YAK's and Hundred Dollar Po-Boys
Even though it was the day before the first day of fall, it felt more like summer. Scattered, white puffy clouds were roaming the skies obscured by a haze layer that went up to four thousand feet. The blazing sun was warming things up quickly, and temperatures were already hitting ninety degrees when we taxied the Cheetah out for launch and lunch. We were heading for Brazoria County airport’s Windsock Grill, known for its good service and good food, and mostly its homemade pies. Connie and I were piled into our airplane for the short trip; Brazoria County was only 27 miles away.
We taxied up onto Pearland’s main ramp and turned right to head to the departing end of runway 32. Parked just south of the turn and on the east side of the taxiway were ex-Chinese Air Force, radial-engined, low-winged Yak’s, two of the three at the airport. Rumor had it they were being groomed for airshow use. Several people were huddled around each airplane to get them ready to fly. I waved at one of the ground crew perched underneath a Yak, and he waved back but seemed irritated at “having” to do it.
Once past the Yak’s, we were the only airplane on the taxiway, so I took us as far down into the run-up area as I could before turning the airplane back into the wind and pulling out our Take-Off Checklists. Connie and I reviewed the engine run-up portion of it and I pushed the throttle up to 1800 RPM to execute it. Both mags, the carb heat, and the engine parameters checked out okay. We then stepped through the rest of the takeoff checks, wiggling flight controls, setting trim and radios, and ensuring the canopy was closed. A Bonanza called on downwind as I spun our airplane around counter-clockwise to look for traffic. The Bonanza was it and he was barely past mid-field, so I pushed the throttle forward and taxied out onto the runway as I called our departure out on the radios. Aligning with the runway centerline, I pushed the throttle all the way up as the nose came around.
At 60, I pulled back on the stick; the airplane flew nose up for about three seconds before unsticking off the ground. I pushed the nose down just a little to help the Cheetah accelerate and then pulled her back up as the airspeed approached 91,i.e., best rate. The trees ahead of us slowly dropped underneath. As we cleared them, we were pointed at the mass of homes ahead of us to the north; so, as the altimeter hit three hundred feet, I banked us right to head toward our destination and turn us away from them. I continued the turn until my directional gyro said I was at two zero one degrees. But the GPS was showing me tracking two zero seven degrees. I had learned a long time ago that, especially in a climb when the compass is also useless, my KLN-89B GPS could be used as a fairly reliable heading indicator. I lined up my track with what it was telling me would bullseye Brazoria.
At seventeen hundred feet, I leveled us off, throttling back to 2500 rpm once we had accelerated a bit. We listened to Houston Approach work traffic to the northwest and east of us, but heard nothing to think there was anyone he was working in our general vicinity. I pulled out the Houston Terminal Area chart and wrestled with it; for some reason, I was having a hard time correlating our exact (to-the-foot) position with what I was seeing on the ground. Only when I saw the square lakes and the 1038 foot tower northeast of Angleton sliding past us did I nail it exactly; by then, we were almost there. I switched the radio up to Brazoria County’s traffic frequency to hear one airplane shooting a practice ILS approach to runway 17 talking to another one flying out from the airport to do the same. I called our position as we picked up the guy flying outbound. He was almost co-altitude with us at our “two-thirty” and going the other way; he waggled his wings to acknowledge us. I waggled ours back. We were well clear. Another Cessna called saying he was departing on runway 35, so I kept us up at sixteen hundred feet to provide a vertical buffer. Connie spotted him lifting off as we slid over him below. We continued west; and once I was about a mile and a half away from the airport, I banked left in a descending turn toward the downwind for runway 35. I called our position and hit the downwind fast, throttling back to slow us to 80 mph, as I also pulled the nose up to hold our one thousand foot altitude. I called “turning base” and rolled on final kind of close in, picking up the four-light VASI but flying for a touchdown point instead. We touched down at around the first third of the runway, and I braked moderately to make sure we turned off at the first exit. As we did, a white and blue Cessna 172 taxied past. Once I had cleared the “hold short” lines, I called us “clear of the runway” and informed the world we were “taxiing to the diner”.
“Try the taco soup,” someone in the Cessna said.
“Might do that,” I replied. “Thanks.”
