Lessons learned
Bob Kirkpatrick
for the duplication.]
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Lessons learned --and used.
"Walla Walla Flight Watch, Luscombe two-niner-two-five-kilo."
"Luscombe two-five kilo, this is Walla Walla, go."
"Walla Walla, two-five-kilo. I'm approximately 40 miles northeast of
Spokane and I'm looking at a line of darkness to the west. Are you
painting TRW for the area?"
"Two-five-kilo, be advised that we're showing considerable dust from
western Washington at this time."
"Two-five-kilo, roger. That looks pretty nasty. It's just some dust
you say?"
"Roger, two-five-kilo. We're showing no rain, but have reports of
heavy dust blowing over."
My wife, myself, and our new baby boy were in a 1947 Luscombe. My
best friend owned it, and we shared it like family.
We'd just gone to see an airshow at Sandpoint, Idaho. We'd come up
from Portland for the show, which featured the Canadian Warbirds
--the largest collection of WWII fighter aircraft I'd ever seen.
My wife, Suzanne, had the baby in the truss --an in-front sort of
backbak that I'd built so we could bring the baby along with us when
we flew. She looked over at me quizzingly, and then looked back out
over the horizon. The dark line seemed to be coming at us with great
speed. It was 3:05pm on the afternoon of May 18, 1980. The day Mount
Saint Helens erupted.
We'd departed Sandpoint with about 40 minutes of fuel --more than
enough for the hop from Sandpoint to Spokane. The whole flight takes
less than 20 minutes. Up and over the ridge by Mount Spokane, and
then an easy descent into Felts Field.
My wife and I had gone many places in the Luscombe. It was a 1947
model 8E. It had come to its current configuration over a long line
of owners and STCs. Modifications changed the original 65 horse
powerplant to an 85, and then to a 90 hp Continental. It had an
electrical system --mostly to operate the twin landing lights that
were retrofitted into the leading edges of the wings. Back in the
late fifties, the single fuel tank in the fuselage was removed in
favor of wing tanks, and a little later the landing gear was changed
to strut braces and heavier steel tubing from the original flying
wire system. It had been bought by a flight school which no doubt
made the change in anticipation of a string of students practicing
landing after landing in the stout little bird.
The cabin was spartan. Airspeed, compass, T&B, altimeter and an old
tachometer were the only instruments --save for the VOR built in to
the little radio. We added a G meter when I took up Sportsman Class
aerobatics. It did have fuel gauges for the wingtanks, but they were
built into the roots of the wings, and were reliable only to show
that there was gas in the tanks. If the needles bounced a little in
flight, there was fuel.
And so it was that afternoon in May. As we crossed over the mountain
ridge, they sky grayed around us, and then turned black. We were
left zero-zero in an airplane that wouldn't have been my first
choice for flying at dusk --no less a condition suited to IFR. Sure,
it had landing lights, but the cabin instruments weren't backlit, and
the landing lights were good for all of ten minutes before the battery
would die. At that point, the landing lights would become yellow cat's
eyes.
Looking up through the skylight, the sun was a dim purple circle in
a sea of blackness. In another few moments, it too was gone. I got
back on the radio.
"Walla Walla Flight Watch, Luscome two-niner-two-five-kilo."
There was no response.
I had two options. I could continue on to Spokane and Felts, or, I
could turn southeast and head for Coeur d'Alene. CDA was a much
larger airport, and was surrounded by few buildings. On the other
hand, Felts was much smaller, and was ringed by city on three sides,
and a nasty hill on the fourth. Both airports had towers, but the
one at CDA only operated sporadically. I tried to contact both of
the towers, but all I got in response was static.
Just before the blackness had come, I'd plotted our position on the
sectional. That gave me a good estimation of both our direction and
position. We had crossed the mountain ridge, and I knew that the
hills declined rapidly into the Spokane valley. Hoping that the
altimeter setting at Sandpoint was still close, I began to descend
from 6500. My plan was to try to get low enough that I might be able
to make out features on the ground. In a VFR aircraft, that's the
only hope for finding your way.
