Random Thoughts From The Back Seat By Jeff Orchard
But That’s A Story For Another Time..........Part I
In some of the columns I have written in the past, I have stated at some point...”but that is a story for another time”. It sometimes means that I believe my message is clear without further embellishment, but usually it is an attempt at a clever segue so I do not have to recount all the embarrassing details of one of my aviation bloopers. I like to think that I am helping people become better pilots here by passing along some of my own experiences in the air. Often, I find, I am just entertaining them. Hopefully most will learn something and be entertained as well. I originally thought this would make a great column in Towlines, a few paragraphs with some interesting moments from my years of flying gliders. As it turns out, I am at 19 pages and have only documented a third of the episodes. Sooo, I am going to make it a serial, and will add to this as time permits.
Some of you have heard some of these stories before. None of you have heard them all. I offer them as entertainment and education. But most of all, I offer them because I can. In aviation, when your attention or judgement lapse, you can die. Recently in soaring in general, and even within our own club there have been incidents and accidents that were completely preventable, but for some reason, ended with damage to aircraft or injury either to body or spirit. In almost every one of those instances I can honestly say “There but for the grace of god.......”. I know that I have done similar things, not specifically the same, but similar. And the only difference between me and them is a matter of chance. I was lucky. Skill has nothing to do with it, it is a lapse in attention or judgement. The subtitle of this article could be “I learned about flying from that”, but that was already taken. So with this, in the spirit of Jeff Strongs’ Franconia altimeter, I offer some of the “Rest of the Story”.
My most educational moments are almost always in the form of a scare. Some come later, after the landing like when the student says “Hey, that Beech Baron sure was close when it popped out of the cloud”. “Beech Baron?” you say to yourself...... So with all this said, I am still not going to sign my name at the bottom of this confession, because I may have included details from someone elses education. Some names have been changed to protect the innocent.
A Short Flight.
We were lined up on the runway ready to go and I was quizzing the student about emergency procedures. “If the rope breaks as we start rolling, what do you do? How about now, as we pass the windsock? Or now as we lift off? What would you do if the engine quit right here, 125 feet over the trees, with no place to go straight ahead except the trees?” And with that, the thrust dropped, the towplane dropped the rope and we were on our own. Out of the corner of my eye, I saw the Bird Dog make a steep left turn and dive back toward the field. We had about 60 mph indicated and were still in a slight nose up attitude. The day was calm so I climbed a little bit and started a gentle right turn to keep the wing out of the treetops, and held it for 270 degrees, ending up on a low left base, close in and ready for a turn to final. All we had to do was miss the towplane sitting in the middle of the runway. And we did miss it. We stopped and I walked over to Jay, the tow pilot, who was still shaking his head when he said “It just frigging stopped...”
It was the 4th flight of the day and I helped him put it back at a tiedown and he got the other towplane out. We finished the day uneventfully. As we were tieing down at the end of the day, the mechanic called us over to the towplane to show us a pretty well collapsed wall on the left gas tank. A wasp had built a nest in the vent in the top of the tank, keeping air from replacing the fuel as it was used. Since the tank was only about half full when we started the day, there was enough air to expand...to a point. Then the tank started to collapse to replace the volume until it could not collapse any further and the engine starved for fuel. It was a great lesson for me because it was well below the magic 200 feet of altitude that is supposed to get you safely back to the field. We made it back by realizing we had extra speed and could put it to good use. If the wind had been stronger, or there had been turbulence, I probably would have chosen the trees straight ahead instead of a turn. The most amazing part of this? The towplane dived down and turned hard left and beat me to the runway..in one piece.
Another Short Flight.