Gunning the engine a bit, I taxied us forward across the parallel taxiway and turned onto the ramp past some gas pumps and a hangar to point at the diner. We taxied up to it as the only airplane there, and I spun us left over the tie down ropes that littered a cable running parallel to the taxiway. I shut the engine down, pulled off my headset and my kneeboard, installed the control lock, and followed Connie out, shutting the Cheetah’s canopy behind us.
The Windsock Grill is housed in a square, red-brick building with white trim and its name in blue letters, and half of the lower half of the building disappears behind black tinted doors and windows. Inside it, we picked a small, two-person table next to the long window facing the taxiway and runway so we could see who came and went. Our young, black haired waitress arrived bearing two menus. She asked what we wanted to drink; Connie picked her usual diet Coke and I ice tea; and then the waitress asked if we wanted to know what the special was. Connie did. I thought it might be the taco soup, but it turned out to a stuffed potato. Connie decided she wanted a shrimp po-boy, copycatting what she knew I was going to order. I ordered one, too, not letting her first pick sway me. Before she left, Connie wisely asked if they had any pie. Two pieces of blueberry and several peach were left. I ordered the two blueberry slices for us and asked for mine a-la-mode with vanilla ice cream. Sometimes, you gotta strike when the iron’s hot!
Outside the window, the two airplanes shooting ILS approaches roared by sporadically. As our blueberry pie and ice cream arrived at our table, we heard the sound of a radial engine pass overhead; and I looked up through the window to see a grey, straight-winged, radial-engined prop plane heading for the downwind. A few delicious bites of pie later and the airplane was on the ground taxiing toward us. It was another Yak, and not one of the ones we had seen at Pearland. This grey airplane had a red and yellow-outlined dragon standing just behind its nose and red and yellow-outlined Chinese stars and bars on the fuselage. It slid into place right beside our Cheetah and shut down. A black haired man in his fifties wearing shorts climbed out of the front cockpit while a white-haired female companion climbed out of the back and walked toward the Windsock Grill.
“Now, that’s the way to go,” I mumbled. “I bet they have plenty of climb and speed and almost never have to worry about weight and balance.”
Any glance at airplane classifieds these days will show a Yak for sale somewhere. A few of them are the single-seat versions famous for their aerobatic agility; most are two seat versions, old military trainers used up and retired. Brokers are getting them for almost nothing and then selling them here in the US to buyers who want a cheap and bonified means of joining the warbird or airshow crowds. I mean, what American warbird can you buy for between fifty and eighty thousand dollars that’s in flyable condition? I’ve soloed in the T-28B/C and would love to have one, but to buy one would cost between two hundred thousand and three hundred fifty thousand dollars!! That’s too much dough for an engineer working in the space program…
Our shrimp po-boys arrived, and we dug into them. Connie couldn’t eat much of hers; the pie alone had been too much. She asked the waitress for a “to-go” box, but I was going to have none of that. I was eating mine at a steady pace as a twin-engined Piper taxied up followed quickly by the blue and white Cessna we had passed as it went out to shoot approaches down the ILS.
We finished our lunch and Connie sat for a moment while I paid the bill and then hit the restroom. When I came out, we mozied out to the Cheetah, settling into the cockpit as a pretty red and white and signed RV-6 taxied in bearing a black-haired young man wearing sunglasses and his blonde female companion. As they taxied by, pulling into place next to us, I had waved at him and Connie had waved at her. Neither of them had acknowledged us. Connie mentioned it as I cranked up the Cheetah.
“The problem with having your name on the side of your airplane,” I said in response, “is that if you act like an asshole, everyone knows whom the asshole is.”
The Cheetah started on my first try. As I ran through the taxi checklist, another Cessna 172 came in carrying two men in olive-colored flight suits and parked opposite us. Civil Air Patrol, I guessed. We waved at each other as I taxied out, acknowledging the common bond between people who flirt with the air.
Our back-at-Pearland-tiedown-neighbor had told us that gas was selling for $3.50 a gallon at Brazoria, as opposed to $4.25 at Pearland. I’m all for supporting my local airport, but that was too big a price difference to pass up. So, we taxied down to the Brazoria BP gas pump and filled the Cheetah up with 100LL. Ellis was a little off; the cost was $3.51 per gallon. That was good enough for me!
