More Flying:
Earlier I wrote a post about flying with my friend Craig Foltz. Due to everwhelming demand, I have some more stories.
We'd fly nearly every week, often several times a week. He'd pick me up from my Lake City parents house, in his well used Opal Cadet car. (It had the new fangled flow-through ventalation). We'd drive up to Paine filed to a flight service and flying school operation. We were the main customer for the Air-Nocker that they had, as most folks wanted the newer Cessna planes with side seating and a capacity of 4. The Aeronca was fine with us, it was cheaper to fly, and for Craig, gaining hours in the log was most important.
Often we'd just fly pretty local, do some touch and goes and never really getting bery far away. Often though, we figured as long as we were getting hours, we might just as well go someplace. I recall one trip where we went to Olympia Airfield, (a popular search base) and do some navigation to there. After doing some practice landings, we flew out to the Ocean (The Big PO in Corcoran speak).
Out at the ocean, there is a beach that absnt a very high tide, has a broad flat hard sandy surface. It's even considered an emergency airfield called Copalas Beach State Emergency. Well, we had a biological 'emergency' so after flying low and slow to check it out, and seeing another airplane already on the beach, down we went. Nice landing, and there were no incidents. We slowed quicker than we expected, but not enough to be worrisome to take off again. We went over to the other plane (a 4 place Cessna), and offered the couple a donut from our purchase earlier at Olympia. We proceeded a ways directly behind the Cessna, (blind spot) and cleared the bio emergency.
Off we went and north towards the Olympic National Park area. We were going along, enjoying the views of the mountains, when we realized that we were in the wrong canyon, or pass through the Olympics. Seems we were going up a break between the mountains that didn't have an outlet, but a wall of high mountains at the end. That was not good. The Air-nocker was designed as a light observation craft, and by no means (really, NO means), a performance aircraft. In other words, it would be impossible for us to power over the mountains. What we did, and again, it was a first for Foltzy was to do a Hammer Head turn, where we powered up, pulled up into the best climb that we could, roll the plane so the wings were near vertical, kick the rudder over to pivot the plane on its axis, and voila, we were heading the other way. It was good that we made the Copalas stop.
From here on the trip was uneventful. Fun Times!
Dad
I suppose I am fuzzy on the "kick[ing] the rudder over to pivot the plane on its axis" portion. How exactly is this executed and how does it work?
ReplyDelete-Bradley
Picture a small airplane. Call the X axis through the engine and out the tail. Y is 90 degrees from that through the wings. Z is straight up and down. All 3 axis meet at the planes resting center of gravity. OK.
ReplyDeleteWe're flying straight along the X axis. We pull up into a very steep climb. When we start losing airspeed,but before we stall (that would be bad), you apply full rudder (foot pedals) that cause the plane to rotate on the Z axis, and you change from going North and Climbing, to South and Diving. You pull out before you have an unfortunate meeting with the mountains, and off you go in the opposite direction, without having to do a level turn that would take a larger half circle that we had as the mountains were close on both sides. Exciting.
Well, from that description, I believe a "holy smokes" is in order.
ReplyDelete-Bradley
Yes, it was a day. Planes just need to keep going regardless if you like where they are going or not. So when we realized we were not where we thought we were, and we realized that we'd soon run out of air to fly in, when our climb rate didn't overcome the mountains, there was only the one method that would work in the situation we found ourselves in. It IS a known way to essentially make a U-Turn in an aircraft, and having a fairly slow tail dragger like the Aeronca helped, as when we did that little Z axis spin, and our effective airspeed over the wings went to a practical zero, the resulting dive very quickly built up enough speed so our little plane decided to fly again.
ReplyDeleteIt was exciting, but really, it was just what we had to do, and Craig know how to do it. Only later, when reviewing the situation, did I realize how dicey a place some poor navigation got us into.
Dad
So you're saying the moral of the story is to measure twice and fly once?
ReplyDelete-Bradley