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Nasty Job Season
The one good flying day last week brought out the aviators that had been grounded by gusty winds, so there was evidence in planes seen and transmissions on the advisory frequencies. A low-pressure center and trailing fronts moved through later on, putting aircraft back in their stalls. By the weekend, we were dealing with summer-like conditions—heat and thermal updrafts.
The transient flow included a Piper Cherokee, a Cirrus SR, a Piper Twin Comanche and Warrior trainer. Jay McClintock flew down from Harrisonville in his Piper Tomahawk with a student, and a Cessna Skyhawk flew the RNAV 18 instrument approach. Locally, Jon Laughlin flew up to Kansas City in his Piper Cherokee 180, Randy Miller practiced in a Cessna 150, I took the Cessna 172 up and Roy Conley exercised his Grumman Tr2.
All of us are engaged in the annual nesting season battle with our feathered fiends, digging sticks and straws out of nook and crannies that were deposited by determined bird-brains. It’s no laughing matter; blocking airflow to engine cylinders and oil coolers, restricting control travel and putting corrosive emissions into contact with aluminum are safety concerns. Bird control is always a job at any hangar structure, a nasty but important one.
I ran across an old photo from the early days at Butler airport, taken around 1964, when the only paved parking was a small ramp area in front of the main hangars. It shows a brand-new Piper Cherokee Six, probably brought in to show by the Piper salesman, and in the background are the fuel pumps and our only concession to hospitality, the old wooden outhouse. We’ve come a long way in 60 years.
Near tragedy was avoided last Tuesday at an airport near Vancouver, British Columbia, when a landing Cessna 182 clipped a pickup truck on a service road beside the runway end. The Cessna’s tire bounced off the truck windshield, crashed into a fence and caught tire, but the occupants got out okay. Evidently the pilot was fixated on the runway and wasn’t looking for pickups.
Our week’s question from the last column wanted to know why the operating handbook for the Cessna Skyhawk tells pilots to pull on the carburetor heat in heavy rain. That’s to bypass the air filter in the
intake system, sending air directly to the carburetor, because rain can sheet over the filter and block off air, causing a rich mixture and engine stoppage. For next time, why did the 1946 Luscombe 8A have a placard specifying “carburetor heat must be on for takeoff”, which is the opposite of most airplanes’ procedure? You can send your answers to kochhaus1@gmail.com.
