Alaska Adventure: Part 1

I was sitting there eating a peanut butter sandwich when the phone rang.

"Dale, this be Shoemacher."

"Yes, boss what’s up?"

"How would you like to go to Alaska?"

"Why do you ask?"

"Well, it being the first of September, our season is over so I thought you might be interested in a different sort of flying job."

"Can you supply more specifics?"

"Oh, heck yes, I am full of specifics," he chortled. "The person they wants has to be around 6 feet tall, weigh about 175 pounds, have good sanitary habits and steely nerves, be fearless, brave, and good looking, and also (by the way) he needs to know how to fly."

"Well, them specifics fit me to a tee, I reckon. Especially the good-looking part. What does it pay?" I asked.

"The figure they gave me was that the feller would need a tow-sack in which to carry the money home."

That got my undivided attention.

After I got all the (real) specifics I packed my ole travel-weary suitcase and next day took a commercial airline flight to Sea-Tac airport in Seattle Washington. From there I took another flight to Anchorage Alaska. There I met a young feller I will call Sourdough John, who represented a company called New Era Reclamation. These folks were under contract with a consortium of pipeline building companies that were in the process of building a pipeline from Valdez to Prudhoe Bay, Alaska. This company had been wrangling with the EPA for years and finally received permission to proceed.

But to gain this permission the EPA had specifics to be met. The most important one was that after the pipeline was installed, all the terrain had to be put back to its original condition. That is what New Era Reclamation was contracted to do.

Well Sourdough John and I took a commercial flight to Fairbanks, Alaska which is where I was to pick up the ag-plane that I was going to fly - a Cessna Agwagon. The Agwagon was an airplane built specifically for ag-flying work: dusting, spraying, etc.

Upon reaching Fairbanks I was introduced to several men employed by New Era Reclamation and was given a more detailed explanation of what was underway and what was expected of me. They gave me a history to date on the overall plan.

It was something like this: The first step was to build camps for workers along the proposed route of the pipeline. These were placed at intervals of about 75 miles and each camp was to accommodate around 300 to 400 workers. Keep in mind that there was no road or railway along the route. The building supplies had to be hauled in on huge trucks during the winter months when the ground was frozen solid enough to support them without damaging the tundra. 

They called the route the "Winter Trail."  At most of the camps there was a fairly good landing strip for aircraft.

The problem arose when spring came and the Winter Trail began to thaw. The cargo trucks should have stopped, but some continued up the trail and in a few places the tundra was damaged. To reclaim these damaged places New Era Reclamation hired me to fly arctic grass seed and then come back over the places with fertilizer. That brought me up to date.

I started at the Yukon River and worked my way northward. I used the newly graveled roadways as my landing strips. The seed and fertilizer had been stockpiled along the way at strategic points. My loading crew was Eskimo and Indians. They thought the whole thing was a joke and took far too much time loading the plane. Back in the lower 48 states a two-man crew could load the plane in about 5-10 minutes. These four-man turkeys took at least 35-40 minutes and sometimes longer.

It was a very interesting experience. I was not the only plane in the area. There were large two- and four-engine planes flying in and out of the camp strips carrying freight, passengers and mail. 

I had radio contact with the ground stations as well as the planes. It was funny sometimes - I could hear the conversation between the ground station and say, a large freight hauling plane. The ground station would caution the large plane to be aware of an EGGWAGON working the area roads. This usually caused a gabble of conversation amongst them. Or a response like, "What the heck is he doing down there?" 

I would usually pipe up and say, "I am flinging fertilizer on the road in places that you despoilers have messed up. I do this so the EPA won’t shut you down again." 

This usually brought a response like, "Carry on, buddy." I do believe I was the first ag-pilot to ply my trade this far north.

I'll write some more of my Alaska adventures in my next blog. 

Dale and his (slow) loading crew

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.

Fast Money

In the cropdusting field, military surplus planes eventually began to be replaced with newly manufactured aircraft that were designed especially for ag-flying. Piper came out with the Pawnee, Cessna Aircraft Co. started producing the Ag-Wagon, Grumman got into the action with its Ag-Cat. The Leland Snow Company developed the Snow Aircraft, later to be called the Thrush. These planes were much more efficient and productive than the old converted military types, but they were expensive and not necessarily as tough as the old military trainer. We still had engine failures from time to time.

