Okay, Time for Some Fall Flying Tales

Jonathan Baron

Jonathan Baron

New member
Brethren:

Okay, I know just how important this forum is for getting info and help to get or keep your Triple Tails in the air. Occasionally, though, it's useful to wonder why.

Now I figure you folks in my previous haunts are getting weathered in for the year. Out here in Virginia, though, we're weathered in during the summer...haze like volcanic dust, heat south of hell. For us, back east, the time to fly is autumn. The deciduous trees here come with a clock, timed to the length of days. Photo period is the scientific name for it. When the days reach a certain length the sympathetic timer in the trees tells the leaf stems to close up shop until spring. Sun continues to stimulate the chlorophyll but the energy has nowhere to go. So the leaves turn bright colors until the stems finally give way.

After seven years of relative torment - I say relative because there is no physical pain, pang of hunger, or hard world anguish involved - I finally have a 'Master that flies when I want to. Been doing a lot of that lately. Took some getting used to. I don't know quite what to make of this business of firing up the little power tow, guiding my no longer angry and resentful little beauty out onto the taxiway, climbing inside and not having a seat rail break, or a charging system fail, or a ringing bell when I hit the master owing to a hydraulic system in distress. Uneventful run-ups, everything on the panel working, plenty of power on take-off, wheels coming up and, when the time comes, wheels coming down, prop turning smoothly, engine happy. I try not to make a big deal about it, lest I tempt fate.

I learned to fly around here before GPS and used to know the countryside well. Now that the air is transparent again I can leave the GPS at home. Yeah, it's not entirely legal to buzz the hikers on Old Rag mountain and I'm not saying I've done it, but I will not say I have not. Nor would I ever admit to yanking around, diving, and exploring land that was turned to cultivation at least a century before this country ceased to be a colony....at 180 miles per hour or more. I settle down, throttle back, and it feels like that initial speed was like traveling back in a rush of years gone by. Then I fly far, far below cruise speed - you have to LOVE the range between high and low you can employ and still stay in controlled flight in these airplanes - and take an easy look at former plantation houses with their out buildings. I know that generations of former inhabitants were built from the material that rises still from the land below me.

The days are short now. I always seem to be chasing the end of them when I head for home, land, and put the plane away. Replacing the bulbous thunderheads of summer are puffs of placid clouds turning blue at sunset, but I don't see them at first. My Triple Tail is a taildragger after all. No time to look at the sky while landing, or taxing to the hangar. I shut it all down in a careful, well practiced sequence, get out to open the hangar door and fetch the power tow again. Then I turn around and see. Damn. It was worth it after all.

Jonathan
 
Jonathan;

For me not to have a story about ANYTHING goes to show just how tough things are. :shock:
The Bellanca isn’t quite ready to go yet, and the C210 is setting four planes back in the hangar with empty tanks. :cry:

But your story did inspire me, to the point of replacing a picture of Lynn’s fly-by
with your thumb nail attachment to the story as my desktop background. :D

Looking for better times, but for now will just keep on buying that GM stock.

Thanks for the cool story and picture,
 
My flying tales involve how to keep decent shop conditions to do "dope and fabric" work while the environment says 40 degrees and 90% humidty.
 
That's what I figured, Monte, and hoped I was wrong. I'm not downhearted though. Plenty of folks seem to be grounded at the moment, and more will be before fate makes its inevitable turn.

Been running movies at an old airport nearby, in a huge old hangar built in '33, every Saturday. People bring food an hour beforehand, everybody eats and, afterward, an old popcorn popper pops just before an aviation movie appears on a large plywood board that somebody tacked a bed sheet to and painted white. I ran Spirit of St. Louis first, then Only Angles Have Wings ("Calling Baranca....calling Baranca..."), 12 O'clock High, Tuskegee Airman, Hells Angels, Dawn Patrol, and tonight it will be a bit different: In the Shadow of the Moon, a nifty recent documentary featuring interviews with the surviving astronauts who'd gone to the moon. Beforehand I show short subjects...silly aviation videos I've found here and there on the Internet over the years.

