Lessons Learned in Vintage Airplanes Weight a minute by
Dave Clark
“Hi, Dave, let’s go flying in your little airplane!” My friend and fellow pharmacist was asking for the ride I had promised him, and it was long overdue. As we left my office about 4:00 p.m., the sun was bright, the sky cloudless, and the temperature was in the high 80s. Speedway Airport (now closed), on the northwest side of Indianapolis, had a hard surface runway oriented northeast/southwest, and it was a reasonable length, nearly 3,000 feet. A beautiful east/ west grass runway bisected the hard surface at about midpoint. I rarely ever used the hard surface, since every Aeronca Chief in the world is meant to use the sod. My friend was fairly heavy, and I asked him his weight. “About 235,” he said under his breath. With full fuel that would have put me at about gross weight for the Chief. This was a longtime friend, and I never really thought about his actual weight. I came to know him as a friend and never thought about his adipose mass. After a “follow-me-through” preflight of my little Chief, which I always did when giving rides, I hand-propped all of the 65 tired horses, untied the tail wheel, and asked my friend to join me in the cockpit. Unheeded Hint No. 1: My friend was large enough to squeeze in, but only if he sat sideways with his left arm behind my back and on the luggage compartment lid. Since I almost never used the paved runway, it seemed very natural to take off on the shorter sod runway. I made sure I started the takeoff run at the first few feet of the runway and ran it up to full power, and then released the brakes. At least I did have a go/no-go spot picked out to abort the “ride in my little airplane” if needed. It seemed to take forever to get the tail to come up, with lots of forward pressure needed on the controls. At that point I should have been smart enough to think something was amiss; not so! Doubts finally started to flood my mind, but just then, we were slightly airborne before reaching the abort spot. “Wow, I’ve got it made!” I breathed a sigh of relief. Not so fast, Junior bird man. Even with the small amount of ground
effect the little high-winged Chief could muster, we softly settled back onto the ever-shortening “taking off place.” At this point I was committed to fly, and I held it on the ground to gain as much groundspeed as I could. At the last second (really) I jerked it, yes, jerked it, over the 5-foot wire fence at the edge of the airfield and a mature stand of field corn. I was actually flying, but less than a foot above the tassels on the corn. Now I started to feel the long-ago learned shudder on the controls of an impending stall. I very slightly released a little back pressure, and I could hear the corn tassels playing a tune on my tires. Yikes! I was really sweating now, and not from the outside air temperature. I again added very slight back pressure, and we were once more inches above the corn. I had to repeat this insanity several more times. My sideways-sitting passenger yelled, “Aren’t we kinda low?” Looking straight ahead, I was only able to shout, “NOT NOW!” He remained quiet. When I thought we had gained 2-3 feet of “altitude,” I saw another challenge. It was a tree line about a quarter mile ahead. To our right, there was a low spot between some trees. I was afraid to use any aileron, so I gently poked at the right rudder enough times to line us up with the only hope we had to keep us from becoming a ball of steel tube, aluminum, and doped fabric. We cleared the low spot with about 3-4 feet to spare and ended our airborne corn picking adventure. I was happy that I had several hundred hours in my Chief and knew her well. She was flying, but she was not happy! It took about 15 minutes or so to climb to about 500 feet. I then made the decision to climb to 1,000 feet AGL and burn off some of the fuel to lighten the ship. Then, I thought, “Why don’t I fly a couple of hours, round trip, into Illinois, and it might be a little cooler with more dense air when we get back to Speedway Airport. Every little bit helps.” When we got near the Danville, Illinois, airport, my friend asked if we could land and get a sandwich. I didn’t say it, but I thought, real hard, that the last thing needed at that moment was the additional weight
“Aren’t we
kinda low?”
38 AUGUST 2012
