Lesson’s Learned from little creatures

A few weeks ago, I was in preparation for our big trip down to Dare County Regional Airport. This was a big deal on a number of fronts, because I was going to ask Elizabeth to marry me, and… we would be traveling first class, with me flying her down. It was about a 90 minute flight from the Henderson, NC airport. This would be my first long cross country flight in a number of years, and I wanted to be prepared as best as possible.

We had been flying together is a older Cessna 172 for the last few months to get up to speed and comfort. For Elizabeth, who is a real trooper, GA (General Aviation) flying was new to her and something she always wanted to do. But, she had never experienced this before. We had already taken smaller flights and she had done some flying, navigating, and gotten to a place where she understood a lot of what was going on.

So as I secretly made my plans, the thrill was building, and the excitement was getting to me, when I got a call from my flying buddy and instructor… “Jeff, bad news… someone else who was renting the Cessna 172 ‘bent’ it”.

“Uh, what do you mean ‘bent it’? Do you mean someone crashed it?”

“No,” he said calmly, ”just a rough crosswind landing.”

As it ended up, the ‘rough crosswind landing’ actually crammed the nose gear ‘up’ and it literally bent the fuselage half way up to the windshield. We didn’t know if the plane would survive, but one thing we did know… this bird was going to be down for a LONG time.

So, my options were: go back to something I ‘knew’ …the Cessna 152, which gets most of the instructors’ hours, and regularly has things ‘fall’ off, or step up the the low wing Cherokee 140.

The airplane world tells me that ‘low wing’ vs. ‘high wing’ is really no big deal but I had no ‘low wing’ hours as PIC (Pilot in Command) and was very resistant to this change. However, the thought of taking the old 152 down to the coast and watching things fall off wasn’t to my liking, especially making approaches over the water, so I started the check out training for the Cherokee. I found that I LOVED it and really enjoyed flying the plane. I had put in about 4 hours when I took Elizabeth up on her first ride. Of course there are differences in that you get in and out on the passenger side only, you sit ‘on top’ of the wing and your view of the ground is somewhat impeded by the fact that there is a wing below you.

But I knew she was going to love it. We loaded her seats with some extra cushions, so she could see over the dash,  and completed our first preflight together. The owner and operator of the airport was around, and keeping a watchful eye on everything as we fired up the Lycoming. Once it was purring, we did our radio work, finalized AWOS again for the last minute weather, and broadcast to the Unicom that we would be taxing to runway 6 from the terminal.

With the door propped open for airflow, we talked as we started to move out of the parking area to the active taxiway at Henderson-Oxford. I was watching everything as we kept moving, RPM, oil temp, oil pressure, fuel, was the compass and directional gyro in sync, landing lights on, radio frequencies, flaps, and control surfaces… is everything working?

We stopped at the ‘hold short lines’ which is a distance from the runway to be safe but put you next in line for take off and did our ‘run up’. This is where, in a Cherokee, you run the engine up to 2000 rpm and check the magnetos (creates sparks for the plugs) to make sure both of them are working. With everything in the green we took the the active runway, lined up ready to go. I looked at Elizabeth, like I usually do before we roll, smiled, and then ‘gave it the beans’.

Full throttle and off we went. I started my scan and saw the airspeed coming alive, oil pressure was good, rpm was good, volts were good and it ‘felt’ good… We fly the Cherokee on the 80/80 rule. I pulled back at  70, and wheels up to climb out at 80 for best climb. I run my approaches the same with 80 on the speed down to the threshold. It is a very comfortable set up number and the Cherokee is easy to handle.

So that moment comes when speed and lift overcome gravity and drag and we are off. The rumbling roll of the tires on the pavement stops as the wheels begin to slow down and aircraft accelerates up for the sky. The runway at our airport is about 5000 feet so as we lift up we still have pavement under us as we climb for the clouds except… my airspeed indicator starts slowing down. Yikes!!

This isn’t good. I see my speed got from 80 to 75 and it isn’t a little ‘blip’ as we bump through upset air… it is steady… it is real… and it tell me that we are getting slower. Low and Slow are killers in airplanes. So I did the first and best thing possible… push the nose down some and start turning back toward the runway that we just passed over. Elizabeth sensed my change in altitude and attitude real fast. I didn’t look at her but I did say, “Babe, something’s not right,” to which she replied, “You are scaring me”.

I said, “I am not trying to scare you, just telling you, something isn’t right.” I thought about saying, “We’re gonna die, make your peace with God,” but I didn’t think that would serve either of us well.

I pushed the nose down further and the airspeed kept winding down. We are getting down to stall speed and I was waiting for the gut wrenching sound of the stall warning alarm to go off any second. I was already looking for a place to drop the plane down as we stalled, but there were two things that kept us going.

