| Author | Message | ||
     Captpete |
Hey Blake, I think I know where those roads are that you’ve been talking about. I graduated from high school in Kansas, and made it down to Oklahoma a few times, but never to Texas. Even so, I figured that Texas was just a whole lot more of the same thing. But a few years ago…. Well, I remember exactly when it was. I remember getting settled down in my window seat and opening the little notebook that would become the journal I planned to keep throughout the trip. When I began my first entry, the date I wrote was 6789, June 7, 1989 I considered that it was a good omen for all the miles we would cover during the next five days. We were on a round-trip flight from Jacksonville, FL, to Sacramento. I’m not sure about our route on the way out; I just wanted to get there. The return flight was what this trip was all about, and it was going to take all of four days because we would be flying a 450 Stearman. Just in case you’re not a flying buff, I should mention that Stearmans were primary trainers used at the beginning of WW2. They were big open-cockpit two-holer biplanes with the pilot-in-command flying from the rear seat. I’ve been told by some old-timers that that made it right convenient for the instructor to reach over the little windscreen in front of him and whack the student on his leather flying helmet with a ruler when things weren’t going so well. They made thousands and thousands of them, and students rolled thousands of them into balls of wooden splinters because they are very tricky to land without swapping ends until you get the hang of it. But they were strong if you kept them in the air, and even though their 200 hp radial engines were sorely lacking, they could take all the aerobatics you wanted to dish out. You just had to dive to get up to speed sometimes. After the war they were quite abundant and cheap, and most of them were converted to crop-dusters. Those little Continentals were replaced by 985 c.i. Pratt & Whitneys putting out 450 hp. And then most of those ended up as piles of splinters too, and as they became more and more rare, they became more valuable. So the spray tanks started coming back out and the front seats back in, and wings and fuselages were recovered, and they got pretty paint jobs. They became collectable sport planes, and my friend had just agreed over the phone to buy the one we were closing in on. A few more minutes until touchdown in Sacramento and that would be a little diversion, for the pilot would be judged harshly by a couple of hot-stick tail dragger drivers like us. Ok, my friend was a pretty hot stick, ex naval aviator and all. I was only a couple of hundred hours into this tail dragger stuff at the time, but that was one of the reasons I was anticipating the trip so much. My little bush plane was pretty well respected among the family of tail draggers, but a 450 Stearman… this was the real deal, Elmo. So if between the two of us we were able to get this jet landed ok, then it was a room for the night and a rental car in the morning for the drive up to Placerville to a little strip where the plane was located. Then if it turned out to be all it was represented to be, we would load up our kit and start heading south where we would cross the Rockies, and then take the southern route back home. And if the long-range weather forecast held out, then we would be cool. Naturally, the old bird was all she was cracked up to be and more, otherwise this story would be one of disappointment and not worth recounting. It did have an electrical system, but solely for the purpose of starting the engine. It had no lights of any sort, and no gyro panel, which meant it couldn’t be flown after dark. There were no instruments to tell us if we were upside down, sideways, or what, and if we couldn’t see a horizon, well… the trip would produce another one of those balls of splinters. But there were 12 volts there for us, so we had brought a couple of gizmos to help us get back home. First, we had a hand-held radio, so we installed an external antenna to give it some extra range. Secondly, and more importantly, we had brought a Loran unit that would tell us our approximate position, and we installed that along with its external antenna. Once those chores were complete, my friend went up with the seller and flew around the patch a few times on a check ride, making sure he was able to land the thing without ground-looping it. (The term for one of those end-swapping landings I mentioned earlier.) No problems there, so just as there was enough light left, my friend took off for Sacramento. I would meet him there in the rental car, we would get a room for the night, and it would be wheels up at the crack of dawn the next morning. Most of our kit had been stowed in the little locker aft of the rear seat before we left Placerville. I knew ahead of time that we would probably face some extreme temperatures during the trip so in addition to sleeping bags, I had packed a down parka, gloves, and a scarf. And no, not one of those silk things that flaps in the breeze, but a wool one that I would wind around my neck. Regardless of the weather, we were going to have to cross the continental