Chuck and I had know each other for years. He finally decided it was time to take a few lessons and came to Salem on one of those blustery fall days after the leaves have fallen and the wind is right down the runway at 20 gusting to 30. We had a couple of good flights, his landings were passable and he was getting the hang of using the gradient as he came over the trees, keeping the stick moving forward to maintain his speed and putting it down exactly where he wanted it. I had to make a quick phone call so I left him strapped into the 2-33. He was amusing himself by using the stick to keep the wings level in the breeze. After the call, I got in behind him and we towed out into a turbulent sky. At about 50 feet, we started to bank steeply to the left and I saw that he had full right stick and rudder to compensate, but we still banked left. Finally the wing began to ease back to level only to be buffetted into a right turn. Chuck yelled “It seems really loose” and asked me to take it. I said “Naah, it’s just bumpy.” He insisted. When I did come on the controls, the stick flopped to the left and had a little pressure to the right, and the rudder seemed to feel ok. I moved the stick and looked at the wings and could see the ailerons moving to my stick movements, but it seemed very sloppy left to right. I thought it was the pivot bearing in the stick dropping a bolt and leaving the stick able to move, but not having enough pressure to move the ailerons all the way. And I looked at the ailerons again..sure enough, the movement did not seem as much as it should be.
Now I am beginning to get a little nervous. Fore and aft movement ok, side to side not ok. Lets see, 300 feet..wind about 25...I’ll go to 500 and hope I am far enough upwind to get it around and down before I run out of runway. It will be slow to turn and slips will be out. Gonna be fast, I’m afraid. Releasing, I went straight ahead for a bit getting a feel for the stick and realized that I could control the glider better with rudder alone if I kept the speed high. I stretched out the final and made an approach with full spoilers at about 80 mph indicated. That was where the rudder effectiveness let me keep the wings close to level by really stomping on it and then letting off before I changed direction. I touched down indicating well over 80 with a 25 or 30 mph tailwind. We kicked up a lot of dirt getting the glider slowed down, but we did get it stopped. Even a smooth grass runway is brutal at 105 mph.
I got out of the glider and walked around behind to find both ailerons hanging down. I picked the right one up and the stick stayed still. When Chuck moved the stick, the left aileron worked. The right aileron was not connected. When I did the check in the air and saw both move with my stick motion, apparently the right one was just slipstreaming to the wing movement produced by the left one. One aileron might work just fine in a no wind situation, but one aileron is not enough in turbulence.
The moral of this story? Ever heard anyone say “The best preflight is the flight before.”? Well, we had two previous flights and still had a problem. The reason for the failure was that during a 100 hour inspection (required for commercial aircraft) the safety pins were not re-installed to keep the aileron clevis pins in place. After two bumpy flights and some extra manipulation on the ground, the right pin fell out. The left one was still in place without the safety pin.
Whose fault? Mine..completely. We did a good preflight and everything worked. We did not take the headliner out of the back of the glider and look at the pins because we never did that. We basically trusted the mechanic to do a good job. He did not do it properly and we could have been injured. A student pilot might have panicked in that situation. Heck...I might have panicked too. Like I said before...there but for the grace.. What would I do differently? In this case, nothing. I did a positive control check, I double checked the elevator horn (my biggie) and did a standard preflight of the glider. I trusted the mechanic then and I would do the same today.
Sometimes, in spite of all the planning and effort, things go wrong. You can’t check everything. But it did bring home to me the concept of someone else’s mistake being lethal to me.
One More Short Flight.
I had been running ragged all day. Jim was a good pilot, he had gotten a private license and had soloed the 1-26. He was anxious to fly the 2-32 that we used to give 2 passenger rides in. He had been begging me for weeks to take him for an instructional flight and I finally told him before I went off with my next student that if he got the 2-32 untied and preflighted that I would make one flight with him that day. Sure enough, when I landed after two instructional flights with my student, Jim was waving me over and was already strapped in the front seat of the glider ready to fly. I jumped in the wide back seat and got my harness and belt on and as I tightened them up the ground crew attached the rope and checked it. I was telling Jim that this was a big glider, that it felt heavy, but was also extremely responsive and fun to fly. I explained how quickly it would spin, how he would have to hold a higher speed on final than he was used to and make all of his turns as co-ordinated as possible. I also told him about the speed limiting dive brakes which allowed the pilot to point the nose directly at the ground and not exceed the red line speed.