I was proud to be sitting in the middle of a brand new Cessna Ag-Wagon one day and it was noon. I usually carried a lunch bag with me and ate in the plane so I didn’t have to stop. This particular day I had eaten my peanut butter and jelly sandwich and was chomping on an apple as I took off of a muddy strip with a load of dry fertilizer to be spread over a wheat field.

I climbed up to about two-hundred feet or so and as I leveled off there was a sudden silence. The only noise I heard was me chomping on the apple. The engine had shut down as if I had turned the switch off. 

I quickly turned to the right toward an open field and at the same time hit the dump lever and pulled full flaps, preparing to land in the mud. It had rained the night before. The field I had chosen was a wheat field that lay up the side of a hill. I hardly got the flaps down when I touch down and my wheels were sinking in the mud. 

Fortunately, I landed going uphill and the hill was steep enough that it kept the plane from going over on its back. But the wheels were hub-cap deep in the mud and I went up the small hill plowing deep tracks. I arrived at the top of the hill and there was a fence. I stomped on the left brake and full left rudder and the plane slewed around just shy of the fence and stopped. 

I was so rattled that I forgot I had opened the dump gate to get rid of the load of fertilizer. The problem was dry fertilizer does not dump out as quickly as a liquid. The stuff was still pouring out of the hopper and when I climbed out of the plane, I saw I had a huge pile of fertilizer beneath the belly. Oh well, at least the plane didn’t end up lying on its back.

My boss had taken off right behind me in another plane and had seen the whole thing. He landed, got in his pickup, and drove up to get me. It turned out that my practically-new engine had shut down because a small shaft in the air intake had broken and fallen out, closing off the engine. Cessna soon changed the design after we filed a Malfunction & Defects report with the FAA.

As I climbed into the boss's pickup truck, he stuffed a hundred dollar bill in my shirt pocket. Surprised I looked questions at him. "That’s for not bending my new airplane," he said. The thought went through my mind, "Hmmm, that’s the fastest money I ever earned... but I don’t believe I want to do it again!"

Emergency Landing Prep

When a person goes to a flight instructor and puts his money on the barrel-head and asks, “Can you learn me to fly like a bird…a buzzard…a pelican….or perhaps a dodo chick?” it usually follows that you will get a nod of the head. If he is hungry enough, he will answer, “I’ll try.”

You will be handed a stack of books containing pictures of airplanes and chocked full of important information about aerodynamics, air density, FAA regulations, navigation stuff, weather forecasting, the constant struggle between lifties and draggies, and proper pronouncements of aeronautical terms such as ailerons, altimeters, artificial horizons, and magnetic deviations, carburetor ice, gremlins and what not! He knows full well that you aren’t going to hang around and learn this stuff unless you are put in an air-type-ship and given a demonstration of the fun of flying that gets you solidly hooked on this new and wonderful adventure.

You will be placed either in a plane with tricycle landing gear or a plane with the conventional placement of wheels on the bottom side of the air machine which, as you have learned, is called a Tail-Dragger. He will take the plane up in the air a ways and make gentle turns and shallow climbs and shallow dives, all the while giving forth with a rattle of explanations of how an airplane flies and how to control it. He will usually then let you place your feet on the rudder pedals and grasp the stick or the steering wheel and feel what it is like to control this noisy flying contraption.

All this is an introductory flight, so-called. After this flight, the real flight instruction will begin. If all is going smoothly and according to plan, within a few flights you will be able to crank the engine, taxi to the designated runway, do what is called a run-up which is where you will check the magnetos, the carburetor heater, set the altimeter and give the other instruments a look.

If the airport has no control tower, you look both ways for traffic and, if all is clear, you will taxi into position on the runway. You then look at your instructor and when he gives you a nod, you will push the throttle forward, keep the ship going straight down the runway with your agile toes on the rudder pedals, and when the plane begins to feel light on its feet - or wheels as it were - you lift it off the ground and fly away into the wonderful wild blue.

