Continued from previous. (The bored readers have bailed by now, but for the faithful, who may yourselves be tiring of this matter, this is the next to last in the series. I think.)
I breakfasted with Dave before sun-up. He needed to get
to the office for a big meeting with clients from Costa Rica. His company was
proposing to design and build them a machine that harvested a fiber tree of
some sort. Wife Marsha, the office manager, would trail in about 9am. Again I
was on my own, but I liked it that way. I didn’t feel like I was too much of a
burden on my hosts.
I got to the hangar at 0545 and Phil arrived at 0600 via
his golf cart. Phil was a senior pilot with Alaska Airlines on the B-737 and
also a check airman. He had a beautiful RV-6A, which is an RV-6 with a
nosewheel. But he had plenty of time on Strearmans and Pitts, so he knew the
tailwheel culture. We examined the rocket rod. He wasn’t familiar with it. He
pushed the tail around and noticed the tailwheel swiveled freely. “That’s
strange,” he said. “Most tailwheel assemblies have a locking mechanism so that
they stay more or less straight on landing. This one swivels almost 360
degrees. Seems like that could cause weather-vanning into the wind on a
crosswind landing.” He was telling me nothing I didn’t already know and had
been worrying about. He scratched his head some more and then suggested we go
flying.
The virtually new Lycoming O-360 fired off at the touch
of the starter and I had no trouble taxiing the plane. We stopped at the pump
to fuel it and then proceeded to the
runway’s end. The runway at the air park
was very narrow and afforded little room for error. Phil told me via the
plane’s crisp, quiet intercom that we would go over to the Marana Airport, a
former military base which had wide runways to practice landings. I did the
run-up checks and lined the RV up. The wind sock was limp in the early morning
calm. I whipped all 180 horses into a whirling frenzy and within
seconds I was able to raise the tail and let the plane fly off.
 |
| LaCholla Air Park |
It climbed like a bottle rocket and even gained speed in the
climb. In a couple of minutes we were miles away from the field. It responded like a jet to the mere touch of the stick. The visibility out the canopy was
sensational. I leveled the plane at 7,000 feet and set the power for a 75%
power cruise. The speed quickly went up to 175 knots. Wow! What a machine. We
put it through a stall series. It exhibited normal stall characteristics. Phil
wanted me to hold the wings level with rudder and let the plane enter a full
stall regime. “If it falls off into a spin,” he said, “just use normal recovery
techniques.” It started to spin, but a little forward stick and opposite rudder made it a happy flyer again.
I got apprehensive when we entered the pattern at Marina,
and sure enough I botched the first landing. I hit the power and went around
before touching down. It had so much power it was out of there in seconds. The
second landing was rough, with a bounce and some uneasy lateral oscillations. I
powered up and took off again. The third was no better. He suggested I try a
“wheel landing” on the fourth. "Pretend you’re trying to fly the plane a foot off the runway," he said, "and
then gradually reduce power and let it settle on. Hold the tail off as long as
you can.” I did that but bounced and went around. I tried it a second
time and did better, but when I let the tailwheel down we went into a swerving
oscillation from one side of the runway to the other. All this, and the wind
still had not gotten up!
 |
| Marana Airport (Formerly Avra Valley) |
I started to sweat bullets. “Wow!” Phil said. “That
tailwheel is touchy, isn’t it?”
We did two more squirrelly landings and time ran out for
Phil. He had to catch a commuter flight to LAX that afternoon. We headed back
to LaCholla Airpark and its shoestring of a runway. On the way over he said,
“The air park rules allow for only three landings due to noise control. That’s
all you’ve got left with me.”
I botched the first approach—too fast on final (the plane
is hard to slow down). We bolted. One down. The second attempt was a big bounce
and a go-around. Two down. On downwind for the last try he said, “Try a wheel
landing again." I did as he suggested. The plane wanted to swerve when the tail
touched but I caught it and let out a big sigh. “Good!” he said. “Just keep
doing that and you’ll be okay.” I wasn’t so sure.
After Phil left I sat and eyed the plane for a long time.
Noticing the wind picking up, I glanced at my watch. It was nearing my appointment
at Ryan Field to get the pitot-static system re-certified, a procedure required
every two years. Two weeks earlier I had called the avionics shops around
Tucson to price the test. The one at the big airport didn’t consider me
important enough to return the call. Another at Marina Airport told me he could
do the job for $395, with the caveat that if he found a pressure leak I would
have to get an A&P mechanic to fix it. Then I called a guy named Juan at
Ryan Field. He could do it for $295.
I fired up the Six and taxied it out to the runway,
swallowed hard and powered up. I pointed the plane southwest, turned on the
auto-pilot and began fiddling with the Garmin 430 trying to set up a direct
course to Ryan, 20 miles away. Still confused by its many functions, by the
time I figured out how to set up the Garmin, Ryan was insight and I had not yet
looked up the tower frequency. I was so far behind the Six I was in yesterday
and it was in tomorrow.
I got landing clearance from the tower, and on final I
saw the
wind sock standing about half way out from the right quartering front. I
tried to wheel land the plane, hit too hard, bounced high and settled into a
3-point landing, which also resulted in a bounce, followed by a nervous swerve
left, then right before I brought it under reasonable control. I knew I had
entertained the tower controller. “Wow!” I said, on the radio. “That was fun.
I’m new to this plane.” | ||
Ryan Field, west of Tucson.
|
“I see that,” he said. I visualized him smirking. I
turned off the runway, asked him where Juan’s shop was and taxied to it
wondering how I would ever learn this plane without breaking it.
