Previous
Files
September
25, 2007
August
27, 2007
August
9, 2007
July
24, 2007
May
28, 2007
May
2, 2007
March
1, 2007
January
10, 2007
October
8, 2006
June
26, 2006
May
23, 2006
April
25, 2006
December
6, 2005
October
14, 2005
July
22, 2005
May
10, 2005
April
20, 2005
March
29, 2005
March
16, 2005
March
11, 2005
Most
Recent |
November 19,
2007
Dear readers: Here is a new adventure from my
good friend David Board, the flying swashbuckler. I think you'll
enjoy it.
The Sundance Omen!
The day before I flew Sundance for the first time I had
witnessed what the ancient Greeks would have called an Omen!
Perhaps that belies a superstitious nature in me, but I'm
not so sure that it does!
I saw this 'Omen' as I
was taxiing after landing at the Wheeling airport. As I
progressed slowly along the taxiway a Red Tail Hawk came out
of the trees to my left with two small brown birds in close
and hot pursuit! As these three birds passed right in front
of me, one of the small brown pursuers landed right in the
middle of the Red Tail's back, right between the shoulders
of this great bird's wings! And I watched in awe as the
little brown bird like a small feathered jockey, rode the
Red Tail and began to peck the heck out of the Red Tail's
head! In fact there were three of us in the cockpit that
watched this drama unfold in total amazement, as the two
birds took the fight almost to a crash on the ground. But at
the last second the small brown bird riding the Hawk
relented and took off, and the Red Tail escaped! I guess you
can read into this event just about anything you like. But
here is what happened to me the very next day!
 I
flew to another small airport in West Virginia to pick up an
old Piper Cub. A week or so previously I had been performing
the FAA's wing strut AD on this aircraft and while the
struts passed inspection as required by law, in the process
I discovered some tiny bubbles of oxidation starting to
happening under the paint in one or two places on the
struts, so I was now taking this Piper Cub home to remove
both the struts and address this problem. This by the way
was not just any old airplane! This was a beautiful 1933
Piper Cub easily recognized by the early style, three panel
wind-shield. This Cub also had a name that she wore in paint
on the fuselage. Her name was Sundance, and Sundance had
belonged to her present owner for over 38 years or about
half of her life!
So, I pulled this Cub out of the
hangar and after a very serious preflight, I was going to
taxi up to the main ramp and fill up the tank! Sundance only
holds 12 gallons and her little tank was less than half
full. I was embarking this morning for an hour's flight or
better and, as competent as I feel that I am as a pilot,
there always exists the possibility that I could become "temporarily
disoriented" which is how we pilot's describe being
lost for a while! If something like that befell me, that
planned one hour or so flight could end up becoming
interminably longer or end on the side of a hill somewhere
in West Virginia!
With no battery or electrical
system on this aircraft I had to be the starter motor
myself. But hand propping this old girl was more of a
pleasure than a chore! The little 65 horse power Continental
bust into life almost like magic, on the very first good
pull on her prop; then she sat and idled like a well oiled
Swiss watch thereafter! So I climbed into the cockpit and
started to taxi on my way, however, as soon as I advanced
the throttle a little, the engine seemed to starve for gas,
falter and die. The owner had warned me about old 'Sundance'
and her cold nature, but this was the middle of July, it
just wasn't at all cold. So, I kept re-priming and repeating
the starting process, and after a few attempts at this, my
arms were getting pretty fed up with the process. The
excitement and giddy anticipation scurrying round to untie
the tail and climbing into the seat was getting cold and old
too… especially when every time, seconds later
Sundance's engine would up and die on me for no apparent
reason.
As I went about this business, I kept
thinking about the Red Tail Hawk and that Omen of the
previous day! What was the meaning of that Omen I wondered
to myself! Maybe this starting problem is yet another
'Ominous' warning, I thought! Perhaps I am in more danger
here than I realize!
