Don't Meet in the Middle

I was working for Arrow Aviation, east of Lewiston, Idaho, applying dry fertilizer to winter wheat. About 2 miles away on another make-shift air strip two of my friends were doing the same thing for a competitor.

I guess I should change the names to protect the guilty. One friend was Fats Hughes and the other was named Germania Gene.

When flying on dry fertilizer it only takes a few minutes to apply a full load of fertilizer if the field you are fertilizing is close by. So it was this day for my friends. As one pilot was out applying his load to the field, the other one was on the ground being loaded. As soon as the load was pumped into the plane on the ground, the pilot quickly swung the plane around and headed down the strip for a takeoff. Shortly after he was airborne he would head for the field being treated and usually pass the other plane returning for his next load. 

Nothing complicated about this, most crop-dusting crews did this regularly. Generally, you would hit the ground about every 15 or 20 minutes. Very monotonous. Up and down, back and forth, get a load, takeoff, fly it on the field and return for the next load, all day long.

The strip that my friends were working off was located in the middle of a pea field. It had a sizeable hump in the middle so much so that when you started your takeoff run you could not see the opposite end of the strip until you topped this hump. Still, it was a smooth strip and the hump presented no problem to experienced pilots. 

You started your takeoff going up-hill, you topped the hill and started downhill and were soon airborne. Same thing in reverse when landing. It was a steady rhythm. 

For some reason, Fats Hughes had a problem and came back to the strip early. He landed on the down-hill side of the hump. Germania Gene didn’t see Fats land. He received his load, swung around, and poured on the coals to the old Pratt Whitney and went roaring up-hill for his takeoff. 

You guessed it. They met at the top of the hump. 

Fortunately, each was off center of the strip, each was a little to his right. They passed each other and sheared off the upper and lower wings on the left side of both Stearman biplanes. Gene said they passed close enough that he could have reached out and slapped Fats as he went by.

Of course, they filled the air with the debris of chopped up airplane wings. Gene, who was taking off, had up a head of steam as they collided. His plane was going fast and before he could shut it down, it careened around to the left, making an wide circular path out through the pea field, and headed back toward Fat’s plane. 

Fats’s plane slewed around, went off the strip, and quickly came to a stop. Whereupon Fats, seeing the other plane circling and coming back in his direction, bailed out and started running. 

Later he explained, "Well, h***, he made one pass at me and I shore wasn’t gonna sit there and let him make another one." 

Fats was a tobacco-chewing feller and said it was enough to make him swaller his chaw!

Fog vs the Bossman

Back around 1963 or so, I was flying for American Dusting Company of Chickasha, Oklahoma. My unit was based in the town of Pecan Gap Texas. Pecan Gap consisted of a small restaurant, a service station, a feed store and about fifteen private residences. The town was surrounded by thousands of acres of cotton fields. 

My airport was owned and operated by a man named Weldon Briscoe who was also my boss. The landing strip was in the middle of his 160-acre place. Being a carpenter in the off season Briscoe asked me to build a hanger for him, which I did. It was large enough to hanger two planes - both Stearman biplanes that were once military trainers and had been converted to ag aircraft.

For the benefit of the unlearned, commercial aircraft, even crop-duster types, have to be inspected every 100 hours of flying time by a federal authorized mechanic. To get this inspection each time I reached one hundred hours, I had to fly to Chickasha where American had their headquarters and did all the maintenance on the planes.

One morning Boss Briscoe said, "Roberts, your time is up. Take the plane to headquarters and get the danged inspection."  Whereupon I looked all around and observed that there was pretty heavy fog enveloping us. Briscoe allowed that we were located only a few miles from the Red River, and fog forms along the river at this time of year. "If you can take off, you will be out of the fog very shortly since it just hangs along the river area."

The fog wasn’t very thick, I noticed, because I could see the big red ball of the early morning sun through the fog.

So I mounted my trusty steed and, keeping my eye on that big red ball, departed for Oklahoma. Sure enough, I soon came out of the ground-hugging layers of fog and viola! It was a beautiful clear day on top of the fog. 