“Oh! Nice RV,” Juan yelled as I rolled up and shut off
the engine. He got out his equipment and started to work right away. I stood
nearby nervously surfing the internet on my Android, checking weather for
tomorrow’s attempted ferry flight back to Alabama. Within a few minutes Juan
said, “Uh oh! A leak.”
I cringed. Another problem. The pitot-static system,
which supplies information to the altimeter, airspeed indicator and the
altitude reporting function of the transponder had a pressure leak somewhere. I
remembered that other avionics technician I talked to—the one who said if he
found a leak he would not fix it. I would have to employ a mechanic to do that.
This could not be good. My mechanic was off in Yuma flying a C-130. I would
have to find a new one.
Then I saw Juan taking off the rear bulkhead. I watched him
crawl back into the fuselage. I heard him mutter, “I think its back here
somewhere.” Juan was trying to find the leak! I waited on pins and needles for
a few minutes till I heard him yell. “I found it!” He yelled for me to fetch
him a wrench. A few minutes later he emerged and tested again. “It’s
fixed,” he said. “Just a loose connection.” Once again, the Good Lord was
watching over me. I had found the right guy for the job.
While Juan finished up his work, I looked at that confounding
rocket rod and scratched my head. I got out my Andrioid and looked up the
rocket rod’s manufacturer. I called and told a guy there that the wheel was
free swiveling. Was it was supposed to do that? “No!” he said. “Are you flying
it like that?” I told him about my troubles trying to land it. “Man you need to
take it apart and see why it is not locking.” He e-mailed a diagram of the
assembly, but I didn’t have any tools to do the job.
I asked Juan, “Is there a mechanic around who might help
me with my tailwheel?”
To my utter surprise, Juan said, “Sure!” He pointed toward a man working on a Turbo Centurion over in the opposite corner of
the hangar. “Check with Marvin over there.”
I walked over to Marvin. He was so engrossed in the
Centurion’s complicated ignition wiring harness I didn’t want to disturb him.
Juan yelled across the distance, “Marvin, there’s a man here needs your help!”
Marvin turned and said, “What can I do for you?” I told
him my problem, thinking the best that will come from this will be that Marvin
will tell me he can look at it tomorrow, not to mention the shaking down he
would give my wallet. Marvin got up and
wiped his hands. “Let’s take a look.”
I showed him the tailwheel, explained my problem and
showed him the diagram the manufacturer sent me. He waved the diagram off.
“Don’t need it.” He jacked up the 6’s tail and took the tailwheel off, then
took it apart, all the while chattering. He was a part-time music minister in
his church. “Ah! I see! There’s a bunch of old grease gunckin’ up the locking slot.”
In 15 minutes the assembly was cleaned, regreased and reassembled. He pushed
the tail. The wheel locked. “There you go! That’s $30 bucks for half an hour’s
work.” I gladly paid him, realizing again that somebody up there was still looking
out after me.
I paid Juan and taxied out to the runway. Now it was time
to do some serious landing practice. I decided to go back to Marana for that.
When I got on downwind I saw the wind sock standing straight out at a
quartering angle. The air was rough. The Six bumped and jerked. I dropped the
flaps and rolled in.
The landing was better, but not by much. I was learning
to flare at the right height and touch down relatively softly, but the awful
swerving after landing was really getting to me. After a while I seemed not to
be improving. I did a full stop and taxied in.
While I had lunch Dave called. He wanted to know how it was going. After I told him about my struggles he said, “Stay where you are!
Don’t try to land it back at LaCholla. Tie the plane down for the night where
you are. I’ll come and pick you up, but I can’t get there till 6pm.”
“I don’t know,
Dave,” I said. Let’s just see what these winds do.”
I was thinking of telling Dave I would stay an extra day
to do more local practice before heading east, but that idea evaporated when Dave
told me a requirement had suddenly come up for him to leave town early next
day. He didn’t come out right and say it, but I knew I couldn’t stay there any
longer. It wouldn’t look right, me staying there alone with Marsha. Besides, the moose meat was gone. I had to
leave for Alabama next morning, come hell or high cross-winds.
Feeling like a man without a plan (a feeling I abhor), I taxied the plane to
the FBO for fuel. The two people inside acted like
zombies. No personality. No discussion. No “Nice plane, you’ve got there.” No
nothing. It demoralized me even more. I wanted badly to be back at Moontown
Airfield, where people were alive and talked airplanes and recognized you were
a live human standing in front of them. But it seemed so far away.
I went out to the plane and saw the wind sock was still horizontal.
Not knowing what to do, I decided to do nothing. I fired up the Six and taxied
it to an empty hangar port to get out of the burning sun. I shut it down and
sat in it, waiting for the winds to die down. I spent the time reading the
manual for the Garmin, checking the weather, watching the windsock.
By 4pm the winds had not shown the least inclination to
get calmer. I couldn’t sit there any longer. I decided to fly around for a
couple of hours and hope the bad winds died while I was up.
I spent the two hours flying box patterns over the
desert, testing the auto-pilot and the GPS. After becoming reasonably assured I
could navigate using the plane’s systems I pointed it back toward Tuscon. A
quick check of the weather revealed the winds were still high and gusty.
Would I go back to the wide runways of Marina, as my host wanted me to do and leave the plane there for the night? Or would I attempt LaCholla’s ribbon-narrow airstrip with direct crosswinds gusting to 25 knots and park the Six back in Dave’s hangar for the night? Those were the questions I asked myself, but I still simply didn’t know. I flew in the general direction of both airports until a decision for one or the other had to be made.
Next post: The flight home.
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