So, for now, it's hangar flying and movies for many where I live. That'll do just fine for now. So much of what makes aviation aviation is not what happens in the air, after all :)

Jonathan
 
JB, the crate has 24 hrs on it since recover. Another hour and its oil change and tach drive seal replacement. My tach looks like an artifical horizon. I can check the oil level by it. This is somewhat a common problem in OPEC 470. I worked on a Franklin once and it was a sweet engine. Made and supported now in Poland by PZL.I'm combining Forum subjects. Give a shout to Future Battles on the 190 as a 1st pvt plane. For movies try the "Dam Busters" the British raid on the Ruhr dams in 1943. I understand Hollywood is going to remake this movie. Snowing here in Pittsburgh and I wish someone was showing me airplane movies! :D Lynn the crate
 
You're reading my mind again, Lynn - just grabbed a copy of Dam Busters, as well as The Great Waldo Pepper which you have to find used because it went out of print awhile back. Although it makes sense to aviators, especially its darker aspects, Waldo did go over as well as others with the wives and kids of the growing crowd....I think it lost 'em after Susan Sarandon's character fell. We have a great guy who attends who's also a Fed and it's anti CAA (precursor to the FAA as nearly everyone reading this knows) theme kinda put the poor guy on the spot. When the CAA guy asks Waldo to join him, and I said, "Luke" in as deep a voice as I can muster...let's just say everyone but the Fed was laughing...LOUD!

Biggest hit so far was that movie (documentary) I said I was about to show in my last post: In the Shadow of the Moon. Pity of it was that the 15 year old daughter of one of the pilots - a Viking guy, but he's okay - did not show up for that one because it was a documentary. When everyone told her this evening that she'd missed the best one of all she kept protesting, "But going to the moon is BORING!" The rest of the folks, knowing just how well that documentary made going to the moon anything BUT boring, were shaking their heads. It makes perfect sense to me that a teenager would feel this way, and I chuckled. "But...but...it was just a bunch of really old guys talking, right?" she said, showing a bit of embarrassment. "I'm an old guy," I said, "and I can't make you stop asking me questions about everything." "How old are you?" she asked. "Very old," I said, "Ancient!" After I got home I found something close to an assault of messages from her on my Facebook page trying to make me understand just how boring anything about going to the moon must be. Oy...I think I'll have to loan my Viking buddy the film if I'm ever going to get her to shut up :)

You cannot anticipate what you're getting yourself into when you do something like this. It's both wonderful and strange trying to get pilots together, men and women pilots, much less their spouses, friends, kids, everyone to sit down and watch a movie together. But ultimately it's fun and most gratifying.

Best short subject video I've shown before the feature film, which made everyone awestruck was this one: http://www.alexisparkinn.com/photogallery/Videos/2006-Japanese-Aerobatics.wmv

I'm certain that many of you must have seen it. I think what really made it work for lots of the non-pilots was that it opens with Svetlana Kapanina. It so astonished them to see one of the most beautiful women in the world as among the best pilots of the world which, of course, she is beyond any discussion or doubt. This vid does not begin to show just how good she is. Were Wagstaff still in her prime she could not touch this gal, and she's made Kirby Chambliss look bad more than a few times...then again, to be fair, Wagstaff did not start out as an Olympic gymnast. The production values of that video alone are beyond anything I've found in many hours of web hunting. Yeah, I've seen hours of footage of IAC competition, and few people - not even pilots - could put up with much of that, but this captures the flavor of the current state of the art in throwing airplanes all over the sky with both OMG moments and tear inspiring grace...without the between rounds boring bits and all that Tai Chi walking through the maneuvers on the ground routine.

Funniest one...well...that's a tough call. The one that disabled me with laughter was this: http://www.alexisparkinn.com/photogallery/Videos/2006-9-23-Fly-Baby-N500F.wmv

This was not universally amusing to one and all. I guess you have to have seen a lot of over-dramatic Brit war movies to appreciate this parody. All I do know is that I doubt my neighbors were amused when I certainly woke them up with explosive Fun House laughter after I came across it at...oh...3AM on a week night. I have to get up as early as they but I think they need just a bit more sleep than I do :oops:

Jonathan
 
Tom Selleck and Bess Armstrong as I recall....it's been awhile but I enjoyed it. That's a good idea, Larry. It too would probably work with a wider audience.