I continued to climb, thinking if I got high enough I could probably see that the fog was just local. I climbed and climbed and climbed. At ten thousand feet all I could see in all directions was the brilliantly white cottony fog; no holes, no openings anywhere.

I wasn’t too worried though, I figured I would take up a heading to Chickasha and no doubt would leave the fog behind after a bit. As I said, it was a beautiful spring morning and I was enjoying the flight thinking how lucky I was to be flying on such a glorious day. 

I flew for about an hour and very slowly two thing began to crowd into my consciousness. One, the fog was not any local thing at all and two, my fuel gauge was getting nearer and nearer to the empty point. The fuel tank located in the top wing of the biplane directly in the middle of the center-section. The fuel gauge was a glass tube attached to the bottom of the tank directly in front of my eyes. It was placed there for a reason.

This airplane was originally designed for a 225 hp Lycoming engine which consumed about 10 or 12 gallons per hour. The tank held about 46 gallons of fuel which would give one about three and a half hours of flight. But...when the plane was converted to crop-dusting configuration a 450 hp Pratt Whitney engine was added. This engine burned about 20 gallons of fuel per hour of flight, meaning I only had about 30 more minutes of flight before I ran out of fuel. 

Still no sign of the ground anywhere. I became alarmed and began to make desperate plans.

I decided I would have to go down through the fog. I would slow the plane to the slowest speed that it would fly and still have control, and take whatever came, be it good or bad. Just before I did this suddenly I saw a small hole in the white layer below me.

As I circled the hole I could see the ground and there was a strange pattern on the earth. I could not imagine what it was. Whatever it was, I was about to find out. 

I rolled into a tight turn and cut my engine back, beginning a corkscrew descent into this cloudy well of an opening. Nearer and nearer came the ground. When the altimeter showed that I was only about a hundred or so feet above the surface suddenly - I was in the clear. Thank God, there was a clear space between the bottom of the fog and the earth! 

The strange pattern I had seen was a fish hatchery. It was a small lake with dikes running parallel across it, spaced about twenty feet apart. I had not remembered this landmark though I had flown this way several times in the past.

Of course, I rolled out of my tight turn into level flight and stopped my descent. However, I was still as lost as a goose. I took up a heading to the northwest anyway and figured, "At least I can land in a pasture or field."  

Then I suddenly came to a highway. "That is where I will put this flying machine down," I determined. I turned so I was flying along parallel to the pavement, expecting to hear the engine stop any moment. Then up came a sign that said "Duncan 10 miles." This was going to be my first fuel stop. Within minutes I was on the runway and taxing into the gas pit.

I pull up to the fuel pump and shut the engine down. Needless to say I was a bit sweaty. The small airport fuel boy came sauntering out and looked at me and then up at the low ceiling, shook his head and said "What in God’s name are you doing flying in this stuff?" I wondered the same thing.

The gas boy filled my tank and it took 45 1/2 gallons. As I said, the tank was a 46 gallon tank. 

Moral: I was stupid for taking off in the fog no matter what the bossman sez.

The Never-Fail Turbo-Prop

Aircraft engines made a radical change with the advent of the turbo-prop engine. The old engines were classified as reciprocating engines, similar to what we have in automobiles. The turbo-prop engine worked completely differently. It had a small turbine as the power generating source, similar to a jet engine, except the turbine turned a propeller. These new engines were smaller, lighter, had more horsepower and were supposedly much more reliable.

We ag-pilots were anxious to try one of these new-fangled engines because with the light weight and extra power we could increase the "payload" and thereby do more work in a given time. Plus we liked that the engines were said to be much less likely to fail.

My first opportunity to fly an ag-plane with this type of power plant came when I hired out to an ag-operator located in the Gulf Coast. It was in rice growing country near the small town of Katy, Texas.  

Before I was cleared to aviate with a turbo-prop at the pointy end of the airplane, the insurance company insisted that I be sent to school so as to know how to handle this here highly complicated and tremenjusly complex apparatus. Even though I had years and years of experience and thousands and thousands of hours flying back and forth over the vegetables, it made no difference to them. 