You already know to climb to 400 feet and make a 90-degree-turn to the left because that is the prescribed flight pattern for this airport. Just as you start a bank to left for the turn, the instructor suddenly pulls the throttle back to idle and hollers in an alarming voice, “This is an engine failure emergency! Where are you going to land?”

Of course, the whole exercise is to introduce to you the possibility that at some time in your future, this might actually happen and you need to be prepared for this eventuality. Usually after a short time, during which you will think OH GOOD HEAVENS WE ARE GOING TO FALL OUT OF THE SKY, he will push the throttle forward again and you resume normal flight.

Now while he has your undivided attention, he will launch into a series of actions that you must learn and practice so you will do the right things instinctively in case this sort of emergency should arise. Things like:

• Don’t panic
• Continue to maintain control by placing the aircraft in a normal glide attitude
• Immediately begin looking for a likely place to land such as a nearby road or an open and level field or pasture or a sandy beach 

While you head for the chosen landing place, you learn to quickly scan the instrument panel to see if you can fix the problem. Maybe you need to switch gas tanks or maybe you need to introduce some carburetor heat. You might even try to re-start the engine if you have enough altitude. Again, above all, do not panic.

Keep cool. Fly the dang airplane!

Runaway Aircraft

Back in the woahgie days, most small aeroplanes did not have electric starters.  The onliest way to start the engine to internally combust was to spin the propeller by hand.   Early on several techniques were developed to do this little chore safely.

The most common method required at least two people - one to sit in the cockpit and handle the controls, and the other to spin the propeller.  The routine went something like this.  The man at the propeller called, "Switch off, throttle set, and prime." The cockpit man called back, "The switch is off, throttle is set, a couple shots of prime."  Whereupon, the propeller man would grab the propeller and pull it through several blades in the proper direction, thereby filling the cylinders with fuel-laden air ready to be ignited.  Then the prop man called, "Make it hot."  That meant the cockpit man was to turn the magneto switch to the "on" position. The cockpit man called back "Switch is on."

The man at the prop carefully took the upward slanting blade in hand, swung his left leg forward and up, then heaved his body and leg downward and back as he pulled the prop blade through a revolution.  This maneuver hopefully cranked the engine as it also took the prop man safely clear of the spinning blade.  Sometimes this had to be repeated several times before the engine came alive and started running.

Now, ya got the picture?

I have observed several incidents where one or more of these parts of the above mentioned procedure were not carefully observed or were somewhat modified with - shall we say - interesting results. There were times when one had to crank the engine with no one else around to help. The procedure then was slightly changed. The airplane was securely tied down to the ground with ropes or straps, usually to a concrete block with a metal loop on top to receive the tie-down rope.
 
In one instance that I recall, the tail-wheel tie-down was not fastened and the right wing tie-down came loose.  When the lone individual cranked the engine by the prop, the plane launched a quick circle around the left wing tie-down and struck the twin-engine aircraft tied down next to it, and chopped the twin nearly in half.   Hope the pilot had liability insurance!

Another occasion that I witnessed, the plane was prop-started with no tie-downs at all.  The throttle had been set about half open.  The plane was completely out of control and loose!  It cut three or four quick circles with several men chasing it.  If it wasn't so serious, it would have been highly comical.  The men were chasing the plane and then whoops! The plane, after a sharp change of direction, was chasing the men!  This chaotic scenario was repeated several times until the wayward Aeronca Champ slammed into the side of a hanger.  Ouch!  What a mess!

George (name changed to protect the guilty) and I were spraying brush out in West Texas.  We were using a landing strip out on a ranch which sloped downward to a small lake on the south end.   We were flying Piper Cub-type aircraft, neither of which had an electric starter.  I was tall enough to stand on the right side of the engine cowling behind the propeller and with my right hand-prop my plane.  I could set the throttle at a low setting and when the engine started, I could quickly reach into the cockpit with my left hand and reduce the RPM.  No problem.

George was a small fellow and could not do this so I usually did the honors while he sat in the cockpit.  For some reason this particular morning he decided to set the parking brake on his ship and went round in front of the plane and cranked it by propping it himself.  He had set the throttle a leetle too high.  The brake didn't hold.  The plane began to move forward. Being very agile, George quickly jumped to the side and then made a leap for the cockpit.  He didn't make it.  Instead he tripped on the wing strut and tumbled over and landed on his back just in time for the tail wing (stabilizer) to pass over him.

