A TRAINEE AT 83

Not Dave Cotner.

He’s gone beyond cars and trucks and is learning to fly aircraft again.

But this time it’s not fixed-wing airplanes that he’s flown most of his life, or torpedo bombers that he flew in World War II.

Instead, the new passion for this octogenarian is helicopters.

For the past month, Cotner, who’s lived in Las Vegas since 1946, has been learning to fly a helicopter out of Boulder City Municipal Airport.

Why?

“I don’t know,” he said Tuesday while waiting for the wind to die down so he could hop in the whirlybird parked outside the airport’s Vegas Air Service to practice session hovering.

“Maybe because it’s something new all the time. It gets in your blood,” he said, cracking a wide smile with raised eyebrows beneath the brim of his tan, cowboy hat.

The real reason, though, has to do with another passion: His desire to find remnants of a fleet of Chinese ships supposedly carried on the swell of the so-called “mega tsunami” in 1421 or 1422 that crashed into what is now the central Oregon coast.

“The ships had to go with the current and with the wind,” he said, describing the 40-foot-tall swell that sped across the Pacific Ocean. “When it caught this fleet it dumped them all up the beach.”

He is confident he has found the hull of one boat buried in 26 feet of sand there, 1,600 feet inland from the shoreline, using a technique called “dowsing,” that was confirmed with ground-penetrating radar.

It was while trudging through the sand in the summer that he thought it might be better to learn how to fly a helicopter in order to continue the search more effectively.

“It’s difficult to walk in the sand four or five miles so I decided I’d get a helicopter and fly over it,” he said.

He also wants to write a book about the effort.

“I figure if I live to be 116, I’ll be through with that book,” said Cotner, a native of Prescott, Ariz. He settled in Las Vegas after World War II to become a blackjack dealer at the Boulder Club on Fremont Street where Binion’s is.

“I came to Las Vegas and have lived here ever since. I can’t get enough money to get out,” he joked.

From flying TBM-3C Avengers on South Pacific bombing runs in World War II as a Navy pilot aboard the USS Hancock and USS Ticonderoga to the single-engine planes he flew afterward, Cotner racked up about 7,000 hours in fixed-wing craft before his curiosity about helicopters made him want to fly one, he said.

“Being a fixed-wing pilot, I wasn’t afraid. … It’s a lot different. The controls are a lot different,” he said, noting, “I really don’t look at myself as an old man.

“I have to concentrate quite a bit. I think any normal guy my age can do it,” he said.

Cotner’s 50-year-old son, Doug, is also taking helicopter lessons but is not as advanced as his dad. He is amazed at how fast his father has come along.

“Most guys your age are picking out walkers,” he told his dad before Tuesday’s session.

In addition to his dad’s desire to fly helicopters it his determination that has kept him in the cockpit.

“If you tell him he can’t do it, he’ll go do it,” Doug Cotner said.

Their instructor at Vegas Air Service, Mike Eveleigh, said the elder Cotner “is doing quite well” in his first dozen hours at the controls, mainly because he’s not afraid.

He’s flown with Eveleigh from Boulder City to Searchlight and back and will start going solo after about 25 hours in the piston-powered, Schweizer 300c helicopter. Then, after at least another five hours at the controls he’ll be ready for his 25-mile cross-country landing flight and Federal Aviation Administration licensing tests.

“Just for an 83-year-old to fly a helicopter is fantastic. He hasn’t stopped living,” said Eveleigh, whose youngest student was 23. “It proves you don’t have to be a certain age to learn something new.”

Cotner credits his longevity to his wife, Mildred, age 88, “who takes very good care of me.”

Also, he said, “I quit smoking 45 years ago.”

As for Mildred, she still drives and “she makes me nervous,” he said. “She hasn’t even scratched a fender in 30 years.”

Contact reporter Keith Rogers at krogers@reviewjournal.com or (702) 383-0308.