All this talk of stalls has made me remember one of my more stupid flights early in my flying career. I had around 660 hours total time and was still working at my first place of flying employment.
I had been flying in the Houston area in the company C-180 doing ‘strip’ photography for the pipe line companies on the new DOT requirements.
I was back in Tulsa for some reason and on the morning of 7-27 1971 I was told to take 21 Terrible, you might remember her from some of my other stories, to Tyler TX for EC, a patrol pilot based there who was having airplane trouble. I was told the weather , although not good, was fine if I got a move on. (I was also told that if I really could not get the job done, to leave the C-150 there and get a bus home.)
I grabbed a map and ‘got a move on.’ The flight down was rather uneventful as far as this story is concerned. Show 2.3 Hrs total time in the log book EC met me at the FBO and so did the mechanic that caused the sudden flight. He was threatening to go to the FAA with how bad the plane was if EC tried to fly it. Call me on it also. Well, I am an A&P licensed mechanic also and so I told him I would look the plane over and if I thought I could get it home I would and if it looked bad, I would call and get a ferry permit and if I would not fly it, it would sit until other arrangement were made.
So EC took me out to the plane. Oh My, what a tired little thing. Dirty, corroded, torn upholstery, the inside was coated with tabaco. EC was a chewer. ICKY, the inside was yellow with scum, especially around the little vent cups in the windshield, oil leaks, lousy compression, learned from the pull through of the engine. No directional gyro, no artificial horizon, only a VTH-2 radio, bald tires, I won’t tell you how many hours over TBO ( time between overhauls) I thought the engine had.
In other words, typical equipment for this company.(Why do you think they would hire pilots with less than 300 hours total time?)
The weather was getting worse. I needed to make up my mind.
I said I was going to take it on a test flight around the airport and see what it was doing. My, what a tired little airplane. Very weak but ran smooth in three cicles of the field. that was enough so I looked to the South and saw the weather moving in so I swung to the Northwest and radioed down that I was off to Tulsa.
I started a slow climb and worked the best possible climb out of 7753E that I could. It was not much. After a while, I could see that the clouds were going right to the ground and were getting higher than faster than I was so I did a 180 degree turn to head back to Tyler. Oops. The weather was shut down behind me and I raced to the last open area I could see. I lost the race and was trapped on top with a line of thunderstorms to the South and a solid overcast to the North. I could see where the overcast leveled out about at 8-9 thousand feet some good distance to the North. I headed that way and worked on getting altitude. I used every trick I could, even had a small clipboard under the flap handle to hold about 3-4 degrees of flap and was down to the point that any speed, even right down to the stall would not gain another foot of altitude. I was at 5200 feet. I was not going to clear the overcast.
I had gotten high enough to be able to call the FS station at McAlester and get current weather. I was had. East and West was no help. Tops of the overcast at MLC was at 8500 with some clearing above and scattered to broken North of MLC. I just had to find a way to get there. I turned back South and all that did was show that MLC was right and the line of weather was cutting me off even more.
Okay, I knew I was South and East of a straight line from TUL to Tyler. I was south of the highest mountains & South of MLC and if I could get under neath and there was any room at all. I could go West until I found the large transmission line that ran across the mountains.
The lowest part I could find over the overcast was now about 4800 feet. I was wondering what to do while thinking about what Hurley had shown me one day in a C-170. He showed me how to fly right at the stall with the engine at idle using only the rudder and compass. We had been talking about how the W.W.I pilots would use a spin to get down through an overcast because, one, they knew how to get the airplane out of a spin and two, the airplane was stable in the spin with the controls held in one position. Well a lot of modern planes do not do prolonged spins well like some of the W.W.I. fighters did. So in a high wing Cessna there is another way.
Carb heat on, engine at idle, full flaps, and trim for the edge of the stall. Just sitting there nibbling at it. You are sort of nodding up and down going from flying to mushy stall and back again. You use the rudders to nail the standby compass to a heading and do not let it get off even ½ a lubber line. Since you are more or less level, the compass wheel works a bit like a horizon but that is not to be really worried about. The point being, if the plane is not turning, it can’t be spinning and it will hold a steady glide when set up like that where it is just mushy , sorta, stalling along.
So I did that while heading to the Southeast where I knew the lowest ground was and hoped I had some kind of room underneath. It was not a day of fog so I had some good chance that it would be as I needed. * Remember, I was taught to fly close to the ground (pipeline patrol) and a good patrol pilot only needs 100 feet and a quarter mile to think he’s VFR.*
It took 3 years to get down to beneath that overcast, the air was smooth, I had not to fight any major turbulence, leg trembling was my only problem. My ability to concentrate on that compass has never been better in all my years of flying. I cried and glared at the compass daring it to waver, I shook and sweated and made promises to god, I watched the altimeter unwind and wondered it the clouds really went all the way to the ground, I worried about having to land in a field and my bad judgement would be there for all to see. ( I think that was a very big concern.) When I started to get some flashes of the ground from the corner of my eyes, I was one happy camper. I took just a few seconds to now listen to the wings whispering and talking to me in a way I had never heard before. I cleaned up things, added power, off with the carb heat and was back in the game.
I had 400 feet between the clouds and ground and almost a mile of visibility. I was FAT. Back to the Northwest and much map study as I looked for my power line guide across the mountains. I eventually found it and keeping it on my left, I was off for TUL. I had not been on the line for over 10 minutes when a Mooney came whipping by on the other side. I hope he had some approach plates or was going to a local strip he knew because it was not good behind me. I never heard about a crash so I assume he made it to his destination.
I gave weather report to MLC FSS as I went by and trucked on to TUL in clearing conditions.
Good judgement would have saved me on this day, true. Knowledge of the airplane up in the corner of the flight envelope where stalls are and a bit of practice brought me back.
You ever notice that lessons, learning experiences, terror, adventure, and all the interesting things flying wise seem to start with bad judgement?
