SCOTT D. MCDONALD
Book #4 of the PISTONS AND PROPELLERS series. THE HONEY WIND follows several characters through a couple years of seasonal flying jobs, from Alaska to Africa and back. Collie has gone legit, SkyDog is turning a profit, and Brian has fallen in love with flying air tankers. Ray has started thinking about his future, even as he keeps picking up extracurricular flights.
Grassroots stock car racing, some fishing and birdwatching, and a little smuggling. Danger and dark humor, and a LOT of detailed flying sequences in Constellations, C-46s, and B-17s
PISTONS AND PROPELLERS SERIES
This book series follows some colorful characters flying and maintaining radial-engine powered transports saved from the scrap yard to perform hardscrabble, unglamorous work like firefighting, hauling cargo in Alaska and the Caribbean, and disaster relief in third world countries.
All books available as ebook and paperback on Amazon. Windward now available as audiobook.
BLENDERS AND BULLETS
The first pilot procedural from Scott D. McDonald. Collie Bonnabell is a world-weary mercenary pilot who has flown all over the world, delivering relief supplies to war-torn countries, dropping retardant on wildfires, and sometimes hauling munitions without an end user certificate. Now he just wants to pile up a little nest egg and semi-retire on a third-world beach. He has a small fleet of worn out cargo airplanes in south Texas and he hires Brian and Ray to run black market televisions into Mexico to avoid tariffs. This is profitable but dangerous. There are double-crosses, narrow escapes with bullets flying, and crash landings. To purchase, copy and paste https://www.amazon.com/dp/1735478199
WINDWARD
“…enjoy this realistic portrayal of a colorful corner of the industry. A blue-collar pilot cuts his teeth among Miami’s pirate airlines in McDonald’s latest novel, the second in a series.” —— KIRKUS REVIEWS.
This is Ray’s story as he leaves Texas and drives his beater Chevy to Miami, where he has heard there are shoestring cargo outfits using old four-engine transports to haul cargo to Caribbean islands, with very little regulation due to a loophole in the FAA rules. Unable to find a full-time job, Ray picks up a trip at a time for different operators, some of them sketchy. He plans to move on to Alaska but he gradually falls in love with Florida’s natural world. https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0D1WR7X13
LOW LEVEL
Collie and his partner Marv try to go straight and turn SkyDog into a legitimate business. Collie borrows too much money on a long shot attempt to convert some retired military transports into luxurious executive airplanes. They have stopped running contraband over the border but suddenly they are asked to make a trip south to rescue a young girl and her aunt who have been targeted by a cartel. https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0DCTKC767
THE HONEY WIND
Two years pass by as Ray stumbles into firefighting, the Alaskan fish haul, and timber spraying in Canadian Boreal Forests. In the off season, he flies all kinds of radial engine prop planes hauling exotic cargo to the Caribbean and South America. He gets talked into some extracurricular flying, and he catches a bullet and another story. SkyDog avoids bankruptcy and starts to operate King Airs on short term cloud seeding and geo mapping contracts. Ray checks out in DC-7s and does some work for USAID in Western Africa. Some secondary characters from the previous books and some new characters are having adventures and pursuing that good flying job. A lot of humor, a lot of authentic description of flying the big round engine transports, and some tragedy as Ray is finally about to move up to the world of jets and white collar aviation.
FAIR CHASE and OTHER STORIES includes a novella about a lazy private eye in Phoenix, and eight short stories about big game hunting, skydiving, petty criminals, and a couple of stories set during the Great Depression.
About Scott mcdonald
Scott dropped skydivers and towed gliders for years, while doing seasonal ag flying in the summers. He ended up flying passengers all over the world in wide body jets.
PISTONS AND PROPELLERS is his series of novels depicting the last years of the great prop transports like Constellations and DC-6s.