I Wish He Hadn't Done That

After an agonizing wait, Russian Thunder was ready for pick up, or so I thought. I flew down to Redding, CA with a friend in his Piper Apache. We arrived after a light rain. Russian Thunder looked ready for me.

But the test flight turned very harrowing.

It had been a while since I had flown the plane but I felt like something was odd with the sound of the engine as I taxied out to the runway. I remember spending a long time in the run up area trying to work out whether I was just being too cautious or if there was a real problem. The engine instruments were all indicating fine and there seemed to be plenty of thrust. I decided to taxi out on the runway and give it a go, figuring I could just do a high speed taxi and then taxi back and set up for real if I felt things were ok.

But once I got over the numbers and saw all that runway ahead, I guess I felt a bit too bold. I pushed the throttle forward and kept an eye on the airspeed indicator. Normally this plane seems to leap off the ground. It can climb out at an insanely high angle of attack. But as I eased the stick back, I felt the first bit of worry. I looked at the airspeed indicator and it looked normal… just climbing up to 110 km/h which is about right for that point in the take off. But why did the stick feel so loose?

Maybe I was just out of practice.

As the plane left the ground, I knew I was in trouble. It rotated without leaving ground effect. I looked ahead at the front cockpit and saw my airspeed indicated a much lower speed on the gauge in front! The two didn’t match at all. By now I was over halfway down the runway. I was committed, or so I felt. Looking back on it now with more experience I would think to myself: “this plane has disrespected me too much to care about it” but at that time with so much money spent and so much care taken to make it shiny as a penny, I suppose I thought my job was to get the plane into the air and bring it around for a landing, which ultimately I guess I did.

But the feeling of hovering just barely above a stall speed, wallowing out of ground effect, awkwardly climbing just barely enough over the trees at the end of the runway to avoid scraping sounds, feeling like I was so close to them that my toes curled up, is something I will never forget.

Just as things looked to be stable, with me about 100 feet above the ground and managing a meager climb, the engine shuddered.

I flew several miles out straight as an arrow, hoping for a place to put down, unable to climb any further, too high to bail out and too low for any hope if the engine died. I managed a very shallow turn with a bank angle of about 3 degrees, turning to my right headed east where there were just a bit fewer trees. Houses, creeks, and cars passed below me, close enough that I could see their fine details.

As I turned back north after what felt like an eternity, every moment excruciating and resolute, the engine let out a loud bang. From this point on there was no hope of maintaining altitude. I began the shallowest descent possible and headed back to the airport, pushing forward on every lever in the cockpit until my hands bruised, hoping for just enough power to save my skin.

As I saw the airport appear over the trees I felt my first glimmer of hope.

Naturally, in my adrenaline fueled state, I couldn’t bring myself to reduce the throttle near touchdown. I managed to pick up speed at the end of the descent, just enough that I missed my landing point. The propeller governor was doing me no favors, and it turned out that the plane had another squawk in the form of malfunctioning brakes. After all that dreaming of getting back on the ground, I almost overshot the runway!

I finally came to a stop a hundred yards or so from the end. I taxied back to the hangar with all the crew staring at me pale faced. They told me later that they could see white hot pieces of metal flying out of the exhaust and when I departed the head mechanic said to one of the others, “I wish he hadn’t done that!”

All’s well that ends well, they say, but even though I lived to fly again (and again and again) this was my first rodeo and the first but not the last time I’d lose sleep over a close call.

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