951 pickup truck!

Sam: I’m sure I’ll see you back at Sun ‘n Fun next year!