divide, and it’s rarely comfortable at 12 or 13 thousand feet. We launched as the sun was starting to peek above the horizon, and my heart was pounding like a drum. I had done just a little bit of open-cockpit flying, but it was nothing like this. There’s just something about flying behind one of those round engines, and it all begins at engine start-up. The bottom cylinders collect oil when at rest and when they first light off, all that oil comes out the exhaust stacks, first as raw oil and then as smoke. And I don’t mean a little smoke, either. More than once the fire department has been called by some well-meaning but unknowing spectator who was certain that an airplane had just caught fire on the ramp. The oil thing doesn’t stop there, either. It’s the nature of the beast. They leak oil worse than a GM diesel, and every time we landed for fuel we had to clean those little windscreens we were each looking through. I had thought about this in advance, and had brought some goggles, but found them to be much too restrictive. Kind of distanced you from the real experience. And the real experience began, heading south through California, a state I had never seen before. I marveled at the rolling grasslands beneath me and thought about an old John Stewart tune where he claimed not to be the Saint of San Joaquin Valley. I had always known what he was singing about, but now I knew where as well. This was certainly nothing like the California I had imagined. (Ha! See where this is heading, Blake?) Everything was going perfectly. That P&W R985 was a lot like a Harley (Buell?) engine. It sounded like it was going to come unglued any second, but it just kept on pounding, never missing a lick. Our confidence level steadily increased with every mile, and we began to experiment with this bird’s capabilities. My friend put her into a gentle climb and when our airspeed dropped to the proper entry speed, we did the first of many snap rolls that bird would perform before we would see Florida. I remember hollering in glee throughout the maneuver. How could life be any better? I had a fleeting thought about all those poor earth-bound bastards going to work beneath me. If I dropped dead right then, it wouldn’t be a bad way to go. And I realized with that thought that I had reached a level in flying that most pilots never experienced. We made it to Bakersfield at the end of that first day with time to spare, going no farther since this would be our jumping-off point tomorrow morning for crossing the Continental Divide. We tied her down on the ramp and experienced an occurrence that would repeat itself throughout the trip. Anytime this bird landed, it drew a crowd. A Stearman first, and second a 450 Stearman. But more than that, one with a shiny new paint job. All black fuselage with red scalloped leading edges on all four wings, elevators, and tail. This was a real-man’s sport plane. One of the folks who came out to greet us had a collection of vintage birds there on the field, and gave us a tour of his little personal museum. I remember meeting my first DeHaviland Chipmunk there. After our tour we found a little juke joint close by, had a burger and a few beers for dinner, and went back to the airport where we unrolled our sleeping bags in the grass at the base of the tower and slept under the stars. I had a little trouble getting to sleep because the synapses just wouldn’t stop firing. There were all the events of the day to relive, and the anticipation of what tomorrow would bring as we climbed over the Rockies. We were wheels up the next morning the instant we thought there was enough light to make out the horizon. We started heading east, and I was ready, sitting on my parka and gloves that I knew I would need before this day was over. The whole trip was a learning experience, and one of the things I had just about worked out was how to light a cigarette while in flight. It was difficult because somehow there was a tremendous draft of air in that front seat. I didn’t know exactly how it was getting in, but there was a continual blast of air that came up from the bottom of the fuselage through the front hole where I was sitting. My friend was quite the prankster. One of the neat little accoutrements on this bird was a smoke system, which injects oil from a dedicated tank into the exhaust system. I’m sure you’ve seen them at air shows. Another neat little standard gizmo was a mirror on the trailing edge of the upper left wing that allowed both occupants to see one another’s face. We had also installed a little intercom system before we departed that would allow us to communicate via headsets that we had brought along, but with the engine, exhaust and wind noise, found them pretty much useless during that first day. We had to resort to the old tried and true method which was to either beat on the outside of the fuselage or shake the stick to get the other’s attention, and then communicate with sign language by looking at each other in the little mirror I mentioned. Early this morning, for the first of many times during the trip, I heard my friend pounding on the fuselage for my attention. I looked into our mirror and there he sat with that huge grin on his