So there was nothing for it but to
take the cowlings off and check things out. I knew that
there was no evidence of water or contamination of any kind
in the fuel system. Nothing was evidently wrong with the
tank sample of gas I had drained from the fuel/water
separator that was mostly glass and I could see through, so
I decided that the contamination problem had to be in the
Carburetor itself. The first thing thought that came to my
mind was the accelerator pump, so I was slightly embarrassed
when I got to the carburetor to be reminded… this
vintage engine and carburetor has no accelerator pump! They
were clever people back in the 1930's!
OK then,
water in the float bowl itself! It had a little brass plug
so I drained it…no, nothing there!
Next, I
took out the fuel line screen just before the carburetor.
But again, there was no evidence of water or contamination
there either. However, when I had removed the little thimble
like fuel screen I was only seeing slightly more than a
dribble of fuel at the screen and not the gusher that knew
that I should have been seeing. So I began to work my way
back up the line towards the fuel tank itself. I didn't have
to go very far because immediately I took the main fuel line
off from the gascolator on the firewall, I got the gusher of
fuel that I was looking for. Now I was much happier, because
I felt that I had successfully isolated the problem. Except
I didn't know it yet, but I hadn't. Because I had not
actually seen or identified any physical debris in the line.
But I blew out the line and replaced it, and saw the gusher
I was looking for all the way down at the carburetor this
time. So without really knowing what the problem had been, I
was reassured that everything was 'Hunky Dory' as they say,
and so I reassembled everything and safety wired the screen.
Now Sundance seemed to run perfectly.
So after
checking for contamination of the fuel supply one more time,
I taxied to the pumps and I filled up the little gas tank
and took off for Woodsfield, Ohio. It was pleasant and an
uneventful flight and I was thinking that I had now
understood the Omen of the pervious day! It must have been a
simple warning! I told myself. It was an Omen telling me to
be especially careful about this flight! I felt that I had
been tested and passed muster!
After a quick
lunch at Monroe County I made arrangements to be picked up
at the Cadiz airport in Harrison County and taxied out for
take off again. I gave the old Sundance a full measure of
power but as I accelerated down the runway the engine
faltered again! Wow I thought! Now I was really spooked! The
Omen was deeper than I realized!
Still, I was on
the ground and so… it was back to the ramp and out with
the tool box and I went through the process of checking the
fuel system again. This time I noticed that the mixture
control, or fuel shut off valve, was not perfectly rigged. I
reached under the fuel tank to the petcock valve with my
hand and clearly felt it open another fraction on an inch
more than I could with the mixture control. Not much, but
maybe just enough to cause it to be just shy of being fully
open… Maybe vibration! I thought to myself, and if so I
would replace that cable with a longer one as soon as I got
to Cadiz! And for a little more peace of mind, I wired the
valve wide open for the flight, just in case! I pulled the
prop through once again and now everything seemed to run
well again. Now trying NOT to think of that Omen of the day
before - I gave the engine full power and once again I was
launched off into the wild blue yonder.
Not really
trusting the airplane anymore, now I climbed up to 6
thousand feet right over the airport. If the engine was
going to quit I was going to be in gliding distance of a
safe landing. After arriving at 6 thousand feet with no
problems, I took off to the north. There were only a very
few minutes while I was out of gliding distance from the
Woodsfield airport, until I was well into a in gliding
distance of Howe, a small grass strip just south of
Barnsville. As Howe field passed behind me I could see the
Barnsville airport was in already in safe gliding distance.
All flights are conducted this way in a glider, more or
less! Furthermore, by now the land below me was flattening
out and offering lots of options to land in an emergency if
another problem was to arise. So I began to relax a little.
As I approach my destination airport I saw that I
was arriving at almost the same time as my prearranged ride
home. My ride home was going to be my own daughter in a
Cessna 150. That Cessna 150 was now about half a mile ahead
of me and on final approach for runway 31 at the Cadiz
airport. So I was just basking in that glow that you
experience when a plan finally comes together and then, just
as I was turning on to my final approach… the engine on
Sundance quit again and with a sobering sense of finality
this time.
