I had planned to help my wife work around the house; but the engagement of one of my sons and his desire to hook up with us that night via iChat made an unscheduled trip to the beauty salon necessary for her. Suddenly, faced with no obligations, I decided to go back down to Galveston where my infirm Cheetah sat. I had said to my mechanic when I had left the night before we needed to run the airplane on the right mag alone to verify our analysis of the problems it was having. So, I decided to do just that, taking my flight bag with all my flight gear inside it. I hopped into my truck and headed south on that hot and sunny day toward the beach and the wide, towered airfield that was Scholes Field.
When I got there, after making my obligatory stop at the Terminal to hit the restroom, my airplane was sitting at the mouth of Bill’s hangar as if he had known I was coming. Bill, one of his interns, and probably the pilot of the Mooney they were working on were behind my airplane, huddled around the Mooney’s engine. Bill was threading a wire past its cylinders and seemed oblivious to my presence; I decided just to press on with getting the airplane ready to pull out of the hangar. As I checked out the cockpit, Bill came up and said hello and attached a tow bar to the airplane’s nose and we pulled the airplane out about twenty feet and turned it so the tail was pointing at the wide expanse of concrete behind me.
“You watch,” I said to Bill, “this darned airplane will check out just fine. What are we going to do then?”
Bill shrugged his shoulders.
“Go fly it?” he supposed. We were leaping off into the world of “Checks good on deck: cannot duplicate the problem” also known in NASA-speak as the “Unexplained Anomaly” or “U.A.”.
I laughed, hopping in the cockpit and rigging up my headset while grabbing my checklist and strapping in.
“Clear prop!” I yelled, after running through the pre-start checklist, giving the engine three shots of primer because it hadn’t been run much. I switched the Mags to Left and hit the Starter button. The prop cranked over a couple of times and I pulled the throttle full back and the engine roared to life. Her oil pressure was already on its way to the green as soon as I checked, so I brought the radios up and then checked the engine gauges again. Everything looked great.
I placed the Run-Up checklist on my lap and pushed the throttle forward, the engine following me up to 1800 RPM’s as I did. My feet mashed on the airplane’s brakes and she bucked against standing still; the wind was trying hard to blow off my hat not protected by the open canopy. I switched the Mags to Left and watched the RPM drop down about 125 and sit there. I switched them back to Both and they bounced back to 1800 and then dropped 125 again as I switched to Right. The damn thing had done what I had jokingly suggested; it had run like nothing had ever been wrong with it!
I taxied the airplane around in a loop just to give me something fun to do; and when I got the nose pointed back around again, I stopped the airplane, locked the brakes, ran her up to 1800 RPM, and checked the mags again. And, again, they passed!
By now, Bill was glancing at me from inside the hangar. Laughing, I have him a “thumbs up”. As he walked toward me, I shut the airplane down and hopped out.
“Do you believe that?” I asked.”
“Of course,” he said, “it’s an airplane!”
An airplane engine and its environs is the hottest about twenty minutes after it’s shutdown. I wanted to see if the problem we were looking for might be heat-associated, so I told Bill I’d let it heat-soak for 20 minutes and then restart it and try it again. I also decided that if it passed that mag check, I had no good reason not to take it flying. Bill agreed. I got on my iPhone to call my wife and we talked about the plan for the afternoon, which had just shifted due to a now-flyable airplane. She offered to cancel her hair saloon’s appointment about thirty minutes away, but I told her there was no need. For one thing, until I flew the airplane a bit, I really didn’t know if it was indeed “up” or if I needed to return it to the shop. My test plan was to fly it to Pearland, where I would do two touch and go’s and then land and check the magnetos. If they performed normally, I then would have the option of flying some more or pulling the airplane over into the shade of our covered tie-down and awaiting her there. If they didn’t and I trusted the airplane enough to get it back to Galveston, I’d be flying it back to where my truck was and wouldn’t need to fetch it back. She went on to her appointment with her hair stylist, and I went on to my appointment with the airplane.