face that was his trademark. He spent way too much time bugging me about smoking, and this time I watched him raise one hand to his face and make a cigarette smoking gesture. The he pulled the smoke lever and I discovered where all that air was coming from. That stream of constant upwelling air that I was sitting in turned to solid smoke. When he finally released the lever and the smoke cleared from my cockpit, he was able to see another bird in the mirror. All I saw was that stupid cackle of his. I would get used to it before the trip was over. And I also figured out why my eyes were so red when we had landed in Bakersfield. I had spent the whole day riding around in a cloud of exhaust gasses, and I had another three days to go. No big deal, though. Just a little diversion from the diesel fumes I had been breathing for fifteen years on fishing boats. We climbed steadily toward the divide as the scenery below us seemed to change with every mile, and I had the stick when eventually that final hump was before us. I should tell you a little about the difference that R985 made in this bird. First of all, it’s a supercharged engine which enables it to maintain a given power output as the altitude increases. That’s good for crossing the mountains. But that old bird has so much drag, which you know increases exponentially with speed, that the extra horsepower doesn’t really increase top speed very much. But what it does increase dramatically is rate of climb. As an example: My little bush plane was a STOL (Short TakeOff and Landing) aircraft, and the take off procedure for it was to first get the tail off the ground and then accelerate to flying speed before dropping the tail. From that point on, it was like riding an elevator. Not so with this bird. You held the stick all the way back, keeping the tail on the runway, and punched the throttle. It rolled a couple hundred feet and then you were flying. As they say, it would climb like a homesick angel. So I’m climbing toward the top of the hump at full power and I’m holding it right at Vx, which is best-angle-of-climb speed. But the ground is getting closer and closer because the terrain is rising faster than we are climbing. This is my first mountain-flying experience and I am about to fly into a situation that has killed a bunch of pilots. Well, almost. Most of ‘em bought it flying up valleys. Then I heard that thumping sound on the fuselage and looked into the little mirror where my friend was making a circular motion with one finger raised in the air. Duh. I knew the answer, I just wasn’t sure when, so I put it into a shallow banked, climbing 360. One time around and we had the altitude to make the ridge. But I have to admit that I could feel the sticky perspiration that was accumulating inside my parka. We crossed the hump and my friend wobbled the stick, indicating that he would take over. The terrain began to fall away beneath us and I couldn’t understand why we weren’t heading down with it. Whenever possible, we had rarely gotten over 500 feet above ground, enjoying the scenery. But now that distance was steadily increasing as we maintained level flight. My friend pulled the power, but still maintained that level attitude as the airspeed degraded, and the mystery was solved. I knew what was coming. He held it there right up to the stall and then kicked hard left rudder, and we were spinning toward the ground. I don’t remember how many turns we made, but I do know that thing was wound up. He broke the spin at about a thousand feet, and we came out of it as I was pounding on the side of the fuselage, once again in glee. And it was getting warmer, and I shucked the gloves and parka and settled in for the rest of the downhill run. But it was not to be. My friend was a consummate aerobatic pilot, and couldn’t let well enough alone. The nose pitched up and my jowls began to sag, and we were at it again. We did three consecutive loops, and as we leveled out I glanced at my altimeter and discovered we had gained 600 feet during that little maneuver. Now that’s what I’m talking about when I said this bird would climb. We made it to Bullhead City, Arizona, that day before darkness forced us back to the ground. I couldn’t believe the extremes of temperature we had experienced that day. It was 114 degrees in the shade when we landed, and the only shade was under the wings on the ramp. As it had become warmer during the day we had used temperature to determine our flying altitude. We just flew where it was most comfortable. This meant that when it was time to land we had a bunch of descending to do first, and I remember thinking we had just been thrown into a furnace when I heard the tires chirp as we made contact with the runway. I had never been anyplace that was so hot. We tied the bird down and took the little ferry across the Colorado River to McLaughlin, Nevada, which is like a mini Las Vegas, except geared for the low-rollers. Great big parking lots for all the blue-hairs to park their RV’s. I lost my obligatory $20 playing blackjack, and we had some cheap drinks and a great prime rib dinner that was almost free. Then back across the creek to unroll our sleeping bags under the wings. It had cooled