Fat on gas and not rushed for once, we got back in the Cheetah and then turned east after takeoff. It was just a little before one p.m. and the sun’s heat was converting into thermals giving us a bouncy ride and, gratefully, carrying us upward. I was aiming to take us to thirty-five hundred feet so I could fly the length of Galveston Island while keeping us a thousand feet above Shoales Field’s Class D airspace. As always, I could see the top of the haze layer would still be one thousand to fifteen hundred feet above us. One of these days…
I knew there were a couple of two thousand foot radio towers nearby, and I held us a bit west of a bayou to make sure we remained clear of them until we climbed above. We hit the coast-line just after I leveled off at thirty-five hundred, crossing the bridge that links Galveston Island on its southwestern side with the rest of the Texas mainland. We barreled east, splitting the island in half, with the Intercoastal Waterway on the left side of our airplane and the island’s white beaches on our right. There was absolutely no horizon except the artificial one on the instrument panel; and I was once-again happy I was instrument trained even though we were technically flying VFR.
Below, I watched as the runways, hangars, and openness of the Galveston airport slid below us. A single cruise ship lumbered at the Galveston docks as we flew past the scattered block homes and businesses that made up the town. Banking gently left, I cut across the east end of the island to head out across the bay and the eastern end of the Texas City refineries. Over the radios, we heard Galveston Tower talking to a twin coming in from the northeast. Connie spotted it at our one o’clock and very low just as it slid beneath us.
As we crossed over the water to fly to Texas City, I checked the Houston TCA chart to make sure I was clear of Galveston tower’s airspace and pulled the engine rpm back a couple of hundred to start a powered descent. Class B airspace just north of me was not a problem; its floor was at four thousand feet. At fifteen DME from Hobby, however, the floor dropped to two thousand, so I watched the DME and altimeter both clock down to make sure I was below the floor by then. We were headed back to Pearland.
I switched the radios up to listen to Houston Approach as we motored in at a final fifteen hundred feet. On COMM2, I pulled in the Pearland weather. The winds were running 040 at 8, so I was initially planning on running an upwind entry to 32 and crossing over the field once I had scoped out the traffic. But then I heard Approach vectoring traffic for Polly Ranch, a subdivision of homes scattered around a private runway and less then a mile and just right of our nose. As Approach released him, we still had not seen him, so I altered our course a bit south and west, abandoning the upwind 32 idea for a round-the-airport normal 45 degree entry into the 32 downwind. As I dodged the 1200 foot tower and was swinging us into position for that approach, Connie reported seeing an airplane on our right and very close. I didn’t see anyone for a few moments and then caught him slinking along the ground below us, i.e., probably the powerline patrol. Over the radios, now up on Pearland’s airport frequency, we heard traffic departing runway 14. A quick check on the ASOS said the winds had gone calm, so I decided, with some frustration, to cross at midfield and set up for a 14 approach. I did so without a problem and turned a close-in base, suddenly finding myself at 90 mph (REALLY FAST!) and a bit high as I turned onto final. HOW DID THAT HAPPEN??!! Pulling the power off, I slipped toward the runway below, blowing past my usual touchdown points, and not putting her on the ground until almost half way down the runway! I braked moderately hard. The brakes didn’t feel like they were doing much; but I kept it up, only letting go when I knew I could turn us off at the very last exit.
“That was the worst approach I’ve flown in a long time!” I thought as I cleaned the airplane up and taxied her along the parallel taxiway back up toward the Terminal and our covered tiedown not far from it. At the other end of the taxiway, I could see the three Yak’s, idling as they awaited takeoff. I turned us off the taxiway into the ramp and from there scooted over to our concrete ramp, the one in front of our covered carport we call home.
After shutting the Cheetah down, I sat in the cockpit unplugging headsets and packing them up and recording flight time as I heard the Yak’s power up. Turning, I watched them take off as singles and quickly join up as they circled back and flew over my head. The three of them were working a fingertip formation, with two tucked in tight and three too far out. I guess I wasn’t the only one not doing things “just right”.
I felt like I’d had a damned tailwind during that approach. Anyone know what the winds really were?