Keeping an eye on the altimeter, airspeed, and compass, I tried to
estimate where I was, where I'd be in moments, and what I should be
looking for. My mind wandered back to my days of flight instruction
at Evergreen in Vancouver --my home airport. Evergreen is the home
of the Northwest Antique Aircraft Association, and the field had
more than it's share of experienced pilots --and from the days when
aircraft like the Luscome weren't the exception, but the rule. I'd
learned to fly in an Aeronca Champ --along with scattered hours in
Taylorcrafts, Stinsons, and even a couple of Stearman's and a Waco.
It wasn't until I HAD to that I flew in Cessnas, Beechs, and Pipers
from the tricycle age.
I thought back to the war stories of the semi-heros I looked up to
at Evergreen, and thought hard about the stick and rudder advice I
got from Wally Olsen and Evelyn Waldren. Both had one hell of a
history, and I tried as hard as I could to keep in mind each detail
they'd ever passed. There was no question that my wife, son and self
were in a serious fix.
After about ten minutes, I plotted myself as being in the valley,
with the ground about 200 feet below me. If all was going right, we
should be crossing the I-90 freeway and I told my wife to look for
it. After a few minutes, we still hadn't see it, and I began to get
concerned about the mountains on the other side of the wide valley.
Summoning courage (!) I decided to do a two minute timed turn, and
to lose some more altitude. I held a penlight in my mouth, and
stared at the gauges trying to keep them all where they should be. I
hoped that my estimation of ground level was accurate.
As it turned out, it wasn't.
The blackness had begun to give way to a near-dark gray. Inside the
aircraft I could make out the instruments without the little
flashlight. This was good, because the battery in it was dying. As I
was completing the turn, my wife asked if I saw something ahead of
us. I did. It was one of the large red and white checked water
towers that pop up out of the valley. I twisted the plane into a
hard left bank, and watched the tower pass under the cowl. It scared
me, and my legs began to shake as I righted the Luscombe.
"You're doing great, Bob." said Suzanne. "That was good." I was
angry with myself that I'd forgotten about the towers, and began to
reevaluate what my altitude was. But right then, we saw a line of
glowing light below us, and I knew I was passing over the freeway.
It was time to choose. Did I go for Felts, or should I make for
Coeur d'Alene? I thought of all the obstructions next to Felts, and
remembered that CDA sat right next to Hiway 95 --a major route that
intersects I-90 at Coeur d'Alene. I decided on CDA.
Flight time so far was about 25 minutes, and I began to wonder about
fuel. The penlight showed that the right tank gauge was still as a
rock, but the left was still jiggling. I figured we had another 20
minutes and I'd be dead stick. Deciding not to waste time, I arced
hard to the east and stayed above the lights on the freeway. Not
wanting to miss the highway intersection, I let down even more, and
got low enough that I could distinguish headlights on the cars and
trucks, rather than see them as pools of misty gray. I guess that my
altitude was about a hundred feet off the ground.
We found the intersection without any problem, and using the chart,
I guessed that time to the airport was about three minutes at the 85
to 90 mph we were travelling. I decided to try the radio again, and
had my wife look up the tower and unicom frequency in the Flight
Guide. A call to the tower brought no answer, but a try on unicom
had a different result.
"Couer d'Alene Unicom, Luscombe two-niner-two-five-kilo. Can anybody
hear me?" Seconds ticked by like hours.
"Luscome? Don't tell me you're flying in this."
"I wish I wasn't. We didn't get much choice. I'm about a mile south
and closing. Does the airport have a beacon? Is it on?"
"Roger, two-five-kilo. We do, it's burning, and it's green and
white."
"Where is it in relation to the field?"
"It sits mid-field on the east side of the airport. I've got them
turning on the runway and taxi lights, and running them up to full
intensity."
The voice gave me a current altimeter setting and wind. I saw the
beacon as an on-off glow off the left wing, and turned towards it.
