Facebook
RSS![[mccookgazette.com]](http://www.mccookgazette.com/images/nameplate31.png)
RSS
Print
Email link
Respond to editor
Read comments (2)
And that is the wonder of business-class jet aviation. From McCook one can reach either coast is about three hours. Get up early and you can be in a meeting in New York by 10, complete the transaction, have a nice lunch and be home in time for dinner with the lady. Heading to the West Coast you don't even have to leave early due to changes in time zones.
I used to live in the jet travel world where distance simply translates to time. In that realm of travel one hour flying time equates to about a long day's travel by automobile. One memorable day in 1969 I remember returning from Vietnam in my trusty KC-135 tanker. We "coasted-in" in the neighborhood of San Francisco about five hours out of Honolulu. An hour later Grand Junction passed beneath us. Then in a half hour over Denver, 30 minutes later McCook was nine miles below us, then Omaha a half hour later and in another 45 minutes we were landing in Shreveport, La. Our final destination that day was back home to our families at Burns Flat, Okla., but first we had passengers to offload and the usual hassle of processing through customs.
Don is a student pilot working on his private pilot certificate and cross-country flying experience is essential. Sky bourn there are no road signs. One has to make your way by figuring time and distance traveled, reading a chart, using radio aids or modern GPS. He conjured up flying farther east to land at Lewis University Airport just south of Chicago. Following a nice lunch we had the fuel tanks topped off and headed back toward home.
The plan was to land at the Millard Airport in Omaha for gas but in the middle of Iowa our fuel gauges were indicating lower than they should have been. Now fuel gauges in light airplanes are universally regarded with suspicion so we were tempted to press on. Discretion being the better part of valor we diverted into Ottumwa. The line boy there happily topped off our fuel tanks. I pressed Don to recreate a flight plan omitting Omaha and we departed for home.
Again our fuel gauges were pointing toward empty as we neared Hastings, Neb. We couldn't possibly have burned that much fuel and I was tempted to disregard their lying indications and press for home. But then it was getting dark and the prospect of making an empty fuel tank landing on a dark road somewhere was not comforting in the least.
Sadly, Hastings airport has fallen on hard times and there is no airport operator in residence at the moment. They do have self-service "card troll" fuel however so we topped the tanks and hunted for a possible fuel leak. Voila right there was the culprit -- a deteriorated o-ring in the right fuel cap evidenced by fuel stains streaming back over the right wing behind the filler port. For hours, fuel had been siphoning out the top of the right tank and disappearing into the wind. Of course, there was no repair at the moment, so we isolated that tank and saved the full left tank to burn later.
It was a beautiful clear night and passing Arapahoe we were able to make out the glow of McCook's lights. Ominously though, beyond were also flashes of lightning from a huge thunderstorm southwest of our home runway. The race was on, but this time Mother Nature the winner. Flying abeam Bartley, the lights of McCook disappeared due to torrential rain and a brilliant display of lightning as that huge thunderstorm moved over the city. By then it had already been too long a day so we altered course toward the lights of Lee Bird Field and a welcoming motel room in North Platte.
Oh yes, a pair of new o-rings -- only $53 but well worth it.
That is how I saw it.
Comments
A real life example of the old saying someone once taught me. "There are old pilots, and there are bold pilots, but there are no old, bold pilots." I enjoy reading your articles online every week and find each one very interesting. Glad to hear you are still using the same common sense you taught me about 18 years ago. I hope I have passed your knowledge on down to all those I have taught to fly! Suzanne Pensacola, FL
The thought of Fuel Exhaustion in an airplane, and more so at night, raises my stress level to the max. Imagine having to land that lightweight aluminum shell blindly into less than soft, flat terrain and one must wonder.... could this happen to me? No, probably not because I have adequete training and do not become complacent. Oddly enough, a search at the NTSB accident database will confirm that some pilots do fall into this very obvious trap. Fuel management does not appear difficult being a simple formula of basic math and weather conditions compared to airplane performance specifications. In this scenario, the fuel quantity and engine consumption rate have been reasonably demonstrated and the weather conditions were not a factor but a mechanical malfunction of the fuel system occurred in flight leaving a pilot with the challenge of determining what information to trust; he has interpreted the fuel quantity indicator and it has given contradictory information in regard to his flight plan ( fuel burn/time ). The Cessna Skylane has two fuel indicators, one each for the left tank and the right tank, they are commonly graduated in both pounds and gallons and have a swing indicator for reference. Each fuel quanity indicator is connected to a sensing device located at both fuel cells. The design and operation of the sensing device is compromised by two primary factors. First, the airplane movement about X,Y,Z axis, with refereces to pitch, bank, yaw, gravity and thrust. Second, is the motion of the liqued fuel, it will interact sometimes indepepedant to the motion of the airplane, as it simply follows the path of lesser resistance. This results in an error due to the fuel quantity sensor being ridgidly mounted to a rigid fuel cell while the liqued flows away from the sensing device. The pilot needs to process the misinfromation and make a decision. It was prudent for Don to land at an alternate airport but that may not always be the situation in the real world. Obviously a good pilot understands each systems particular operation and the related errors and when a problem arises he takes action. A better pilot can diagnose cross check, or isolate the system during flight and make the determination as to how critical the situation may become and possibly delay action till later. In daylight VFR flight information is easier to process but add darkness or low visibility and your workload increases significantly.
I was flying back home to NE last Thursday after a long day doing a Cat rescue in Jeffco, CO. I was tired, the cat had gotten loose in the cockpit, winds aloft shifted from a headwind to a cross wind and I made a spontaneous decision to reroute to a a larger more familiar airport approximatly 60 NM off my intended course. No big deal I thought as the moon was out and I know the area. Me and the stable air were both calm and sleepy, and in a haze, I decided to just pilot by dead reckoning until intercepting the airport NDB. The ADF indicator never swung and my time had elapsed, I had descended to the MSA of 5600 and the airport was unlit and at that moment I realized that simple flight plan was in order. It took several minutes to circle and dial in navaids before I could find my airport some ten NM off in the distance.... the ADF indicator did swing and happily shot the approach.