Jonathan
 
Hey, JB,

I loved both the videos, especially the Fly Baby video - thanks for sharing.

Funny thing, I've been flying for 48 years now, but more times than not, I still hear that dramatic kind of music in my head every time I lift an airplane off the ground.

Dave
 
I'm not big on movies involving aviation or flying, because of all the inaccuracies. If you want to see another dumb plot with some great '30s airplane shots, pull up "The Bride came COD." This is about a 1938 issue with James Cagney and other famous period actors. The best part for me was all the film devoted to the Bellanca Senior Skyrocket, the central airplane in the film. Dan
 
Jonathan

Though it might be time to get back to a few flying tales, I guess now they would be winter flying yarns.

My brother recently purchased a winter home at Indian Hills Airpark in AZ. (2AZ1) As he needed to get a couple of airplanes and a vehicle or two down there from SD, I volunteered to fly the C140 down. The one he wanted down there is restored and polished with a modified 90+ hp. A nice flying little airplane.

As there were storms coming in that might catch me on the straight shot through UT I elected to take the eastern route RAP to PUB around the corner direct to 2AZ1. Left about noon a day ahead of the auto parade, because of a approaching storm in SD and flew to PUB for the night, found great people at Flower Aviation, reasonable fuel, a ride and discount prices at the very nice motel. (The motel van was busy, so they took me across town in a cab. He gave me a tour zig zagging across town on the streets at the motels expense, never offered to get out and help with luggage with a none stop supply of BS all the way. When he finally delivered me to the motel that was just a few miles down the interstate from the airport, I got out piled all my stuff by the door and gave him a five-dollar tip. Explaining that I am a tight SD farmer and I usually don’t tip but he was the worse cab drive I had ever had and I wanted to remember him. I can BS too, he wasn’t the worst, I haven’t farmed for 50 years, but the tight part was true.)

Left PUB the next morn, at a reasonable time, after thirty years of rushing to the airport and meeting a scheduled takeoff in the dark I don’t get very excited anymore about time. The weather guessers said I would have relatively calm winds on the deck and thirty plus knots on the nose at attitude. They were right, as I turned to the west south of PUB headed for FLG I ran into head winds. As I droned along west bound it became apparent that I wasn’t going to make FLG on these little tanks in that wind. After much arguing with the pilot in command, I decided to stop at FMN. Folks DO NOT UNLESS DEATH IS THE ONLY OTHER OPTION STOP AT FMN. And even then give it a second thought. The only thing vaguely attractive about ______that place was the poor little girl behind the counter that kept apologizing for the $7.23 gas. I guess she must get a lot of irate pilots out of gas with no other option, because she just kept on apologizing and I kept assuring her that it wasn’t her fault, but I was going to make the only FBO in FMN famous. A quick candy bar out of my stash as there were none available there and I was back in the saddle. I use that term not trying pretend I’m a writer, it was a real rodeo into FLG, great on the deck waving at the friendly Hopi’s until I had to climb back up into that rough, tough, wind right on the nose. At one little ridge, 10,000 ft. only a bump in the 210 I finally got to 11,000 made a run at it, at one point the GPS said 17 knt. Airspeed 55 mph, going down 200 fpm looking around the cowl at a very menacing mountain. Not even this old has been mountain pilot had the balls to hang on to that one. Turned out and tried to remember how we used to navigate before we had that little line across the screen to follow.