He did manage to grab the tail-wheel strut as it passed by.  The plane dragged him quite a ways as he struggle to regain his feet.  The little Cub seemed bent on taking a dip in the lake at the end of the runway.  George hung on and, after clawing his way up the length of the fuselage, scrambled to the cockpit and closed the throttle.  The plane rolled to a stop about fifteen feet from the lake.

About that time the boss-man came driving up to find me lying on the ground laughing my head off.  He wasn't laughing.  It was a wonder he didn't fire the both of us.

Over the years I witnessed a number of these runaways. With the advent of electric starters, this excitement seldom happens anymore. These incidents were very serious, of course. But almost always hilarious...as long as it wasn't my plane!   

Pants and a Piper Cub

Farming vs Flying

My first interest in aviation was at the early age of eight or nine-years-old. World War II had plunged the United States into the great conflict by an aerial attack on Pearl Harbor, and the war eventually filled the skies of Texas with military training aircraft.

The most prominent types were the BT 13 Vultees, PT 19 Fairchilds, and PT 17 Boeing Stearman - tail-draggers all. A few other lesser know types appeared from time to time. As I was hoeing weeds out of our cornfield on hot summer days, much to my parent’s displeasure, I spent a good bit of time staring up at the sky watching these planes and envying the young men who were preparing to become part of the world’s greatest air force. I made a promise to myself that one day I would be a pilot and, above all, I would have nothing to do with farming.

The war ended. We won. My desire to fly diminished, but never quite left me.

Crops and Cropdusting
Some ten years later I happened to meet a man who was a professional “cropduster” pilot. I was dating his daughter. I observed him plying his trade and the more I watched the more I became fascinated with this type of flying. He encouraged me to begin learning to fly and promised me that if I got a commercial license, he would put me to work. I enrolled in a flying school and soon had my private license. Some three months later he was killed in a cropdusting accident. That slowed me down and dampened my enthusiasm for the low and slow flying. Even so, I found I enjoyed flying so much that I spent every dime of my hard-earned money on airplane rentals.

With Friends Like This...
I had a friend who was also interested in learning to fly. He suggested that we pool our money and buy a small plane. We did. It was a two-place, sixty-five horsepower, Piper Cub, PA 15 Vagabond. A fun little tail-dragger plane. We hangered the plane at the old TCU airport just south of Fort Worth. This little country airport had one turf type runway of about fifteen hundred feet in length. There was a couple of small hangers and other out buildings. Altogether a very primitive, seldom used little airport, and a good place for a new pilot to practice and play.

One afternoon we drove out to the airport and I took my friend up, and we shot a couple of touch and go landings. After the third landing, I felt the urgent call of mother-nature. I left my friend seated in the plane with the engine running and repaired to the old-fashioned outhouse. While seated in the one-holer, I hear the engine RPM began to increase. The outhouse, being old and weathered, had cracks between the planks that I could see through. Suddenly I realized my non-flying buddy had decided to taxi out onto the airstrip!

He taxied to the far end of the strip, turned around and started back. Obviously he had convinced himself that he could handle the little ship and I could hear the RPM increase more and so did his taxi speed. Meantime, the thought jumped into my mind that my half of that airplane was firmly attached to his half! I speedily arose from the throne and stumbled from the outhouse with my pants at half-mast, intent on flagging him down. At about that same moment, the tail wheel left the ground. He careened sharply  to the right and made a wheel squealing ground-loop. Fortunately, he had enough presence of mind to chop the throttle and roll to a stop.

I was still standing outside the so-called country restroom with my pants just up to my knees when I suddenly realized that a car had pulled up in front of the hangers about thirty feet directly in front of me with a young man and three young ladies on board. They seemed to be fixated on the arrangement of my clothing as well as the strange behavior of the Vagabond cub. I quickly tugged at my pants as I trotted down to the cub and blasted my friend for endangering my half of the plane.

 He apologized and then said, “Did you see that car leave in a cloud of dust? I guess I must have scared them or something.”