A fun short memory with Scott as a flight instructor.
At the beginning of each training orientation group, we take a day to travel around to visit the local grass runways with the new pilots and mechanics. For most of them, they have little to no experience operating on grass and probably have never surveyed a runway to set it up for safe operations.
During the process, we walk the entire runway, looking for hazards, surface conditions, clearance angles to the trees on approach and departure, etc. We often use these large fiberglass cones to mark the touchdown zones and the ends of the runway.
These cones act as a sort of greenhouse on the grass runway and can attract fire ants to mound inside of them where they build their colonies....
I remember on this day I was explaining to the trainees the unique features of this particular runway. Suddenly, I start hearing this commotion, cries of "no, no, NO" and as I turned, there was Scott, stripping off his pants in the middle of the runway and slapping his legs. He had kicked on one of those cones, and proceeded to stand there, only to get attacked by the fire ants.
For those who don't know how fire ants attack, they swarm in a stealth-like manner covering the victim and then have a way of signaling to each other when to bite. The hundreds of fire ants simultaneously sting a the same time, thus the 'fire' feeling.
Scott recovered fine, and of course, he still had a smile on his face and could laugh about it over the next few days, even while itching the bites.
I will never forget the day I saw more of Scott than I had seen previously out on a runway.
--B.J. Diggins