We passed it about 20 feet above it and fifty feet off the wing. As
soon as we did, I could make out the runway lights ahead. They were
aligned 90 degrees to my direction. We crossed over and were back in
the gray murk. I began to count (one-mississippi, two-mississippi)
and began a teardrop timed turn to get aligned.
I was pretty sure I was lined up with the runway dead-ahead, and
began to let down some more. The engine began to run rough, the
intake beginning to clog with the ash and dust in the air. I think I
said "Oh, shit."
I had to decide whether to go with carb heat and let the engine
breathe --which would no doubt clog the carb and do god-only-knows what
else to the engine. I decided that I didn't care about the engine as
much as I wanted it to run a while longer, and clogging --well, if I
had luck on my side, I had a very few minutes of fuel left anyway.
I cracked the carb heat a little, and the engine RPMs surged
upwards. Airspeed was at 85, and so I backed off the power and began
what was going to be my final. I figured that my best bet was a
power on approach --I had a lot of runway in front of me, lots of
room to spare. But I couldn't be sure I was lined up exactly, and
wanted power and speed available to correct with. The RPMs were at
1200, and I pegged airspeed at 62. In the Luscombe, this would be
just enough to keep me ahead of the power curve if I needed to
correct. Hiking up the nose, I added power to keep airspeed and let
the ship slowly down, little by little.
"What's that noise?" asked Suzanne. I heard it too. It was a
familiar noise, I'd heard it before but couldn't place it for a
second. Then, I realized that it was the sound of the gear striking
the top of tall grass. I fed power and hopped up a few feet. "What?"
said Suzanne.
"There may be a fence." I found out later that there was indeed a
fence. But at that moment the runway lights appeared on both sides
of the aircraft. I was dead center on the runway. I reached up and
shut off the mag switch, and the engine clacked into silence. When
it did, we could hear the sound of the ash hitting the windscreen
and the wings, not so different from the sound of blowing sand.
Touchdown was one of the lightest I ever made in the airplane. We
rolled straight and true, and I hastened the stop with the heel
brakes.
We sat in total silence for a few seconds.
"Christ. I hope nobody else is up there." I said. Then it dawned on
me that there might be indeed, and I climbed out of the plane. I
told the wife to stay put, and moved to the back of the airplane.
Telling her to stay strapped in --there might be a ditch-- I muscled
the plane around and pushed it past the lights and off the runway.
When I felt I'd gone far enough, maybe 30 feet, I let the airplane
sit and walked up to the cabin door. My wife got out of the plane
with the baby, and I took off the sweater I was wearing and put it
over his face to keep the ash out. My teeth were already grinding
from the grit my mouth had collected, and I didn't want him to have
the same experience.
We stood directly in front of the prop facing east. We figured that
if we walked a straight line, we'd eventually either run into a
building or something that would give us our bearings. After about
30 paces, I stopped and looked back towards the little white and
black plane. It was invisible in the gray.
A couple of minutes later, we stumbled into the Piper Flight Center
and in the door. Inside, about ten people applauded. A man whose
voice matched the one on the radio came up and shook my hand.
"We wondered if you'd make it. We kept waiting to hear the crash.
When we didn't we wondered if you flew on past. That was some pretty
good flyin' mister."
Yeah. All this time later, I still agree with him. But I thank my
lucky stars that I had the flight instruction I did, from the folks
who gave it to me.
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The next day, I went out to the airport to recover the plane and
have it serviced. The grit had opaqued the windshield so badly that
it took three bottles of McGuire's to polish it back --not to
mention a power buffer. All of the paint had been blasted from the
leading edges of the wings, struts, and tail group. For some reason,
the gear didn't get stripped, but the usual layer of bug remains
were gone.
We had the ship cleaned, and the engine completely flushed and
checked. I thought it remarkable that the engine came through with
no discernable damage. All we had to do was replace the air filter.
We did leave one thing alone.
To this day, you can still see the ash _inside_ the plexiglass land-
ing light covers.
(c) 1993
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bo...@dogear.spk.wa.us_____________________________________________________
Bob Kirkpatrick - Dog Ear'd Systems of Spokane, WA