EAA Sport Aviation

I’LL NEVER DO THAT AGAIN

tops of corn rows was I able to bounce the
old airplane into the air. But as if to make
up for its earlier refusal to fly, now the 152
would not be denied. It was climbing like a
rocket, and I suddenly remembered that I
did not want to climb! I needed to be well
under 50 feet altitude or I would hit the
power lines! A determined shove forward
on the yoke, and I passed beneath some
very nasty-looking black cables.
I learned several things from this episode:
1) Practice engine-out landings frequently. If
you fly alone, force yourself to pull the power
on random flights, at random times. Best glide
speed and the cockpit actions to make it hap-
pen must become automatic, muscle-memory
tasks. Otherwise you may not do them prop-
erly when all hell breaks loose. 2) With an
intermittent engine, it is better to make a
precautionary landing in a good field than
to be forced down in a residential area. And
once you decide that a precautionary landing
is the prudent thing to do, pull the power
to idle, shut off the fuel and the mags, and
land it! 3) Tell ATC what you are doing. If I
had been talking to Center, getting traffic
advisory service (which I always do now),
they would have had a very close approxi-
mation of my location. This could have
dramatically shortened the time it would have
taken to rescue me had that been necessary.

A determined shove forward
on the yoke, and I passed
beneath some very nasty-
looking black cables.
4) Polish your common sense and then use
it. Learn to estimate runway lengths by look-
ing from one end of every runway to the
other end and then looking at the airport
diagram showing runway length. Then say
aloud, “So that is what 2,000 feet [or what-
ever] looks like.” Do the same on downwind
to unfamiliar fields. And as you pass airports
while en route, compare what you see out the
windscreen to the distance out to the pointer
on your portable GPS, so your ability to esti-
mate distances stays sharp. 5) Know your fuel
state. I should never have needed to question
the amount of fuel in my tanks. I should have
known. I don’t know exactly how much fuel I
drained trying to find water. And I don’t
know how much the mechanics drained (they
never said). I may have been about to run that
airplane out of fuel! By forcing me down in a
good landing field, maybe the rag in the fuel
system saved my life instead of threatening it.
So pay as much attention to the clock as you
do the sectional. Always write down your
departure time, always know your aircraft’s
fuel consumption at any given power setting
and altitude, and when you reach your fuel-
limited time, minus about an hour for
reserves, land. 6) And lastly, before you rent
an airplane to somebody, do a thorough
inspection of the fuel tanks. Shop rags do not
move through fuel systems very well and can
cause unnecessary sphincter-tightening.