January 1, 2021, the COVID-19 pandemic rages on. At this point, there are more than 354,000 deaths in the US attributable to the SARS-CoV-2 virus. My wife and I follow the CDC and WHO guidelines and we generally go out of the house only for groceries, but I’m still flying. The race for a vaccine is on and we’re hoping that soon we’ll start seeing the light at the end of the tunnel. Two of our four kids contract the disease but both cases are very light and they recover quickly.
Below are some brief stories of my flights in January 2021, and details on a close call I had.
On January 1, 2021, I decided to do a New Years Day flight around the area. It’s not a long flight — I only head for the Huntsville area — and I’m in the air for less than an hour. But it’s a kind of tradition in some corners of the world — to fly on New Years Day — and I like the idea. It’s in the 40s but I’m nice and toasty in my enclosed cabin. I have cabin heat but don’t really need it.
In our quest to find places to go have lunch in our aircraft, on the 5th of January I fly to the airport near Lufkin — Angelina County Airport [KLFK]. They are supposed to have a restaurant on-site and are even supposed to have outdoor seating. So, I went to check it out. I get an early start. Temps are a bit warming, in the high 50s and low-60s. Flying northeast from our airport, you can’t really avoid overflying Lake Livingston.
Another 30 minutes and I see the airport, land, and pull up for some fuel.
After refueling, I catch the attention of an airport worker who is busy refueling another plane. Standing 10+ feet apart, I ask him about the restaurant and he enthusiastically tells me it’s open for business! Good for both of us! I also can clearly see there is outdoor seating, so this looks like a good place to come for lunch.
The flight back is uneventful. It’s easy to see where the evergreen trees are, compared to the deciduous trees. I’m over Lake Livingston again, but the light is different so it warrants another picture!
On January 17, I did some simple joy-flying* in the local area, along with 3 stop-n-go’s.
* Like driving a car for fun is called joy-riding, then flying my plane for fun could certainly be called joy-flying. Often there is a practical reason: running the engine and all the other systems of the plane to keep it in nominal shape. But whether it’s for that or not, it is without a doubt fun to just fly around in the open skies.
January 18, I flew the Cavalon to Fair Weather Field to have my A&P do the annual condition inspection. I always enjoy this flight, all the more since I know I’ll be without my Cavalon for a week or more.
On the way over there, I decided to overfly my son’s house. I let them know when I’d be overhead, so his wife and my three grandkids all came out to wave at me.
After the flight, I turned my aircraft over to the trusty hands of my A&P, my wife picks me up and we head home.
My A&P was very quick this year, and my plane was ready to be picked up on January 26. My wife dropped me off and I spend some time chatting with the A&P and his helper. Finally, it’s time for me to saddle up and head home. What happened then is one of the more weird events I’ve had with my Cavalon.
Except for the two flights to Lufkin, most of my flying is off my home airport, which is turf. Turf means a slower roll-out and it takes a bit longer to get up to speed. Today, though, I was on asphalt and I was caught not paying attention. At a specific moment in pre-rotation when the rotor is getting near its optimal rotation speed, I pull the stick back at the same time as I release the pre-rotator. Almost simultaneously, I slowly (but steadily) add power so that the air is going through the rotor, more and more, to bring it up to the speed where I am “balancing on the mains”. (In the Cavalon, it’s less balancing as it is allowing the nosewheel to come off the turf just a bit.)
I’m thinking that I had been getting sloppy in the exact sequence of events during that period, and the part where I pull the stick back somehow got moved to the back of the sequence. On turf, it doesn’t matter. But on a hard surface, once you open up the throttle, the plane moves quite quickly down the runway. If the rotor is not tilted back when you do this, you may get some serious blade flapping. Blade flapping is not good and could result in a serious crash.
That morning, I should have pulled the stick back before I released the brake for my roll-out… but I didn’t. Maybe it was because my A&P had been lubing some of the linkages, the throttle moved much more quickly than I had expected and the Cavalon shot down the runway. I was so surprised that it delayed an already overdue element, pulling the stick back. When I did pull the stick back, the plane lept into the air at a very steep angle, causing the tail boom to strike the pavement (just a little; this is not as bad as it may sound). The A&P helper had watched all this and even though he wasn’t a gyro pilot, he sensed that something was different/wrong. (In a later conversation I had with my A&P, he told me his helper had seen it and asked if everything were ok. I assured him it was just a bad mistake on my part.)
There was a moment when I was about 20 feet in the air, where anything but the absolute correct decision needed to be made. Any other decision, and even hesitating before executing the right decision, would have certainly resulted in a crash. In the space of 1 or 2 seconds, I had to process what had just happened. I was very surprised. But thanks to the great training I’ve received, I knew what to do and did it without hesitation. I shoved the stick hard forward (a move that is highly frowned upon in normal gyro flight). In the next second or two, the plane leveled off and, though slow, it was gaining speed and stayed aloft. Whew!
I was very shaken up and flew around the airport a couple of times to make sure that everything felt okay. It did. I knew almost immediately that the plane was okay, but that time spent flying close to the airport was more for me than the plane. I finally calmed down and pointed the nose to the east-northeast and settled in. It was probably my worst takeoff, but I and my plane did survive it.
It’s never a bad thing to be reminded about how easy it is to screw things up in a gyro, but you just hope you survive it! Since then, I’m much more purposeful in my roll-out sequence.
The flight back covered areas I know well…
On January 31st, I did a little joy-flying in the local area, including some s-turns and 3 stop-n-go landings:
Because of the dramatic break in routine — due to the pandemic — for the next 5 or 6 months, I’ll be providing a summary of the flying I’m doing on a monthly basis. Next up is a story of the major winter storm in February.