Exploration Pilot

About the Book

The adventure begins with a rocky start; Krogstad’s flight instructor dies in an airplane crash. That realization seems to cast a residual shadow on Krogstad’s entire flying career. Through twenty years, more than ten thousand hours of flight, and more than a million miles of flying in extraordinary airplanes—single engines to jets—on extraordinary missions, Krogstad experienced more close calls, near misses, and potential disasters—as well as some calamities—than most pilots ever hear about. Krogstad has landed and taken off in every state in the continental US, and his Alaskan adventures are among the most diverse and exciting as any pilot could experience. Every flight project was uniquely challenging and often carried with it the risks borne of unproven techniques and equipment. The technicalities of the work, the equipment, and the flying environment were complex, and Krogstad clearly defines them as they contribute to the bizarre events that defined his flying experiences and career. The gradual loss of hearing clearly loomed as the eventual loss of Krogstad’s license to fly, but the actual end of his flying career was the devastating result of a personal disaster that haunted his being long after retiring from flying.

About the Author

Kendall Krogstad’s initial education was in the sciences, a domain that fascinated him from his childhood experiences (why is the image in a mirror backwards?). In his initial college years, he focused on physics and mathematics, working toward a career in engineering. Marriage and family intervened, and he began flying at age twenty-four. He flew commercially for twenty years. His flying niche was not as a “bus driver” but as a production pilot for mapping photography and exploration. Besides flying airplanes from single engines to jets for the gathering of data, Krogstad immersed himself in the sciences of the remote-sensing disciplines. Airborne magnetometry, spectrometry, and multispectral photography were new techniques at the time, requiring sophisticated equipment and demanding precision flying expertise. The equipment packages were sometimes one-of-a-kind, and Krogstad self-educated himself in analog and digital electronics to be able to troubleshoot equipment faults in remote environments. Flying countless, undocumented missions, he also managed flights through multiple mishaps and life-threatening experiences that challenged his resourcefulness and resolve. Through it all, he built an enviable reputation for dependable airborne production. His final experience was life-threatening in a most unusually criminal scenario. He escaped unharmed but for lasting psychological scars, and he never flew again. Krogstad found a new life in technical analysis and writing, completing a degree in computer science and finally earning an MBA degree. Retiring after a successful second, eighteen-year career, he never revisited his flying experiences until this book, written more than thirty years after the fact.