1 – The squirrels under the cowling were running as hard as they could and rpm was right on the money. Oil pressure was good also.

2-  The plane ‘felt’ right.

I kept my turn going and continued a very slight climb since the imminent stall hadn’t occurred yet. By the time we got turned down wind of the runway it felt like we were really moving which was starting to add up to a instrumentation issue and not a ‘you’re gonna die any second’ issue. Of course this could mean ‘you are gonna die later’, but I thought it best to continue a shallow climb and broadcast. “Henderson-Oxford traffic this is 8432C (Charlie) we are down wind of runway 6. We will be making a expedited approach to runway 6, Henderson-Oxford.”

By this time I had gotten to 700 feet above the ground and started turning back toward runway 6. The view was all wrong and this wasn’t my normal set up but pilots train for the ‘not normal’… this is what I kept telling myself. I had considered broadcasting my final farewells to the world plus scream… “Paul (who is the owner, and who was on the ground), we’re gonna die! I tell you, we’re gonna die”…but I didn’t. Elizabeth was calm and cool… on the outside, but it was clear both our clocks were ticking and we weren’t sure what was coming next.

The part that concerned me was I had a grand total of 4 hours in this airplane and landing without airspeed, climb rate and altimeter meant doing this by feel… in an airplane that I didn’t have a lot of ‘feel’ time with. Once I made my turn and was pointing down toward the runway, I just keep the power on and pushed the nose down. There are power lines off the end of the runway and I flew over them knowing we were close.

I got just to the end up the runway, pulled the power back and pulled on full flaps. The Cherokee did a wonderful job of slowing down as I guessed at my speed. I ‘felt’ we were close to 80 as I started my flare and nose up position to put those big main wheels down first. We touched the runway gently, I pulled further back on wheel and we rotated onto the runway like I meant to do it that way…

I landed so close to the end of the runway that we were able to stop our roll out and make the first taxiway which points directly at the FOB. Given the fact we were alive, I went into “Jeff mode” which is ‘it’s always my fault when something goes wrong’.

We both were shaking and the adrenaline rush was big. Both of us were grateful to be on the ground. Elizabeth said something about getting to see her boys, and if my life flashed before my eyes, it was so pitiful (except for my childhood), and quick, I missed it! 🙂

I told her I must have missed something and could she do me a favor? She said yes, so I asked her to please step out of the plane once we stop and pretend that she has to go to the restroom while I check to see if I left the cover on the pitot tube. (This allows air into the instruments to give you speed etc. ) I stopped the plane, we held hands for a second and off she went.

I then climbed out and started to stretched as if this was a normal 4 minute flight for us, as I made my way around the front of the airplane to see if there cover was still on. The owner was walking over to me and I figured I was in big trouble.

I found… no cover, which is what I remembered from pre-flight. So that was good… so what almost killed us?

Paul came over and said, “That was a short flight.”

“Well, I lost airspeed, altimeter and climb rate just as we crossed over the end of the runway,” I answered.

Paul said, as if he was talking about the most boring, normal thing, “Those dang  Mud Daubers. Let me get some safety wire and dig them out, they get in the way often. Elizabeth had come back out and heard him say as he walked away, “Those things can kill ya… good landing, by the way”.

She looked at me and I explained to her what happened.

My dad has always told me that when you fall, it’s best to get right back up and try again. Though we didn’t ‘fall’… since that would have been a very bad thing, it still occurred to me that once Paul cleaned out the Mud Daubers we needed to go right back out.

That we did… but the lessons were strong.

Though I did a good pre-flight, there are some things you must be prepared for. One is being ready and able to fly without some or all of your instrumentation. I found myself so in shock of what I was seeing that I didn’t put it together fast enough to ‘understand’ what was happening. With airspeed, altitude and rate of climb out of commision, I should have put it together fast that the Pitot system was the issue. Not that it would have made a bit of difference in what needed to be done, but it would have been nice to be able and ‘understand’. In my case, it was ‘fly the dern airplane’ and figure it out later.

Another lesson to learn is how fast adrenaline and fear can kick in and try to crowd out ‘good skills’ with wasted energy. Learning to dance with adrenaline, but not let it take over, is essential.

I also found that ‘listening to the instructor in your head’ really pays off. I know every flyer who reads this has had thing happen to them where the words of their instructor come back in times of need. The process of ‘Aviate, Navigate and Communicate’ are good words.

Paul made it very clear to me once we are on the ground, that planes fly without instruments. Funny thing…

That never occurred to me, till it happened. The same holds true for life. No matter what Mud Daubers gum up things around you, life keeps flying.

Safe Travels friends,