But that wasn’t the worst of it. That happened as I walked toward my car. I heard and saw the dragon-nosed Yak we’d seen at Brazoria taxi up to Pearland’s gas pumps, top off, and take off again. I guess he had his reasons; but if he had gassed up at Brazoria instead of Pearland, he’d have saved 70 cents a gallon.
I couldn’t help but feel that nothing I had done today had been as dumb as that.
We taxied up onto Pearland’s main ramp and turned right to head to the departing end of runway 32. Parked just south of the turn and on the east side of the taxiway were ex-Chinese Air Force, radial-engined, low-winged Yak’s, two of the three at the airport. Rumor had it they were being groomed for airshow use. Several people were huddled around each airplane to get them ready to fly. I waved at one of the ground crew perched underneath a Yak, and he waved back but seemed irritated at “having” to do it.
Once past the Yak’s, we were the only airplane on the taxiway, so I took us as far down into the run-up area as I could before turning the airplane back into the wind and pulling out our Take-Off Checklists. Connie and I reviewed the engine run-up portion of it and I pushed the throttle up to 1800 RPM to execute it. Both mags, the carb heat, and the engine parameters checked out okay. We then stepped through the rest of the takeoff checks, wiggling flight controls, setting trim and radios, and ensuring the canopy was closed. A Bonanza called on downwind as I spun our airplane around counter-clockwise to look for traffic. The Bonanza was it and he was barely past mid-field, so I pushed the throttle forward and taxied out onto the runway as I called our departure out on the radios. Aligning with the runway centerline, I pushed the throttle all the way up as the nose came around.
At 60, I pulled back on the stick; the airplane flew nose up for about three seconds before unsticking off the ground. I pushed the nose down just a little to help the Cheetah accelerate and then pulled her back up as the airspeed approached 91,i.e., best rate. The trees ahead of us slowly dropped underneath. As we cleared them, we were pointed at the mass of homes ahead of us to the north; so, as the altimeter hit three hundred feet, I banked us right to head toward our destination and turn us away from them. I continued the turn until my directional gyro said I was at two zero one degrees. But the GPS was showing me tracking two zero seven degrees. I had learned a long time ago that, especially in a climb when the compass is also useless, my KLN-89B GPS could be used as a fairly reliable heading indicator. I lined up my track with what it was telling me would bullseye Brazoria.
At seventeen hundred feet, I leveled us off, throttling back to 2500 rpm once we had accelerated a bit. We listened to Houston Approach work traffic to the northwest and east of us, but heard nothing to think there was anyone he was working in our general vicinity. I pulled out the Houston Terminal Area chart and wrestled with it; for some reason, I was having a hard time correlating our exact (to-the-foot) position with what I was seeing on the ground. Only when I saw the square lakes and the 1038 foot tower northeast of Angleton sliding past us did I nail it exactly; by then, we were almost there. I switched the radio up to Brazoria County’s traffic frequency to hear one airplane shooting a practice ILS approach to runway 17 talking to another one flying out from the airport to do the same. I called our position as we picked up the guy flying outbound. He was almost co-altitude with us at our “two-thirty” and going the other way; he waggled his wings to acknowledge us. I waggled ours back. We were well clear. Another Cessna called saying he was departing on runway 35, so I kept us up at sixteen hundred feet to provide a vertical buffer. Connie spotted him lifting off as we slid over him below. We continued west; and once I was about a mile and a half away from the airport, I banked left in a descending turn toward the downwind for runway 35. I called our position and hit the downwind fast, throttling back to slow us to 80 mph, as I also pulled the nose up to hold our one thousand foot altitude. I called “turning base” and rolled on final kind of close in, picking up the four-light VASI but flying for a touchdown point instead. We touched down at around the first third of the runway, and I braked moderately to make sure we turned off at the first exit. As we did, a white and blue Cessna 172 taxied past. Once I had cleared the “hold short” lines, I called us “clear of the runway” and informed the world we were “taxiing to the diner”.
“Try the taco soup,” someone in the Cessna said.
“Might do that,” I replied. “Thanks.”
Gunning the engine a bit, I taxied us forward across the parallel taxiway and turned onto the ramp past some gas pumps and a hangar to point at the diner. We taxied up to it as the only airplane there, and I spun us left over the tie down ropes that littered a cable running parallel to the taxiway. I shut the engine down, pulled off my headset and my kneeboard, installed the control lock, and followed Connie out, shutting the Cheetah’s canopy behind us.