off considerably and was down to 104 degrees. But the humidity was so low that we slept comfortably in our skivvies, lying on top of our bedrolls. Somewhere I have a picture I took from my bedroll just at false dawn as my friend was running around in his underwear, releasing the tie-downs and checking the fuel sumps for water. There would be no moss on our backsides at the end of this trip. Our first stop that morning was at a little strip perched at the edge of the Grand Canyon. We had arrived before the gas pumps were even open, and we were freezing. We thought for sure we had seen the last of the cold and hastily pulled the required clothing out of that little locker, and stood around shivering until the little coffee shop finally opened. We got a cup of joe and a sweet roll, topped off the fuel tanks, and added some oil to the reservoir. You didn’t check the oil at the end of each hop with this engine; you just automatically added some and then checked the level. All the airspace around the Canyon is restricted because so many pilots had bought it over the years getting trapped down in the gully. But WTF. We were in a fabric-covered bird with no transponder, so had pretty good stealth capability, so we snuck a little illegal over-flight into the morning’s schedule. I can’t remember the name of the little town in New Mexico we spent the next night in. Apropos, I suppose, because we had no idea what town it was at the time until we circled its municipal water tank. Back during that time Loran was basically an aid to navigation designed for mariners and the coverage was limited to coastal areas and those around the Great Lakes, so we were pretty much lost. But no matter. We had a compass and knew which way Florida was. Anyway, this little town was the site of the demise of either Billy the Kid or Jesse James, I don’t remember which, who was buried in the local cemetery. I do remember that their big annual festival was called tombstone days, and its culmination was a foot race where all the participants carried a tombstone during the race. We walked into town from the mostly abandoned old military airfield where we had landed, and stepped into the first bar we encountered. The folks there were very friendly, especially after they discovered we were the ones who had been flying around their water tank. Everyone there spoke with a heavy Tex-Mex accent, and they were a hoot. We first got the lay of the land and discovered there were only two bars in town, and we were already in the “big” one, so there was no reason to walk to the other end of town. We got to talking with a couple of guys and the conversation went something like the following. I wish I could get the accent on paper, so try to read it into this: “So, what are you guys up to tonight?” “Us? We’re hiding from our wives, mon.” “But there are only two bars in town.” “Si, I know. I theenk they already find us.” We made the short walk to the middle of town and had the best Mexican meal of my career, and then back to the little bar where our two new friends introduced us to their wives, being sure to tell them that we were the pilots of that big plane that was circling the water tank. A few more beers and we hiked back to the airstrip where we stretched out in our bedrolls beneath the wings. Once again, we were wheels up before the sun, and flew into Texas. This was the Texas I had imagined, except the dirt was a lot redder than up in Kansas. And here’s why I know that: Our first landing was at a little strip where they had had a bunch of rain the night before. We were on short final, and just before landing, these tail draggers assume a nose-up attitude. Some are worse than others about this attitude, but Stearmans are one of the worst. Just before touchdown, the pilots(s) can no longer see past the nose of the plane and must either hang his head out to the side or depend on peripheral vision to maintain alignment with the runway. This is how most of these birds get turned into splinters. Tail wheel aircraft have a center of gravity that is aft of the main gear. Obvious, or they would rest on their noses instead of the tail wheel when parked. So this becomes like trying to land an arrow feathers-first. As long as you keep the arrowhead right behind the feathers, it all works out. But if you ever let the feathers get off to one side or the other, all that mass behind the main gear wants to go first and the plane swaps ends on the runway. It’s especially difficult in a bi-plane because the lower wing is so much closer to the runway. I was particularly familiar with this phenomena because of an incident I had when I first started flying my little high-wing tail dragger. I had landed a little crooked early one morning when I still had to think about everything I had to do to keep it lined up properly, and I started into an incipient ground loop. It started this drastic sharp turn to the left on the runway, I knew what was coming, I knew it was too late to save it, and I knew I didn’t want to ride that one out, so I decided to fly out of it. I slammed the throttle against the panel, pulled back on the yoke, and did the best I could to level the wings. I made it, but not until I had taken