A Flight to Remember
(C)Copyright 1997, Carroll Williams, all rights reserved
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           Littleton Airport consisted of a few ramshackle buildings, a fuel pump, and a dozen small airplanes tied down outdoors.  Several of these were rotting hulks from the past.  A twin-engine Beech model eighteen and a Cessna Bobcat begged for restoration to no avail.  Their crazed windshields, like the eyes of dead men, stared blindly at a sky to which they would never return.

        A single dirt and gravel runway ran uphill at both of its ends.  A paved road crossed the north end of this short strip.  The runway's south end pointed directly at the trunks of two very tall pine trees standing a few yards beyond a barbed-wire fence.  There were no runway lights and no control tower. Flyers here used the see-and-be-seen rule.  Keep your head on a swivel and never stop looking around.

        One bright and beautiful October afternoon I took two of my college students on a sight-seeing flight to look at autumn colors.  Cottonwood trees in the Platte River Valley wore bright shades of reds and yellows.  Aspens paraded up the mountain slopes to the west in glorious golden hues.  The sky was a stark, clear blue and begged for human company.

        An early autumn snow had fallen the day before and had partly melted.  The ground was wet. I taxied to the north end of the runway and lined the Cessna Sky Hawk up facing south.  I set the wing flaps to ten degrees to add some lift.  There was a stiff breeze blowing from the southwest.

        There are some special techniques a pilot uses for taking off from a dirt airfield.  If loose gravel is the main concern, advance the throttle slowly.  This prevents loose stones from being pulled suddenly upward through the propeller to damage both the propeller and the airplane.  This technique produces a slow acceleration at the beginning of the take off roll.  This is fine on a dry day.

        On a muddy field, you place both feet firmly on the brakes and bring the engine up to full power. Holding the control yoke all the way back, the pilot releases the brakes suddenly.  The airplane lurches forward and the nose wheel comes off the ground.  This take off run is made on the main wheels only. The nose wheel is already up and out of the mud.  This reduces drag on the tires and allows for quicker acceleration.

        I chose the wrong technique. I was thinking about loose gravel.  On this day it wasn't loose. Damp red clay soil held every stone in place.  I advanced the throttle slowly.  We needed to gallop but our mount was barely trotting.  Most of the runway was already behind us.   The Sky Hawk can get airborne at 55 knots.  I was looking at 46 knots on the airspeed indicator and two tall pine trees rapidly dominating our view ahead.  Wet red soil clung tenaciously to our three tires.

        The wind from our right quarter was producing more drag than lift.  If I tried to abort the take off we would hit the two trees in front of us.  Not a good choice.  I suddenly remembered a scene from the movie "The Spirit of St. Louis."  Jimmy Stuart, playing the role of Charles Lindbergh, bounced his airplane off the rain-soaked ground at Roosevelt Field Long Island.  At each bounce the airplane gained a little more air speed finally rising out of the mud.  I pulled the control yoke back sharply knowing we could not yet fly.  The nose came up.  We hopped off the ground for an instant and then fell back hard on the main wheels.  The airplane bounced like a kangaroo.   I kicked the rudder pedals to the right and shoved the yoke forward to level the nose at an altitude of about ten feet.  Like a weather vane, the airplane turned directly into the wind and away from the pine trees.  This gave us much-needed air flow over our wings.  The airspeed indicator jumped from 46 knots to just over 55 knots in a split second.

        We cleared the barbed wire fence by a few feet.  The Platte River valley slopes gently downward toward the southwest from the airport boundary.  There were no trees in this direction.  I pushed the nose over and flew the contour of the terrain downward into the valley for about a mile.  An airplane wing close to the ground enjoys an air cushion called ground effect.  The wing literally compresses the air against the ground and rides on this cushion.  This is why it is sometimes difficult to get an airplane to quit flying and settle onto a runway when landing.

        I turned back to the southeast to avoid the rising terrain on the west side of the river and established a comfortable climbing speed of seventy knots.  My mouth was dry, my hands were sweating, and my knees were weak.  The young lady in the right front seat said, "That was an exciting take off."  I replied, "Yeah, it was."   The young man in the back seat said nothing. If they only knew! I tried to look and sound calm.

        We spent a half hour cruising parallel to the Front Range of the Rockies.  Patches of golden aspens stood in bold contrast to dark evergreens.  As the sun sank behind the mountains we started back toward our airstrip.  We needed to land before dark.

        I decided to fine tune the engine fuel mixture control.  As I turned the knob on the control panel the whole assembly suddenly flew apart.  The knob, a flat washer, a coil spring, and some other small parts shot past my hand and disappeared into the floor of the airplane.  We had to find these parts and reassemble the mixture control before we could descend.  To make matters worse the flight was getting rather bumpy.

        Two highly motivated college kids scoured the cockpit floor for the pieces of the mixture control knob.  It took all three of us to put this knob and its small parts back together.  The delay caused us to lose precious daylight.  Deepening shadows obscured ground features.  By the time we entered the traffic pattern we were pushing Federal Air Regulations for landing at an unlighted airport.

        I set the radio to the Unicom frequency and announced our approach.  There were no other airplanes in the vicinity.  The wind had shifted and was blowing briskly out of the east.  This was not a good situation.  There was a row of single-story wooden hangars just to the east of the runway.  There were numerous openings between the buildings that let the wind rush through.

        I set the flaps to a full forty degrees and made a steep approach to the north over the tall pine trees.  I had to hold a sharp crab angle with the nose pointed to the right of the runway alignment.   Just before touch down, I had to bring the nose quickly into alignment with the runway, advance the throttle to prevent a sudden drop of the nose, and drop the right wing into the wind to keep the airplane from drifting and going off the runway to the left. This meant that we had to land on the right main wheel and hold the nose wheel and the left main wheel off the ground.  To complicate matters each time we came abreast of a building the stiff wind was blocked and we had to drop the left main wheel.  The gaps between the buildings sent us right back into the cross wind routine dropping the right wing into the wind.  This was one of the most memorable landings I have ever made.   I was dancing on the rudder pedals and waltzing the control yoke all the way down the runway.  It was quite a performance.

        We taxied in and tied the airplane down.  As we walked to the car we had some good laughs about hunting for small parts in a bouncing airplane in waning daylight.  We all agreed that any landing in which we didn't break or bend the airplane and from which we could walk away was truly a good landing.  It was indeed a flight to remember.

End

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