We started rolling down the runway with me coaching, “gentle...gentle corrections...ok, let it fly off the runway, hold it right there...good. Now get into a comfortable tow position and just relax for a few minutes.” Jim was doing fine, although I could see a few drops of perspiration on his forehead from his effort at concentrating. As we approached 2,000 feet I told Jim I would take the controls and demonstrate boxing the wake. I reached down for the stick, and my hand just passed through air. The stick was not there, we generally removed it to make legroom for passengers when we gave a double ride. Also generally, we put the rear stick in a little compartment under the rear seat for storage. I said something like “ Uh, Jim...hang on a sec, keep flying it while I adjust my seat”, meanwhile I was madly loosening my belts and trying to lift the seat I was sitting in far enough to get my hand in and get the rear stick. I twisted my body to the side and nearly cut myself on the sheet metal of the seat, but finally managed to feel all the way into the compartment. It was empty. The rear stick was on the ground, and I was in the air with a low time pilot in a tricky high performance sailplane that he had never flown before.
Deciding not to give him anything to be nervous about, I gently told him that instead of doing airwork on this flight, I wanted him to release....NOW...and we would do a landing. He thought it was a little strange, but I insisted that we do the landing practice. After release, I had him gently try all the controls...keeping his speed well up to avoid any chance of a spin or for that matter a stall which I could not help him recover from. I talked him down to the pattern, had him adjust his speed every few seconds and looked around the cockpit for anything that would fit in the hole that the stick went into that would save us if something went wrong. All I could come up with was my Buck folding knife, which I opened and jammed in the hole. It gave me about 4 inches of leverage to his 18 inches, but it made me feel a little bit better.
I talked him through the pattern to a pretty nice touch down and we rolled to a stop near the end of the field. I was bathed in sweat as I opened the canopy and congratulated him on his first solo in a 2-32. “Solo?” he said. “Solo.” I said. As I explained what had happened, his eyes got bigger and bigger. He was quiet for a long time, but he finally said that he was glad I did not tell him. He thought it was a little strange that I wanted to come right down, but, he thought...”He is the instructor”...
It took me a while to live that one down. “So, Jeff, you gonna teach with a stick today or would you rather leave it on the ground?” The experience was valuable though. It taught me not to rush to get into the air even when things were busy, to take the time to take stock and make certain that I was ready to fly before I flew. And for the most part, I have done just that. Admittedly, however, this article would be a lot shorter if I did that every single time I flew.
Another Short 2-32 Flight.
Dave worked as a ground crew person at the airport and brought a friend for a ride now and then. Dave had a private license, but he liked to take “fun” rides with me in the 2-32 every so often, and this time he had a girl with him that he had met the weekend before who indicated that she would love to see what gliders were all about. I always liked an opportunity to go up and have “fun” in the 2-32, so I gladly assented when he asked. Dave was no fashion plate, he usually had some combination of ex- military khaki clothes on that he was doing his best to recycle. In this case, he was decked out in a long blanket lined overcoat and had a matching dark green, wool lined aviators hat, complete with earflaps. He was proud of the hat, and for a guy like him, it worked.
We strapped in, hooked the rope up and closed the canopy. It seemed a bit reluctant to close all the way, so I gave it a good tug and rammed the locking mechanism closed. We towed out and were at about 2000 feet when the canopy flew open and smashed against the left wing. I tried to reach it, but could not, so while holding right rudder to counter the extra drag, I released and began to slip to the left. Sure enough, the canopy frame and its remaining shards of plastic slammed shut. I yelled back to Dave that we were going to land and that it was likely to be breezy. All I heard from the back seat was..”My Hat! My hat blew off! Damn! I lost my hat!” I was still running on a jigger or two of adrenaline, and did not pay a lot of attention to his problem, I was hoping what was left of the canopy stayed intact so I would not need to hold my glasses on while I landed the glider. We did touch down, fairly smoothly under the circumstances and stopped. I heard Dave say one more time, “I really liked that hat.” I said I was sorry, but at the moment I was as interested in what the glider owner was going to say to me than I was his hat. The tow pilot came over and said he saw the whole thing and was glad we were not hurt..and he handed Dave his hat. It had blown off his head and wrapped around the elevator, the slipstream held it in place until we slowed down and it dropped off...right in front of the tow pilot as he walked over toward us. At least Dave was happy.