out three runway lights and chewed about three inches off the big droop-tip end of my right wing. I had a big confidence problem for the next fifty hours or so, but by now I knew what to look for. I was in a unique position that morning as we touched down, because I had a view through the two top cylinders of that engine that wasn’t available to my friend in the back hole, and what I saw made me believe that this trip was just about over. We were about to touch down a little sideways. Physics is physics, right Blake? My friend was driving, but I was about to ride out my first ground loop. They’re rarely fatal and often result in no injuries to those aboard, but they often do a tremendous amount of damage to the planes involved. Once again, it was a left loop that was developing. The thing that saved us was all that rain the night before and the narrow landing strip. We shot off the concrete into all that wet grass and ended up coming to a halt as we slid sideways to within about 25 feet of the gas pumps. There was never enough traction in that wet grass to get that outside lower wing on the ground. Zero damage. Other than to our egos, that is. But luck was still on our side because no one had yet arrived at the little terminal there so there were no witnesses, and on top of that there was a garden hose right next to us that allowed us to remove all the evidence: gobs and gobs of sticky red mud everywhere, underside of the wings, and all down the right side of the fuselage. We had her all cleaned up and repositioned away from those telltale ruts in the grass by the time the first terminal employee arrived and even had time for the adrenalin to burn off while we rehashed it all. Welcome to Tay-Hass! Later on that day, I got my first glimpse of East Texas. We had been flying pretty much down in the dirt, waving to women hanging out the laundry a hundred feet below us, and watching the cattle scurry. But soon we had to knock that stuff off as it got hillier and hillier and the ground color changed from red to green. I couldn’t believe this was Texas. It looked like a big old golf course down there, almost like the whole place had been landscaped on purpose. And that’s it, isn’t it Blake? That’s where all those roads that you’ve been talking about are located? Man, that’s a pretty place. Maybe I’ll get back there on a Buell someday. Capt. Pete | ||
| Pammy |
Petey, you know I love you, man.... | ||
| Captpete |
Oh, yeah? And now I know what you do all day in that office while Wes slaves away in the back. ;-) | ||
| Blake |
Outstanding! Great tale Pete! Sadly, the roads in E. TX are somewhat wanting as far as being prime riding roads. Early June? Sure the Hill Country coulda still been in the final throws of green, maybe. Lemme see. In 1989 I was residing in Grand Prairie, Texas, a suburb of Dallas. That little neighborhood where Michele and I won the bid on a reclaimed HUD home was a mere half mile from the local airport. An airport that was home to a few vintage aircraft. Of smoking aircraft I can attest. There was a Steerman and even more prodigeous in its smoke production was the Grumman TBM-3 Avenger. One of the coolest things about the big TBM-3 was it's hydraulically folding wings. They didn't have the typical upfold action, the hinge was at an angle as viewed in plan, so the wings folded up and back. But man, when they cranked her over, all two rows and 14 cylinders of 1,700 HP radial engine, she sure would belch some smoke. Hearing that engine fire was music to my ears. There's a certain motorcycle that reminds me of that same sound.  Thanks for sharing. You ought to send that to a Steerman enthusiast's magazine for publication. Better yet, include it with all your other great tales and make your own book. I'll take a dozen copies up front. Thanks! Blake | ||
| Turnagain |
kind of reminds me of my scooter.  Thanks for the trip! But, don't stop in Texas -- wanna know if y'all made it to Florida.  oh,... pics of the old bird? | ||
| Captpete |
Thanks for the suggestions, Blake. I figure I've got one more 5-year fishing venture left in me and then I plan to settle down in a meager thatched-roof ediface of local design on some as-yet-to-be-chosen Pacific Island, and try to find the discipline to write seriously. In the meantime it's nice to have a venue when the mood strikes. And it's encouraging to see your comments, too. Thanks. Capt. Pete That's a thatched roof with a generator and satelite dish linked to the Web. | ||
| Hans |
Great story about this plane:  | ||
| Captpete |
Pretty much, except for the extra 250 (150%) hp and the extra ailerons on the upper wings. Without the latter, the roll rate is so slow you could go out and get a hamburger and be back in time to catch the end of the first revolution and hop back into the seat. That's a great picture of one in its original configuration, Hans. | ||
| Pammy |
Petey,I was going to tell you to call me, so I could tell you what I've been doing...But I got distracted...you know someone dangled a shiny object in front of my face. | ||
| Henrik |
Pete: outstanding story and excellently told too. Thanks. You really should start writing. If you don't want/have time to write, how about recording your tales? Henrik | ||
