It’s been awhile since I updated my On-going Tailwheel Saga.
It’s because I haven’t flown since the end of October. These little annoying intervals happen in aviation. I’ll spare you the direct report of my ranting, raving, and foaming at the mouth. It’s frustrating - I was hoping to get my endorsement before the end of 2005 but it’s looking more and more unlikely. I will finish the project - just not as soon as I’d like.
It’s all quite simple, really. The first two weeks of November the weather was unsafe for the type of flying I needed to do to complete the project. The third week of November I was sick with the flu. The fourth week of November I was battling lung inflammation and the Thanksgiving holiday would have interfered in any case.
Well, here we are - first week of December. And the airplane is having mechanical difficulties. As I told C when she called me, I much prefer having the flight school cancel and call me before I make the trip out there. And much, much preferable to being 10 feet from the end of the runway and hearing >snap< BANG! wackada-wackada-wackada… which happend a couple months ago. Aside from the amazing adrenalin surge that sort of thing induces, I am spared having to push an airplane a quarter mile to a repair facility in cold and snow, which would be even more unpleasent than the summer day I dealt with last time something like that happened.
But that isn’t why I’m writing this, not really. I might have kept silent, except for the depressing news item I first heard over the TV last week. Here are some links:
http://www.morrisdailyherald.com/main.asp?SectionID=1&SubSectionID=58&ArticleID=16298&TM=52813.36
I can’t say I knew Mr. Walker - his face and name are famillar, so I might have seen him or bumped into him at Morris. Or perhaps not. There are a lot of young white men at any airport. There are a lot of Cherokee 140’s. In many ways he is a much more typical example of a pilot than I will ever be.
I can relate to how he died, even if I don’t know why he made some of the choices he did. I’ve detoured around many a broadcast antenna, I’ve flown low, I’ve battled winds. Would I have flown on the day he died? No, I would not have - there was weather severe enough over the Rockies to shut down highways and cause road fatalities. I don’t consider the Piper Cherokee 140 to be a foul weather airplane, I view it as less capable than the Piper Warriors (PA-28-151 and PA-28-161) that I fly, and I don’t consider them foul weather aircraft, either, even if I have ridden on them in instrument conditions (with a properly certified-for-instrument-flight pilot in charge). Properly equipped, and with a properly and fully trained pilot, they can handle the no-visibility part of such flying but they have no mechanism to deal with ice accumulation and being of relatively low mass they are easily tossed by gusts and winds. Flying one in winter weather is not to be done lightly.
But perhaps the weather reports indicated less severe weather on his flight path. Perhaps he thought he could handle it. Perhaps something else went wrong. We just don’t know for sure at this point.
I do understand how he could come to be flying low under the cloud ceiling. I understand how he could miss a tower and come to grief. He probably shouldn’t have been there, yes, but I understand how could have made a series of decision that, one by one, made sense but nonetheless resulted in his death and the death of two other people. I have survived a forced landing into a field due to bad and worsening weather. There but for the grace of God go I…
One of the things that really bugs me about these sorts of accidents - other than the deaths of fellow human beings - is what I call the “ghost car”. The pilot drove to the airport to get to the airplane… and his car is still there. I remember a few years back when one of the pilots at my Indiana home airport died. He car sat for weeks, unmoved, untouched. It was a reminder that he wasn’t coming home, a reminder of a life interrupted. When they brought that pilot home, unloading his coffin from an airplane, his body was there and then taken away very quickly but his car sat and sat and sat…
It does bother me, to think that if I made such an error it could be my face on the TV, in the paper, on the internet. In aviation you can never assume your mistakes will remain private.
At least this time the wreck will not be housed at Morris during the investigation. I will not have walk past a smashed pile of junk. I’ve had that experience in the past, with other crashes. After a few weeks the wreck can smell pretty ripe, too, which is just another reminder of death and destruction.
So I sit here, listening to cars going by on the street outside and hearing the slush under their wheels from the snowy streets. When I look out the window and see the low ceiling and the falling snow I think… well, perhaps it doesn’t matter the Citabria is in the shop. Maybe not so good a day for flying because of the weather. Most of all, I remind myself that no matter how much fun flying is, it is still serious business. The risks are real, even if most days we keep them at bay.