My dear friends;
Well it finally happened...the test pilot of my beautiful airplane project
turned
the controls over to me and I flew for the first time on Saturday,November
6th.
It was a beautiful day at the Mesa, Arizona airport (called Falcon field) with
high clouds and a gentle breeze. Temperatures were near perfect at about 73
degrees. The Commemorative Air Force (used to be called the Confederate Air
Force-
they restore and maintain flying WWII type aircraft) was having a big
event in celebration of Veterans day so there were many interesting aircraft
flying
about the field that day.
We took off and climbed out to the East about 3,000 feet above ground level. I
practiced learning my new Grand Rapids EIS (which I don't recommend) and also
how this airplane would handle. I practiced some aerobatic maneuvers- stalls,
spins, aileron rolls, wingovers, and barrel rolls.
Apparently the aerobatics loosened some "chaff" that was in the plastic fuel
tank.
We had taken pains to flush this system out completely but apparently this
is almost impossible to do. We had changed the fuel filters just before flight
and found little debris in them so thought we had no problem. In any event,
the fuel pressure starting fluctuating wildly swinging closer and closer to
zero. We turned on a second fuel pump (called a boost pump) to increase fuel
pressure through the filters. This helped marginally but the pressure continued
to drop. We knew we could not make it back to Falcon field so started looking
for an alternative and found one called Williams Gateway airport (an old
military base). It was 9 miles away and as we started there we reduced power
(to reduce fuel demands on the engine). The plane was running roughly by this
time and even quit entirely a couple of times. Fortunately our high airspeed
in this wonderful plane caused the prop to windmill a
nd
re-start by itself almost immediately. We landed with no further incident.
A call to our mechanics showed that the fuel filters had not been installed in
tandem but had mistakenly been installed to separate gas tanks (a main tank and
an auxiliary). While on the ground we switched to the auxiliary tank and the
fuel pressure jumped to full without a problem. You might wonder why we didn't
do this in the air. The reason is that since the aux tank rarely gets used
any sort of debris tends to collect there. Therefore if you're having a problem
with pressure, switching tanks may make the situation worse.
We prepared to fly back to Falcon Field however another sad event occurred. A
pilot with a Piper Super Cub (an old tail dragger style plane from the 1940's
but still in production- you may have seen them- they are nearly always painted
bright yellow) was carrying a passenger- one of the spectators from the Veterans
Day show- and as he took off, he climbed faster than the plane was designed
for. The result was a stall/spin into the ground smashing into a
military plane called an "Albatross." It killed both pilot and passenger while
destroying both aircraft. The airport was closed for the remainder of the day.
We called our mechanics again and they brought out a trailer to pick us up.
My stomach was a bit sore after all this excitement but as someone once said,
"walking
a tightrope is living, everything else is just waiting."
Thanks for sharing in my thoughts about this wonderful adventure of life we are
on,
Your friend,
Paul Boulet, N914PB, Malibu, California
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