Made it into FLG, a must stop if you are anywhere near, need gas, tired, or hungry. I was only about 2 hours out of my destination but a day ahead of the ground pounders, and seriously folks, I was remembering well why I retired. Wiseman Aviation hooked me up with one of the nicest places to stay I have been in, even when uncle sammy was paying the tab. The next morn they topped me with $4.23 gas discounted from $4.43??? I guess because when the old guy came in he looked like this may be his last flight!!! On into 2AZ1was uneventfully. The little Cessna ticked along like a clock all the way. Even the stop at FMN and the pounding on into FLG wasn’t anywhere near the worst I have been through. All in all a great trip.

Now the rest of the story;
Laid over at my brother’s place for a week to enjoy the AZ sun and help him move in. He went out several times for a flight around while I was there maybe a total of a hour or so. On my way home he called and said he and a cousin had changed oil and ran it for a few minutes, shut it off and checked for leaks, then got back in and taxied to the end of the runway, about 300 ft. While idling doing the run-up the engine seized.

THE OLD PILOT DODGED THE BULLET AGAIN

MFH
 
I'm assuming at least four quarts of oil were added during the oil change...........right. There has to be an explanation. What mods were done to the C-90? Dan
 
Dan

Oil starvation was my first thought when he called and told me it seized. But that was not the case, or was it??? The modes didn’t have anything to do with it either. Nor did the fact that we had done a top and changed the PISTONS just 4 tack hours before I left with it???

Some history that may or may not have contributed to the seizer;
This aircraft has been in the NE and SD area for all its life. And only has 1570 total time. Brother bought it two years ago at a farm sale from the estate of a farmer pilot that hadn’t annulled it since 1984. Everyone was standing around at the action wondering how much trouble it would be to take it apart and trailer it home. We did a good inspection, drained the skunky gas, put in some good oil (the old guy supposedly ran it every so often and changed oil???) And flew it 300 miles back to SD. It is original aluminum and polished up good. New interior, and radio replacement, it was a good little oil burner. I kept bugging him to top it and we finally did before the trip to AZ. It was running strong and very smooth for a continental. Looking over the logs it had supposedly been majored not once but twice in 1570 hrs. Which was sort of suspicious, especially with it’s sketchy annual history. Brother called a mechanic in NE that had supposedly recovered the wing, for some history. He told of two brothers in NE that had it for a number of years annulled it every two or three years and never did fly it. Just took it out once and a while and taxied it around. Scared of heights I guess.

I suppose after all this BS I better tell you what happened-----*it spun a cam bearing*.
Not sure what made it go after 2 years and 60+ hours. Jerry B. our engine man said there were several of the little tabs off the rod bearing bolt safeties in the oil sump. Plugged the journal??? Who knows.

But it’s in one piece, both of us are still flying, and the overhauled engine will be even stronger when Jerry B gets through with it.

So all is well that ends well. :D :D

MFH
 
Loved that story, Monty! The reason I just read it now is because 1/5 was the day that I, and 40% of our workforce were introduced to lots of time on our hands and an unhappy economy to find new ways to use them. Although I play the role of chuckle head online, in the world that pays you for doing stuff I am daddy. Spent the next month helping folks who were either crying a lot or drinking too much. Didn't lose anyone this time though. After a layoff of similar scale at one place I worked two suicides followed soon thereafter. I work in the computer games industry and, thus, have lots of coworkers who are very young and don't have the support of spouses or the obligation of children. I don't want to dwell on this but I've found that the harder the victim worked the more likely they are to take extreme measures. The screw-ups have lost plenty of jobs and are less subject to toxic shock. Thus, those with the most promising aftermath futures suffer the worst, and the lazy bastards...well...I guess you should never cease to seek justice but you should also never expect it. Plus it seems to me that, more and more, people look to their work lives to provide things people used to get from their personal lives. It's as if the two merged somehow. Thus losing a job becomes a trauma on the scale of losing every element of your life. Not healthy and I hope it swings back into balance one day soon.

Speaking of justice, I forget who said the words, chance favors the prepared mind. What this means, of course, is that the whims of fortune and fate - luck - are less inclined to clobber the old hand on the stick. The furies certainly noticed you, Monty, but they were impressed and, thus, delayed their decision to smite the wee Continental *after* you were safely on the ground.

Hell of a trip.

Jonathan
 
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