The Windsock Grill is housed in a square, red-brick building with white trim and its name in blue letters, and half of the lower half of the building disappears behind black tinted doors and windows. Inside it, we picked a small, two-person table next to the long window facing the taxiway and runway so we could see who came and went. Our young, black haired waitress arrived bearing two menus. She asked what we wanted to drink; Connie picked her usual diet Coke and I ice tea; and then the waitress asked if we wanted to know what the special was. Connie did. I thought it might be the taco soup, but it turned out to a stuffed potato. Connie decided she wanted a shrimp po-boy, copycatting what she knew I was going to order. I ordered one, too, not letting her first pick sway me. Before she left, Connie wisely asked if they had any pie. Two pieces of blueberry and several peach were left. I ordered the two blueberry slices for us and asked for mine a-la-mode with vanilla ice cream. Sometimes, you gotta strike when the iron’s hot!
Outside the window, the two airplanes shooting ILS approaches roared by sporadically. As our blueberry pie and ice cream arrived at our table, we heard the sound of a radial engine pass overhead; and I looked up through the window to see a grey, straight-winged, radial-engined prop plane heading for the downwind. A few delicious bites of pie later and the airplane was on the ground taxiing toward us. It was another Yak, and not one of the ones we had seen at Pearland. This grey airplane had a red and yellow-outlined dragon standing just behind its nose and red and yellow-outlined Chinese stars and bars on the fuselage. It slid into place right beside our Cheetah and shut down. A black haired man in his fifties wearing shorts climbed out of the front cockpit while a white-haired female companion climbed out of the back and walked toward the Windsock Grill.
“Now, that’s the way to go,” I mumbled. “I bet they have plenty of climb and speed and almost never have to worry about weight and balance.”
Any glance at airplane classifieds these days will show a Yak for sale somewhere. A few of them are the single-seat versions famous for their aerobatic agility; most are two seat versions, old military trainers used up and retired. Brokers are getting them for almost nothing and then selling them here in the US to buyers who want a cheap and bonified means of joining the warbird or airshow crowds. I mean, what American warbird can you buy for between fifty and eighty thousand dollars that’s in flyable condition? I’ve soloed in the T-28B/C and would love to have one, but to buy one would cost between two hundred thousand and three hundred fifty thousand dollars!! That’s too much dough for an engineer working in the space program…
Our shrimp po-boys arrived, and we dug into them. Connie couldn’t eat much of hers; the pie alone had been too much. She asked the waitress for a “to-go” box, but I was going to have none of that. I was eating mine at a steady pace as a twin-engined Piper taxied up followed quickly by the blue and white Cessna we had passed as it went out to shoot approaches down the ILS.
We finished our lunch and Connie sat for a moment while I paid the bill and then hit the restroom. When I came out, we mozied out to the Cheetah, settling into the cockpit as a pretty red and white and signed RV-6 taxied in bearing a black-haired young man wearing sunglasses and his blonde female companion. As they taxied by, pulling into place next to us, I had waved at him and Connie had waved at her. Neither of them had acknowledged us. Connie mentioned it as I cranked up the Cheetah.
“The problem with having your name on the side of your airplane,” I said in response, “is that if you act like an asshole, everyone knows whom the asshole is.”
The Cheetah started on my first try. As I ran through the taxi checklist, another Cessna 172 came in carrying two men in olive-colored flight suits and parked opposite us. Civil Air Patrol, I guessed. We waved at each other as I taxied out, acknowledging the common bond between people who flirt with the air.
Our back-at-Pearland-tiedown-neighbor had told us that gas was selling for $3.50 a gallon at Brazoria, as opposed to $4.25 at Pearland. I’m all for supporting my local airport, but that was too big a price difference to pass up. So, we taxied down to the Brazoria BP gas pump and filled the Cheetah up with 100LL. Ellis was a little off; the cost was $3.51 per gallon. That was good enough for me!
