hey how thick you think that ice is?

[akflyer 1427]

There seems to be a theme to alot of my oh shit stories... My buddy Sid and hunting trips... this one involved the short wing piper death trap we bought (the one I wrecked but that is another story )  

So me and a buddy start talking about wanting a 4 seat plane we can use for hunting and zipping around the state.. we found a 150 hp tripacer that we figured would fit the bill and decided to take it for a test flight and check it out... well, it was spring same day fly and hunt caribou season so we grabbed our rifles, a few survival supplies and decided to go on a 170 mile one way test flight... ( hey we knew the owner and he was dumb enough to just give me the keys and say have fun and fly it for a few days and see what you think... but I dont think he knew what we had in mind).  So we take off from Kenai and I set a course for Lake Clark pass on a nice sunny March day.  Winds were light but temp were a little cool at about -15 on the ground.  The flight was uneventful as we flew through one of the most scenic passes you can imagine.  Rock walls just off the wingtips that are so jagged it just takes your breath away thinking about trying to perform a controlled crash in the event of an engine out.  The pass is littered with planes and the remains of pilots that were put in just that situation and were unable to pull it off.  

So we get down to the Lower Talarik creek area and start looking for animals (yeah, this is the same general area that a few years before I had the episode with the PA 12 and not being able to get the engine started again in the cold)  We spot some caribou and I pick a lake to set this cute little tripacer down on that looks like it is frozen over real well... here is where the fun ends.. I line up on short final, pull full flaps and ease her down.  Just about the time we get to 25 mph and I take the flaps off she puts the full weight of the plane onto the ice.... and the nose drops like a rock, water, ice and all kinds of shit are flying around, the prop is chopping the shit outa the ice and I think the nose gear just folded.  I pull the mixture and we come to a very abrupt stop.  We both look at each other and then bail out the door.  If you know anything about a stock pacer, they only have a right hand door in the front, and I am trying to call over my buddy to get the hell outa this plane that for all I know is gonna sink.  Turns out there was lots of good ice followed by about 8" of overflow, capped off by about 1.5" to 2" of ice.  

 Once we determined that we were not gonna sink to the bottom of the lake we relax, giggle a little bit thinking out loud how the bad f word did we get ourselves into another "adventure" instead of an easy quick hunt.  We quickly formulate a plan.  Sid will lean over the back of the fuse just infront of the vertical stab to get the nose wheel up out of the water and I will pick up on a wing swing it around and get this baby back on top of the ice in short order.. yeah, well you know how well laid plans go.. we make the first move and get the nose wheel up on the ice, swing it around, pick up a wing and get one main on the ice, we smugly go to the other side thinking we got this shit in the bag, gonna be up and going in no time..  Well the second we pick up the second wing and put all the weight on the other two wheels she broke back through.. F me... now keep in mind that we touched down right at 12:00 noon... it is now 12:30 and we have moved this bitch about 4'.  We go through these motions 4 or 5 times in the next hour and are now soaking wet, getting cold and have moved about 10'... we need a new plan.

We take a walk around our lake (ok small pond that I should have never put that tripacer into) and try to find "good" ice.  About 50' away from the plane we find a place we can jump up and down on and it only cracks, but we dont break through.  We walk it out and find that we have about 150-200' of relatively good ice before it starts thinning out again.  I figure if I can get it light on the gear by the time we hit the thin stuff we stand a good chance of staying on top long enough to get airborne.... yep, thats right, I am making the mistake of thinking again... One of these days I will learn not to do that too much.