My daughter in the little Cessna ahead
of me looked like she was going to have just enough time to
land and taxi clear of the runway before I was going need
that runway for landing myself. But I knew that she hadn't
seen me. And as frustrating as it was, I had no radio on
board the Cub to call and warn her of my predicament, so I
did the only thing I could do in this situation, I just went
with the flow, and continued the process and thought about
that Omen again!
Moments later, like a slow motion
night mare, the Cessna 150 did a 180 on the runway and began
taxiing back down the runway towards me! My options were now
suddenly, and seriously limited! The land around the airport
was very rough imperfectly reclaimed strip mine and would
undoubtedly lead me to wreck old Sundance! She would
probably nose over and end up on her back! Not a nice thing
to do to a 74 year old lady! Then as I got closer to the
airport I saw for the first time that there was someone on a
tractor cutting grass on the north side of the runway and I
was suddenly wondering about the feasibility of hitting the
runway just ahead of the Cessna and bouncing this old Cub
right over the Cessna and its spinning propeller like an
Evil Keneval stunt! There was a very narrow taxiway on the
south side of the runway, but there was a Golf cart
pottering down it! So I was reduced to weighing the options
of a ground loop or a nose over in the rough grass when
suddenly I could see that the little Cessna had picked up
speed. My daughter must have seen me coming in to land at
last and was now hurrying to get out of my way. So I
continued for the runway and precisely as I flared out over
the numbers, I could see the 150 clearing the runway about
mid field and the runway was now all my own! It had been a
close call.
I know that there are bound to be
critics out there who read this account from the safety and
comfort of their arm chairs, and, blessed with the perfect
acuity of 20/20 vision common to hindsight, they can, and
will no doubt, want to tell me how they would have done much
better job! And I just hope that they never have to.
I
had options - yes I had lots of them. Options that I have
never even thought of yet! And yes, I took a risk taking off
on this flight in the first place. But you can't fly an
airplane, nor can you drive a truck, nor can you get out of
bed in the morning without taking on some degree of risk! To
be fearful of taking risks is a kind of pathology all of its
own. NOT wanting or not being prepared, to take any kind of
risk in life is just as morbid a pathology as risk taking
itself. And trying NOT to take risks usually involves a
significant degree of self delusion; the delusion is that
you can take all the risk out of life, because you can't and
nor is it healthy to do. The key in these situations is to
be able to both understand and to live up to the
responsibility of what ever level of risk you expose
yourself to. That little brown bird took a calculated risk
when she took on a Red Tailed Hawk. That Red Tail was ten
times the size of the little brown bird. Can you imagine
picking a fight with a person who was 60 feet tall? That
little brown bird took on what for most of us would have
been an unacceptable level of risk! But I imagine that there
are a couple of little chicks in a nest in a tree somewhere
on the Wheeling airport who will be sleeping peacefully
because of the courage and skills of a brave mother, who was
able to understand and live up to the risk she took for the
sake of her offspring! She did it because she calculated
that she had a greater ability than that monstrous Red Tail
Hawk; a greater ability to dodge, weave and maneuver; and
this gave that little brown bird the ability to reasonably
take on that super courageous level of risk! Flying after
all is all about risk, and it is all about energy management
and through prudent energy management skills, the ability to
minimize that risk to an acceptable level. But you can never
illuminate risk completely. There are going to be times,
weather you fly a Balloon, a Helicopter, an Airplane or a
Glider, when you have to manage the kinetic energy in your
ship to its maximum potential. When an engine fails you
normally have just one chance to get things right the first
time. There is no other option.
There are times
when I fly, that I know that if my engine fails, I have
close to zero options of being able to heroically save the
day. Flying the North Atlantic between America and Europe in
any kind of airplane involves hours and hours of precisely
that kind of risk taking. And incidentally, that includes
being a passenger on a commercial transatlantic flight too.
All you can do as a pilot if your engine quits in those
conditions is crash as 'survivably' as you possibly can! All
you can do is - do your best to stack the deck in your favor
and keep a clear head on your shoulders!
Think
about this the next time you yell clear prop! And watch out
for those Omens!
David Board
tero26041@yahoo.com
|
 |