Fat on gas and not rushed for once, we got back in the Cheetah and then turned east after takeoff. It was just a little before one p.m. and the sun’s heat was converting into thermals giving us a bouncy ride and, gratefully, carrying us upward. I was aiming to take us to thirty-five hundred feet so I could fly the length of Galveston Island while keeping us a thousand feet above Shoales Field’s Class D airspace. As always, I could see the top of the haze layer would still be one thousand to fifteen hundred feet above us. One of these days…
I knew there were a couple of two thousand foot radio towers nearby, and I held us a bit west of a bayou to make sure we remained clear of them until we climbed above. We hit the coast-line just after I leveled off at thirty-five hundred, crossing the bridge that links Galveston Island on its southwestern side with the rest of the Texas mainland. We barreled east, splitting the island in half, with the Intercoastal Waterway on the left side of our airplane and the island’s white beaches on our right. There was absolutely no horizon except the artificial one on the instrument panel; and I was once-again happy I was instrument trained even though we were technically flying VFR.
Below, I watched as the runways, hangars, and openness of the Galveston airport slid below us. A single cruise ship lumbered at the Galveston docks as we flew past the scattered block homes and businesses that made up the town. Banking gently left, I cut across the east end of the island to head out across the bay and the eastern end of the Texas City refineries. Over the radios, we heard Galveston Tower talking to a twin coming in from the northeast. Connie spotted it at our one o’clock and very low just as it slid beneath us.
As we crossed over the water to fly to Texas City, I checked the Houston TCA chart to make sure I was clear of Galveston tower’s airspace and pulled the engine rpm back a couple of hundred to start a powered descent. Class B airspace just north of me was not a problem; its floor was at four thousand feet. At fifteen DME from Hobby, however, the floor dropped to two thousand, so I watched the DME and altimeter both clock down to make sure I was below the floor by then. We were headed back to Pearland.
I switched the radios up to listen to Houston Approach as we motored in at a final fifteen hundred feet. On COMM2, I pulled in the Pearland weather. The winds were running 040 at 8, so I was initially planning on running an upwind entry to 32 and crossing over the field once I had scoped out the traffic. But then I heard Approach vectoring traffic for Polly Ranch, a subdivision of homes scattered around a private runway and less then a mile and just right of our nose. As Approach released him, we still had not seen him, so I altered our course a bit south and west, abandoning the upwind 32 idea for a round-the-airport normal 45 degree entry into the 32 downwind. As I dodged the 1200 foot tower and was swinging us into position for that approach, Connie reported seeing an airplane on our right and very close. I didn’t see anyone for a few moments and then caught him slinking along the ground below us, i.e., probably the powerline patrol. Over the radios, now up on Pearland’s airport frequency, we heard traffic departing runway 14. A quick check on the ASOS said the winds had gone calm, so I decided, with some frustration, to cross at midfield and set up for a 14 approach. I did so without a problem and turned a close-in base, suddenly finding myself at 90 mph (REALLY FAST!) and a bit high as I turned onto final. HOW DID THAT HAPPEN??!! Pulling the power off, I slipped toward the runway below, blowing past my usual touchdown points, and not putting her on the ground until almost half way down the runway! I braked moderately hard. The brakes didn’t feel like they were doing much; but I kept it up, only letting go when I knew I could turn us off at the very last exit.
“That was the worst approach I’ve flown in a long time!” I thought as I cleaned the airplane up and taxied her along the parallel taxiway back up toward the Terminal and our covered tiedown not far from it. At the other end of the taxiway, I could see the three Yak’s, idling as they awaited takeoff. I turned us off the taxiway into the ramp and from there scooted over to our concrete ramp, the one in front of our covered carport we call home.
After shutting the Cheetah down, I sat in the cockpit unplugging headsets and packing them up and recording flight time as I heard the Yak’s power up. Turning, I watched them take off as singles and quickly join up as they circled back and flew over my head. The three of them were working a fingertip formation, with two tucked in tight and three too far out. I guess I wasn’t the only one not doing things “just right”.
I felt like I’d had a damned tailwind during that approach. Anyone know what the winds really were?
But that wasn’t the worst of it. That happened as I walked toward my car. I heard and saw the dragon-nosed Yak we’d seen at Brazoria taxi up to Pearland’s gas pumps, top off, and take off again. I guess he had his reasons; but if he had gassed up at Brazoria instead of Pearland, he’d have saved 70 cents a gallon.
I couldn’t help but feel that nothing I had done today had been as dumb as that.
posted by Andy Foster at 10:01 AM
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