Back at the plane it is the same get the nose wheel up, get one main up break through, get the nose up, one main yada yada.. this goes on till 5:00 PM.  We are loosing light, strength and want to in a real hurry.  We finally got it up on ice that we were not breaking through on so we gingerly load in the plane and F me we break through again... again we do the nose wheel one main etc and get it back up on top, roll it further down onto the "good" ice and try it again.. this time we stay on top with both in the plane.  I fire it up, and immediately notice a bit of a vibration.. shut down, get out and look at the prop.. yep, got some good dings, a bit of a curl and a chunk gone.. well I'll be damned if I am gonna spend the night out here in the cold cuddling with my buddy when I got a wife at home so we load back up and go for it....  now let me paint a picture of what the "runway" now looks like.. I have about 100' of good ice now, then it start thinning out.. the sides of the lake are gently sloping in at about a 15 degree angle.  we are surrounded on 3 sides by hills about 40' high and directly in front of me we have a bank about 10-15' high at the end of a 500' run.  After the bank we have frozen tundra that slopes off dropping about 50' in elevation over about 1500'.  We get her warmed up, I pour the coals to it with full up trim on the stabilizer (the whole horizontal stab moves for the trim) and have the yoke in my lap.  I hit 35 MPH and pull on the flaps trying to get it light on the gear with the nose high in the air.  Sure as shit, the mains start breaking through and shooting water up on the wing (yeah its sub zero so that shit is sticking quick and it is not a smooth covering).  I manage to get the plane back on top of the ice and start gaining speed again.  I hit 45 and really start trying to horse this bitch into the air cause the bank is coming up in about another 200'  I stagger into the air, lower the nose, gain some speed and with only a few precious feet left ease her up and over the bank.. whew... aww shit, the small abrupt climb scrubbed off all the flying speed I had and we start to settle... F me again cause now I have frozen tundra with 2-3' high clumps of moss and grass sticking up.. yeah great big landing gear removing, plane killing speed bumps and I am flying a plane with teeny ass 600X6 pavement tires.. so here we go, pin balling over the tundra.  The gear legs have bungees on them just like our Avid or Kitfox gear so you can imagine the racket I got going under me as the wheels are banging across the top of the tundra at 40 MPH.  I hit 45 and start easing up again and get her to stagger into the air.  I dont think I have had one breath of air in the last 2 minutes so I take a good deep breath and baby this bugger as the tundra slowly drops away under us.  We continue to gather speed and I ease the flaps off, and start climbing, but I am not climbing like it was before and the plane is shaking more than I wanted it to.  I fly for about 15 minutes till I find a good long cinder blow that I can land on and scrape some of the ice off the plane.  Here is where I learn another lesson about a stock tripacer.  The nose wheel has a direct link rod to the rudder pedals and a single johnson bar to operate both brakes.. no differential steering and solid link steering.. NICE.. this may work fine on pavement, but I will tell you right now it sucks ASS on gravel or soft cinder beds.  I touch down in the classic nose high, soft field landing, so far so good, I bleed speed slowly pulling the yolk back into my lap.  The nose wheel slowly comes down and SHIIIIIITTTT the nose gear hits that soft stuff and yanks on the rudder pedals like it was a young kid that just found out what his pecker was for.. I mean that nose wheel is jerking us around on the verge of being totally out of control.  I grab that johnson bar (yeah real fitting name huh) and pull that bugger till I think I am gonna rip it out from under the dash and get this runaway bird stopped.

Once again we get out, shake the crap outa our pants and assess our new predicament.  The cinder is a lot softer and deeper that I remember it ever being before.  Our nose wheel is about half buried in the fluff.  WE knock all the ice off the plane, turn the plane around by hand and get it headed in the right direction.. we both jump in fire up fire wall it and just sit there making one hell of a dust cloud... I am thinking cmon, it is now just damn near dark and this fn plane wont move.  Sid gets out and pushes while I firewall it and blow ash all over the place filling the plane with the volcanic vile.  We get rolling and he jumps in as we slowly, slowly. slowly gather speed... that nose wheel is like the kid and his pecker and I am all over the place as I cant hold the nose straight to save either of our lives.  I find myself in a familiar predicament.. no speed, running out of runway and not about to give up yet.. we played the tundra pinball game again and somehow ( I am sure it was the hand of god) we bounced into the air for the 500th time in the last 30 seconds and I was able to claw my way off the tundra and into the sky.  I am now in an unfamiliar plane, its dark, no GPS and no landmarks to be seen.  When I say it is dark, I mean it is blacker than the ace of spades.  There are no towns around for 50 miles.  No lights, no damn nothing but the darkest inkiest black suck hole you can think of.  I know I dont have any mountains to worry about for about 60 miles so I point the nose up and climb to 11,000'  set a course to what I think is Kenai and hope for the best.

About 45 minutes later, I can see a glow over the horizon that must be the lights of Anchorage so I swing the nose what I figure is about 50 miles south of that and I should be pointed at Kenai.  About another hour and a half later, I see the glow of Kenai about 10 degrees north of my heading.  I swing the nose over and breath a sigh of relief because I know that if I can see the glow, I wont hit the top of mount Illiamna or mount Redoubt (both peaks higher than my present altitude).

The landing at Kenai is uneventful and we get her tied down.  The next day Elton calls to see how it went.. I stifle a laugh and tell him I will call him later.  I head over to the plane to see what we F'd up the day before.  It looked like a few small ice holes in the fuse and wing and a beat to shit prop.  Well the cowling had a little ice damage to.  I called Elton and told him I guess we had to take the plane now cause we f'd it up the day before  It was a fun plane to fly until the day I stacked it in on full lotus floats... but that is another story all together..

[Wayne 2]

Hee hee, I like it. How'ed we all live so long anyway....

Speaking for me, don't know..

Wayne

[akflyer 1427]

I only have one explanation... Divine intervention   Between boats, cars, snowmachines and airplanes I should have died long ago. 

 

[1avidflyer 1983]

Maybe he's sitting back laughing and saying "wonder what stupid stunt he's going to pull next?  It'll be funny for sure.  Maybe I'll keep him around for a while, I can use the laughs"  Jim Chuk