I was very interested in what had caused the canopy to open, and after a little investigatory work, we discovered that the canopy frame had two pins to lock it closed, one fore and one aft. These pins fit into holes in the corresponding bulkheads in the glider when you moved the latch mechanism. The rear one had seated, but the front one missed the hole and that allowed the leading edge of the canopy to lift up and twist the frame enough to pull the rear one free. It happened fast. Needless to say, I never left the ground in that, or any, glider without checking to see if the canopy was properly seated and latched...ever again.
A Very Long Flight.
Another Dave used to show up to fly now and then. He had about 90 flights and had not yet soloed. It was not that he was not qualified to solo, he just didn’t want to fly alone. He was a full professor of mathematics at MIT and came out to fly to relieve pressure, not increase it. He would roll in usually late in the day and load me in the back seat and we would go flying. Once in a while I would make a comment or two in an instructorial mode, but usually he would find a thermal and play for a bit then land and go home. And I just went along for the ride.
One day, there was more lift late in the day than usual and we went around in endless circles in random thermals. I had had a tough night and was pretty tired, and with little being said, I finally nodded off in the back seat after an hour or so. Some time later, I awoke with a start and a strong smell of smoke in the cockpit. It was dusk, the sun was nearly down and we were circling in the smoke rising from the burning Pelham NH dump. And it was not the sweet smelling odor of hickory smoked bacon we were surrounded by, it was awful. A combination of garbage, old burning mattresses and discarded tires just permeated not only the cockpit, but our clothes as well. I invited him to land and we walked in to the office smelling like a trash incinerator. We were promptly ushered outside where Dave wrote a check for the flight and handed it back through the door before he headed home. He winked and said “Great flight.” as he left. It was the first time I had ever been in a glider that cored a thermal by smell. Good thing that burning dumps are pretty much illegal now.
Land, Don’t Land, Land Now.
I was sitting at 2000 feet, just off tow. There were cumulus clouds everywhere with bases at around 10,000 feet and I was licking my lips in anticipation of a long afternoon in the air. I could see all the way to Midland easily, and the desert air was very clear in every direction. I was just a little northwest of the Ector County Airport in Odessa Texas heading upwind to the first thermal of the day. Alas it was not to be right then, in spite of all of the convection all around me, I was not able to find even a small bump. Oh well, a tow was only 8 bucks, and I could still see the Citabria towplane sitting next to the hangar. I decided to land on a taxiway to save time. Everybody did it, almost all the time, because it ended up right at the hangar. All you had to do was get out and find the tow pilot and go again.
The Ector County Airport is an old WWII Army Air Force training field with 3 runways. From the air it looks like a triangle with a maze of taxiways in the middle and around the outside. It was not used commercially so the glider pilots of the area and several light plane owners pretty much had it all to themselves.... except for Al Parker and his boys. Al Parker made our clubs’ Bird Dog, and just about every other general aviation Bird Dog that exists today. He and his sons and a few employees had obtained most of the L-19 parts that were available and manufactured Bird Dogs right on the field in a great big ex-military hangar. I had gotten a tour a few days before and I never saw so many wings and fuselages and various other airplane parts in one place before. And I hit it off well enough with one of the Parker boys that I got a ride in his fully restored bright red Beech Staggerwing, the same one I believe that is shown on the AOPA Visa card.
At 600 feet, I was on downwind to my taxiway landing in a Schweizer 1-35 and deployed partial flaps and put the gear down. A turn to base and I was right off the approach end of the “real” runway when I hit a really nice bump and went up a few feet in strong lift. I retracted the wheel and cranked the glider into a steep right turn into the thermal at about 300 feet...... right into the path of a Cessna Twin that was on final for the runway I was off the end of. It had to be a matter of just a few feet, certainly no more than a wingspan that was between us and a really big mess on the end of that runway. Needless to say, we did miss, but I was so shaken that I immediately dropped the gear and landed. I left the glider in the sagebrush alongside the runway and followed the taxiing twin to its’ tiedown.
