ABOUT THE AUTHOR, RON FOX

I began my flying in 1965, at the age of eighteen in
Half Moon Bay, California in a Cessna 120 tail-dragger.
During college I signed up for the U.S. Navy Aviation Reserve
Officer Candidate program and flew the T-34C at Pensacola,
Florida, the T-2 Buckeye jet at Meridian, Mississippi and the
A-4 Skyhawk at Beeville, Texas. All my life, my goal was to
be shot off a boat in a Navy jet. After accomplishing that,
I didn’t know what else to shoot for as a goal. I got my
Navy wings in February of 1973, just thirty days after the
air war was over in southeast asia, so I was considered an
excess jet jock along with 700 others that year. I ended my
navy career flying DC-3’s off Midway Island after two years
of island-hopping in the Pacific. After dropping skydivers
for almost a year, I didn’t have enough of the right type of
flying time to interest the major airlines, so I decided to
head for Alaska and become a bush pilot in single engine
aircraft (another mistake for the blue-chip airlines). It
was wild and woolly on the last frontier and, after a year, I
headed for Dallas to become a freight dog in Beech Barons.
Yearning for a DC-3 job, I found employment in Beaumont,
Texas with Air Texana, the Airline of the Golden Triangle
with two DC-3’s, a Convair 440 and two piston Beech
Queenaires. That didn’t last a year before going out of
business so one of the Convair captains took me to the border
and introduced me to smuggling electronics into Mexico with
DC-3’s, T-Bones (Twin Bonanzas), Barons and Beech 18’s.
After some harrowing experiences on the border, I hastily
retreated back to Dallas and drove a limo for 6 months before
landing another freight job. When the airlines opened up
jobs for older pilots (35 at the time), I had to make another
try for the big iron. I spent almost two years with a
commuter in Dallas before getting on with TranStar flying MD-
80’s. Unfortunately it was the last six months the company
would be in business. Now I’m back flying right seat for a
commuter out of DFW which provides my pen name, FOX (for
First Officer X).

I love to fly, and it’s what I’m doing. I may have had
some crazy experiences with airplanes, and they may have
prevented me from following the correct path to a major
airline career, but I wouldn’t trade my yesterdays for all
the money I would have made as a big-iron driver. What I can
do is share my stories with aviation enthusiasts and maybe
even get them published.

This first book is going to be called “Dawn Arrival” and
it involves stories centering around smuggling electronics
into Mexico. It’s not as shady as you think. We on the
border in this enterprise never violated any U.S. laws. We
were simply flying cargoes of consumer electronics such as
car stereos and TV’s into Mexico for receivers who were
avoiding the outrageous 100% mexican customs duties on such
goods. We always filed export declarations and cargo
manifests with U.S. Customs and got inspected outbound and
inbound to this country. Like we used to say on the border,
we would risk our lives, but not our pilot’s certificates.
We never smuggled anything into the U.S. and were always
careful to avoid capture in Mexico. It didn’t always work
out that way, however. It was a gentleman’s game for many
years until it all fell apart when the peso started
devaluating during the mexican economy’s collapse in 1982.
Back then a dollar would buy you 12 pesos. Now it will buy
you 3,000.

Copyright 1998, BUSHPILOT, all rights reserved.

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