I performed a complete pre-flight as Bill called the Evergreen FBO to inquire about the status of the fuel pump which has been down almost as much as my Cheetah this year. When they told him it was indeed broken, he asked them to drive the fuel truck down, and they agreed. I found a couple of inspection plates missing from the bottom of the right wing where Bill had been working and called out to him. He had overlooked them, and he finished buttoning them down as the fuel truck arrived. I asked the fuel truck driver to top off both wings. He said “Sure” and then got busy with his task. I finished the preflight and came back around the front of the airplane to find him finishing up and ready for me to pay. I have him a credit card that he processed and then I signed for the gas, turned, and saw that his truck’s grounding wire was still attached to my airplane. I told him to “hold up” as I detached it and then he reeled it back.
Hopping into the cockpit, I pulled out a Houston area terminal chart and put it up against the windscreen if I needed it for reference, strapped in and strapped my kneeboard to my right leg. Down the Pre-Start Checklist I went, priming the engine only once to make it ready to start.
“Clear prop!” I called, as I made sure no one was in front of me to get hit. I pressed the Starter button, the propeller spun clockwise, and the engine came to life. Ignition to Both and Oil Pressure was up. Leaving the intercom off, I brought the radios on and listened to the current Galveston weather that could have been summed up by “clear and HOT!” instead of by temperature and altimeter. Setting the altimeter, I noted the winds as I watched my KLN-89B GPS spin out error messages I hadn’t seen before. Months of sitting in a hangar had apparently killed its internal battery and perhaps more, though in a few moments it did have a correct bearing and distance to Pearland.
I decided to do my Before Takeoff checklist before I called Galveston Ground, so I ran the engine up and did the mag checks and everything worked like it was supposed to. I configured the airplane and radios for flight and then called Ground who gave me a clearance to taxi to runway 17 using taxiway Echo, an instruction that put the takeoff runway only yards away. Closing the canopy as I taxied up to the hold short line, I switched over to Tower for clearance for takeoff and got it right away. Spinning left to align the airplane with the runway, I pushed the throttle in all the way and we surged forward. At 60 mph, I pulled the stick back to what I use as takeoff attitude, and after staying there for only a moment, the airplane lifted off. As it climbed and the remaining runway slowly disappeared under the nose, I glanced at the engine instruments and they all looked okay. I hit four hundred feet above the ground and requested a right turn from the Tower which they approved, so I cranked her around to the right until I was heading back up to the northwest toward Pearland across the small waterway that was the Intercoastal.
Below me, the homes on Tiki Island formed a circle to protect themselves against the water surrounding them, while slightly off to my right and ahead the oil tanks and towers of a petroleum plant marked the southern edge of the coastline north of Galveston. I leveled the airplane off at 1600 feet and switched my radio over to Houston Approach to listen for any air traffic that might be coming my way. The oil temperature gauge was indicating in the green but, unfortunately, way over to the right as it had been doing since we installed the PowerFlow.
I had about ten miles of visibility due to haze, but it was still a glorious day. I was flying again! I had forgotten how much I loved it and often it seemed that the struggles we were going through to keep an airplane and ourselves airborne in it weren’t worth it. But, at that moment, despite the hot running engine and the peeling paint, I was grateful to have an airplane of my own and grateful we could fly. Tomorrow might be another story.
As I approached Pearland, I listened to its automated weather broadcast and set up for runway 14 due to small but persistent southern winds. I was the only one in the landing pattern, so I did two touch and go landings as planned and then rolled to a stop on the third. Once I was clear of the runway, I pulled the airplane over in a convenient spot, ran the engine up to 1800 rpm, ad checked the mags again. They were fine. Not knowing how much longer it would be before my wife got there, I taxied the airplane back to the covered tie-down spot she hadn’t seen in months and tied her down there in its shade.
It’s been about a week since we’ve gotten her back, and I’m pleased to say the fuel leak in the right wing does look like it’s been cured and the mags haven’t misbehaved. The GPS is going to need some service and I’m going to have to chase the hot running engine, but at least we can fly now and then.
Like they say, miracles happen; just when it comes to airplanes, don’t expect them to last.