I walked over to the pilot as he got out and was very apologetic for almost taking him out of the sky. He looked at me and then looked back along the runway and saw my glider. He was gracious...”Ahhh, it happens all the time. We know that you glider guys are likely to do most anything when there is a thermal out there. I saw you, and I knew I was going to be above you no matter what. It’s OK.” Just the same, I again apologized profusely for cutting him off, and as I walked back to retrieve my glider, I was wondering if it really did happen all the time at that airport. I was feeling pretty stupid. In my enthusiasm to catch that thermal, I had let all my training and common sense just go out the window. That lapse could have killed not only me, but might have killed an innocent bystander as well. My own flight training years before had drilled into me that a glider in a traffic pattern is committed to land. Once that decision to land is made, the glider should follow as close as possible to the established traffic pattern, not only to make the landing easier, but to be predictable for other traffic. We have all seen someone making turns off the end of the runway, or somewhere in the pattern that does not make sense. Most of the time, the comments from the ground are “What are they doing?”, followed by “Who is that?”
When you grow up and get your very own airport, you can do anything you want to do for a landing pattern. Meanwhile, when you fly at someone elses airport, with other aircraft in the sky with you, predictabilty is important. Predictability is especially important when there are students and low time pilots sharing your airspace. They may not have the experience to be able to play dodge ball in the sky.
Watermarks.
My third solo flight was the day after my first solo. It was the first flight of the day and I was in the sky, all alone playing with a thermal in a gentle breeze. I was going up slowly, and drifting away from the airport slowly too. Salem had a specific traffic pattern from the west that started at one of four ponds west of the field. The “right” pond was about a mile and a half from the runway and had a distinctive shape, and you began the pattern directly over it at 1500 feet. The other ponds were different shapes and ranged from 3 to 6 miles from the runway.
As I played with my thermal and it played with me, out of the corner of my eye I could see the glint of sunlight off pond water with each turn, but I was focused on the variometer. I was alone in a thermal for the first time and I was going to make good use of it. And I slowly lost altitude in spite of my stellar soaring technique. Finally, at 1500 feet, I knew I had to land, so I looked down at my pond and centered over it and looked to the east for the airport. And the runway was not where it always was. In fact, nothing looked right. As I was taught, I started to look for the orange roofs of Rockingham Race Track, which are visible from all over southern NH and northern Massachusetts, looking close in at first, then in widening arcs. There was some orange a few miles off in the distance, too far away to be Rockingham, and the angle was all wrong. I took another look at the pond I was over and saw that there was an island in it that should not have been there. “Omigod, wrong pond!” I could not even see the runway from the altitude I was at, but I knew the general direction and headed that way..at minimum sink, being very careful not to make any sudden moves on the controls that would make me less aerodynamic.. as if that made a lot of difference in a 2-33. I was sweating, my stomach was a large industrial sized knot and I was scared.
Finally I began to see the runway show through the trees, and it was at an angle that I had never seen before. I was still way out . I passed over the real pond, the one I was supposed to start at 1500 feet at and glanced at the altimeter. 700 feet, and a mile and a half to go. I knew I would never make a complete pattern so I decided on a downwind straight in approach. The last half mile was agony. I was very low, the trees were reaching up for me, but my eyes were glued to the runway. I made a gentle turn to miss the silo that was in my path at the top of the hill and then had to decide if I had enough altitude to get over the wires along the road, or if I should go under them. I decided to sacrifice a little speed and go over them because I had no idea how high my rudder stuck up in level flight and did not want to catch it in the power lines. After that it was all downhill. 35 feet downhill to be precise. I aimed for the near end of the runway, ruddered the turn close to the ground to keep the wings level, lifted the glider over the fence and dropped onto the grass with a thud. I may have rolled 50 feet after touchdown, but it was probably less. I sat there for a few minutes gathering my wits and saw the airport manager on the deck scanning the sky for me. Then he saw me..waaaaay down at the other end of the field. He drove the retrieve vehicle down to get me and said, “You must have been high on final to go this far down the runway. I never saw you land. You want to be sure you don’t get too close when you turn onto base, it makes your approach steep and uses a lot of runway.”
I told him I would keep that in mind the next time.
End Aug 21, 1999