So they sent me to Hartford, Connecticuty, where the Pratt-Whitney Aircraft Co. had a school for beginners to be learnt about these jet fuel burning engines. I spent a week in classrooms listening to some young, self-important individual spout off, displaying his vast knowledge of turbo-prop aircraft engine. Mostly his talk was giving high praise of the reliability of the PT6-E turbo-prop engine. He assured us that our days of engine failure were over. THIS ENGINE DOES NOT FAIL. IT WILL GO 6000 HRS BETWEEN OVERHAULS. THIS ENGINE DOES NOT FAIL.

I came back to Katy with about the same amount of knowledge that I left with, except I knew that the turbo-prop engine DID NOT FAIL. Yeah, I had that phrase ringing in my ears. Me and my partner went to work and I was enjoying flying with the comforting new knowledge that there would be no more flight interruptions due to engine failure. I had launched myself into the future of ag-aviation feeling safe and secure. 

About the third week and somewhere around 80 hours on the new engine, I was working off a dirt strip surrounded by rice fields - some dry, some flooded. I had a hopper full of liquid fertilizer, about 300 gallons as I recall. I had just broken ground when I noticed that a couple of puffs of smoke came out the exhaust pipe on the left side. 

At the next instant I noted that my engine rpm was decreasing and I could feel the loss of power. I reached the end of the strip and slapped the dump gate lever open and the load was dumped instantaneously. Lighter of wing, I swung the Ag-Cat out to the right with the intention of making a 180-degree turn to the left and landing back on my landing strip. Nothing around me looked favorable for an emergency landing.

The engine continued to lose power (a new word - "unspooling" it was called). About half-way around the turn I realized I wasn’t going to make it. I leveled the wings and prepared to make contact with a newly plowed rice field. I sat it down as smoothly as possible and held the stick back so hard that the tail wheel touched first. As soon as the weight of the Ag-Cat settled on to the main landing gear, the wheels quickly sank into the soft powdery dirt of the recently plowed field. Up came the tail and down went the new engine into the soft dirt and over the plane went on its back. I slammed down hard upside down. Thankfully, the Ag-Cat being a bi-plane, the upper wing held the fuselage off the ground high enough that the cockpit enclosure wasn’t crushed.

It is very disconcerting to find oneself upside down even though strapped securely in the seat. Believe it or not the danged engine was still running. Of course the prop was not turning. The blades were bent back at a 90 degree angle. But since in this particular type engine there was no mechanical connection between the power section and the propeller, the turbine was still going. How strange. 

I had to shut it down. I unbuckled my seat harness and as I had done at other times, fell on my head. I managed to open the exit window/door and wiggle out on to the powdery earth. I wasn’t injured in any way, but my poor engine didn’t fare so well. Black smoke began to issue forth because the oil in the engine was draining into the hot combustion chamber. There wasn’t much chance of a fire,but it did put up a nice plume of black smoke. I had to hand it to the Pratt-Whitney person who said the engine didn’t fail. Even after it had quit producing power, it was still running!

To make a long involved story shorter, the Pratt-Whitney Co. sent a tech-rep out to collect the engine and take it back to some place in Canada where they analyzed it and pronounced the cause of the engine failure was fuel contamination. Sure, sure. Fuel contamination is the only thing that wasn’t covered in the warranty.

Whatever the cause, it ruined my day and demolished my confidence in turbo-prop engines. My conclusion was that any mechanical contraption can fail PERIOD! 

Someone who saw the plane go down and start smoking called the fire department who then called for ambulances. And along the way a crowd collected of (I'm guessing) newscasters, TV reporters, environmentalists, save-the-whales folks, vegetarians, a couple of couple of local preachers, a pair of politicians, and the county sheriff.

Fortunately, there was a farmhouse nearby. I walked over there and even though I was a bit dirty, they welcomed me in, gave me a cup of coffee and a piece of fresh baked pie, and promised not to tell a soul where I was. I managed to hide out until my boss came looking for me. How he found me, I don’t know. 

Here is a picture of my dead AG-Cat lying on its back with its feet in the air... but as you will notice, I am not in it.