| Captpete |
Why thanks, Henrick. I appreciate your encouragement. But writing is a funny thing, and it’s different for every writer. Often, a writer’s voice is quite different from his/her speaking voice, and I fall into that category. If I tried to tell that little story verbally, you probably wouldn’t recognize it as the same story. As an example, that story took five hours to write, and I was into it. It was sort of like reliving the experience as I wrote. Blake’s discussion of the roads in Texas was the trigger that reminded me of that flight, and I started out to merely tell him that I think I might have flown over them. But as I began to write, all the memories started flooding back and I guess I was ready to relive them. The mood was there, so I decided to spend the day writing. I guess my point is thes: five hours produced less than 9 pages, which is fast for me. My normal average is a page per hour. I touch-type, using the Dvorak keyboard layout, so my typing speed is respectable. Most of that time then is mental, being spent on composition. So the story told verbally would lack all that composition. Otherwise, it would take five hours to tell the story, and man, that would be a lot of pauses. See what I mean? And that’s just the beginning. What you read was a first draft. Few writers go with a first draft. It’s rewrite, rewrite, rewrite, etc. No matter how good your first draft is, it can always be better. If I decide to keep this story, it needs work. There are a bunch of awkward transitions that need to be smoothed out. It needs to flow a little better. As a matter of fact, I just re-read it and spotted at least a dozen things I would change. And writing is like anything else you wish to do well; it takes a lot of practice. So that’s what I’m doing now. I practice when the mood strikes. But it’s great to have someplace to throw up a first draft and get some feedback. I do appreciate the comments. What would be even better would be some constructive criticism. (Off line, of course.) And by the way… you through with my disk of jpegs? Since the camera can still read the images, and has a video-out port, I could watch a slide show on the TV. Oh yeah, and Linda still hasn’t gotten her knee fixed yet, although she’s getting around pretty well. At least she was until a couple of nights ago. We went to a little birthday thing at one of the beach bars, and there she was, out on the dance floor with the son of the local dance studio owner, being thrown around like in one of those South American countries where the cowboys compete to see who can sling a calf the farthest. She ended up whacking the edge of a table with the top of the good foot, and now has a spiral fracture around the outside metatarsal of that one. Boy, it’s ugly. Even the bottom of her foot turned black. That woman’s a mess. Take care, Capt. Pete | ||
| Peter |
Pete, Excellent read. Reminded me of Richard Bach (my favourite writer) and his tales of flight. PPiA | ||
| Tripper |
This is what the best part of flying is about. You write a great story Pete and brought us in to share your adventure. My one and only ultralight flight ended in what can be described as a slightly controlled crash. The bungee suspension did a fine job of saving us from spinal injury and if anyone had been watching they surely would have called 9-1-1, but the pilot/owner and I were in stitches and howling like drunken sailors. It requires the use of hand signals to describe the landing, you know what I mean, so it won't translate here. Flying is for the birds, and the bird-brained. I miss it greatly, but these kids a pretty fair trade-off. | ||
| Henrik |
Pete; I know what you mean about writing (and re-writing ) And seeing a story in print lends itself much better to review and tweaking. I've done a bit of technical (and not terribly interesting) writing, and it takes a lot of work. As one publisher I worked with said: "A book is never finished, it's abandoned." My recording suggestion was more for a way to grab and hold ideas for later writing/reworking. That way, by the time you retire to the beach front hut, you will have plenty to dive into and start writing on - just go through the audio archive and pick an idea. Sorry to hear about Linda - dang, that's bad luck. Tell her hi, and to get a good orthopaedic surgeon to get it all fixed up. Let me know if you want me to find some good guys down your way. Sorry for the wait on the disk. I gave up - it wasn't finalized (I'm guessing) which makes it unreadable unless you have the hack (like your camera) that allows you to go directly to individual files. It is sitting right in front of my work computer nudging my (bad) conscience. I had grand plans of sending it out along with something else. I'll get the disk out and the other thing out when it's done. Henrik | ||
| Aesquire |
Loved the story, as an oldtimer Hang Glider pilot. (with some "irregular" plane time too, Beavers and Pipers and Biplanes oh my! ) By the way, I get the same reaction from bikers, when I say I have a Buell, as I did when telling lightplane pilots I flew Hang Gliders. lol | ||
| Rocketman |
Bloody marvelous yarn Capt. I love you too man Rocket  |
