Thought about putting something here for a while but which of the many to include?
Certainly the first emerg was a gem, chaffing faults on the harness of both mags resulted in two on one side of three not firing and totally blurred vision. I couldn’t see any of the instruments and little outside, at 300 hours total time it was lucky that I remembered an old gravel pit not far in front of me.
Another where the damper clamp bolts all parted company in a ‘ 47 definitely frightened me, it turned super sensitive and it was from about 300 feet straight ahead into a dry waterhole with several large rocks that I very luckily arrived in after nearly inverting it three times. I remember saying as I sat there muscles still locked up on the ground, good boy- good boy and taking my first very deep breath.
A fractured main pressure xmon oil line on a 3B1 which then decided to spurt all over the turbo also got me going big time when first I spotted the massive plume of smoke behind. Down very quickly and in my excitement grabbed the fire-ex, pulled the pin and squirt, yah biggest face full, bloody nozzle back to front eh. But the fire would not go out until some time later after many handfuls of dry dirt. That was when I noticed my legs were shaking like jelly.
I think the worst was in fixed wing. A night search for an overdue company pilot in a ’47. The night was as black as the inside of a dogs guts. We embarked with the duty IFR driver in a baron which had a really beaut flight director in it. Well that’s what the boss said every time we talked about it, his pride and joy it was, could almost skin cats this device, I’m sure - according to him.
So I jump in the front with the driver mainly because I don’t trust anyone else to do a proper radio search. Procedure is, fly the track at 6,000 feet and radio search, xmit – listen carefully, use all likely frqs continuously, big time- full time concentration. Goddamm I think I heard something, this is years before GPS. There’s bloody cloud cover the driver informs me. “Can we go under so we can do a search for afire?” Says I. This is very much the easiest way to find someone at night.
“I’ll try,” he says. Minima’s at 1100 feet, we break through at 900. We both knew the area intimately.
Doing a fire and radio search just as I heard another faint squawk we spotted a fire. OK – now; track and distance from nearest location, notify the local FSU who were close enough for VHF contact and stand by, - ever heard that before?
No worries. Later, ‘Can we fly a racetrack pattern to site from locator as they have a vehicle which will drive out?’
“ Sure.” We reckoned. Time is now around 9.30pm.
We observe the vehicles very slow progress across half boggy deeply gilgaed country that was infested with turpentine bush. A thick brush about eight foot tall and a real killer on tyres. Ground Vis would be about fifty yards; they were to follow our lights each time we turned. They had about 25 klms to run.
It was very boring, I’m starting to get sleepy, all of a sudden I feel something VERY wrong, big ROD I thought, s*** gauge says 2200fpm; compass was spinning, ASI climbing rapidly. I felt the two blokes in the back become very alert, the driver sussed it real quick and recovered. None of us will ever know at what height.
Turns out the boss’s real flash Flight Director had locked one of the bugs and stayed inclined at the standard 30 degrees from the turn. An hour later one of the local Air-Med planes took over. At two thirty am we get a phone call, can we go out again the vehicle isn’t far away now and the other plane has another job to do. Our two observers were in the land of zzedd; I says, “Yep I’ll go with you if you want to,” to the driver. Well what else could we say, one of ours and we still didn’t know whether the pilot was OK or not.
We stayed on station with this idiot locked up bug looking at us for another two hours, checking each other more than the flight profile. I don’t remember many times being more tired
Finally back to the town of the local FSU and get one hours’ sleep. They had squared away with the motel a feed for us at daylight; someone forgot to tell the cook. We go and see the cook in the motel kitchen; ‘can we get a feed mate?’ saya I. He had been on a bender and responded by telling us all to get F***** and chased me around the kitchen with a very long butchers knife.
We left, and flew back another two hours home, took it in fifteen minute turns to fly, with the two blokes in back watching that we didn’t go to sleep, did about fifteen checks for wheels down on finals. Slept all day and spent many sleepless night after that, wondering just how close did we come and what would the investigation have revealed had we? We reckoned it would be everything except a locked up bug.
Before that they all used to reckon that IFR driver was a wan***, I reckon he was proper all right after that, eh. BTW I told the boss what I thought of his flash flight director.