Fifty Years Fly By

My Brush with Aviation . . .

Fifty Years Fly By is the concluding book in the Adventure Trilogy by Randy; former Green Beret, 7th Army Parachute Team Member, Alaskan Bush Pilot, and Surgical Physician Assistant. He began flying at 16 on the farm and learned mountain aviation in Utah. While in Alaska Lippincott took a four-year hiatus from orthopedic surgery and piloted 5,000 grueling hours in the Bush, where the company cut off was 50 below zero! These are the riveting actual accounts collected over a half century of how a boy from Nebraska found his way to the wilds of Alaska. It is a story of daring and excitement that began on a grass field in the Midwest where the basics of the stick and rudder were ingrained in a young man. They are stories of hard work, perseverance, experimentation, and stretching the boundaries, which in the end add up to the journey of a lifetime. This volume describes the family flying stories that started it all; however, it is also the timeless story of a father and son who celebrated aviation together. Randy tells about the fearless trials he suffered while earning a position for the most severe on-the-job training in North America in the harsh and extreme winter environment north of the Arctic Circle during the winter of 1989. The stress of being an Alaskan Bush Pilot is recounted in vivid detail along with the daily struggles of an Air Taxi Pilot. I was an aviator of the enduring purple twilightan allure that holds me in its grip to this day.