More of the past. Golf Juliet Lima

The first aircraft I owned was a Piper PA22-150 Tripacer VH GJL.

The tripacer is an honest little airplane, a dream to fly, forgiving of all but the clumsiest pilot, but noisy enough to wake the dead. It has a few little quirks such as the glide characteristics of a broken brick, interconnected controls, master and start switches hidden under the pilots seat, brakes that are little more than wishful thinking, elevator trim that requires a third arm and a desire to roll inverted and die when stalled out of a full power steep climbing turn. Often referred to as the flying milk stool and treated with distain by those who will only ever manage to pedal her around the sky, she is treasured by those pilots who instinctively know that when mastered she is an aircraft without equal. 

GJL Archerfield  1991

 No one will ever describe a tripacer as beautiful; they already long obsolete by the time they were first built, a stubby, boxy little aeroplane thrust into a world of streamlined polished aluminium, the last of the tube and fabric era. Combining a genuine one hundred and ten knot cruise with superb slow flying ability and crisp control responses, nine hundred pounds of useful load with only a hundred and fifty horsepower up front, the tripacer remains one of the most underrated four seat aircraft around.

The log book entry for 26^th of June 1993 reads  Milo to Gooyea. engine quit.  I was flying home after a week away working, tanks full, gauges in the green, completely relaxed, thinking of other things when I was jolted back to reality by sudden silence up front.  I can guarantee there are few things that can grab your attention quicker than engine failure in a single engine aeroplane. Training kicks in without conscious thought and the responses are automatic, try to restart the engine and look for somewhere to land. The tripacer is a lightweight, aerodynamically dirty aircraft with a poor glide angle and without power the pilot has only one chance to pick a spot and set up for landing.

I was always in the habit of flying at four or five thousand feet on short solo flights and height translates into valuable time and options. The realisation struck me that the difficulty with crashing aeroplanes is that you never do it often enough to get good at it. I picked up the VHF radio mike and put out a radio call. "Mayday, mayday, mayday, this is Golf Juliet Lima. Fifteen miles north of Milo station, one POB, total engine failure". No response, as I half expected, no one within range had a radio on. I knew an ultralight drifter was mustering locally so I called him on the UHF, quick explanation and asked him to stand by. I called home on the UHF to arrange someone to come and pick me up, it was way too far to walk home, and set the aircraft up on a long final for a forced landing on a claypan. I had been flying GJL for some years and I had total confidence in my own ability to safely land that airplane precisely where I chose. 

Flying Quilpie to Longreach. Sure beats driving.

As I was descending the lycoming engine would occasionally regain full power for a brief second and then die again.  I had no idea what was wrong and nothing I did made any difference. At around two thousand feet the engine started to run again, albeit very roughly at around twelve hundred RPM. As I leaned out the mixture it settled into a steady beat at about eighteen hundred RPM.  Not quite enough to maintain height but enough to give me a few options.

Eighteen hundred feet, losing height at around a hundred feet a minute, fifteen minutes to home. Good safe landing site below me, nothing but tiger country on the way home, what option did I have? Common sense would indicate I should cut the power and land immediately but instinct was to fly that little aeroplane home and instinct is more powerful so I headed north. I like to think that if I had a passenger, I would have landed rather than put them at risk but I honestly don’t know. Instinct is insidiously powerful and the overriding urge when flying a stricken aircraft is to keep it in the air. The air is its natural element and while in flight the pilot still has options.

I reached the strip at Gooyea with a hundred feet to spare, tied the aircraft down and dropped the cowl to find out what went wrong.

The O320 lycoming in a tripacer has an updraft carburettor with a carburettor heat butterfly directly below. The shaft for the carburettor heat butterfly had failed and allowed the butterfly to suck up against the carburettor effectively chocking the engine. When the engine stopped the butterfly would fall away unblocking the carburettor and allowing the engine to run again. As it reached full power the butterfly would suck up and again choke all life from the engine. The air box with the butterfly and broken shaft went to Norm Kelly, an aircraft welder in Archerfield for repairs and I was earthbound for a couple of weeks to reflect on the fine line between skill and luck.

Sometimes it all goes wrong. Queenair crash 1984.

Looking back I am struck by the number of pilots who have died in aircraft crashes. Barry Hempel, the instructor who sent me solo in 1976 flying another tripacer, PJW, signed off my unrestricted licence in GJL and tail wheel endorsement in tiger moth UVB flew into the sea off South Stradbroke Island. Laurie Curley of Curley Air Maintenance, one of nature’s true gentleman and one of Queenslands great rogues, an engineer extraordinaire who maintained both my airplanes and stayed with us whenever he was in the Quilpie area, flew a Mooney into the ground at night near Roma.  I watched a Beechcraft Queenair crash killing the pilot at Trinidad, the property that I grew up on in Western Queensland, and two neighbours were killed in separate flying accidents. An oilrig I had been working with lost a crew in a Beechcraft Kingair crash near Adavale in Western Queensland. The instructor who taught me to fly a K7 glider at McCaffreys field lost his life in a crash on the same field. Other pilots, just casual acquittances, also lost their lives following their passion.

Memorial to lives lost in Kingair crash. Adavale.

For over a hundred years pilots have sometimes been called upon to pay the ultimate price for the privilege of soaring like an eagle and I expect most of them understood and willingly accepted the risks and ultimately been satisfied with the payments that can only be made in heartache and blood. Only those who fly can possibly understand the peace and contentment that comes when you are alone in the cockpit, the world has dropped away far below and you become one with the airplane and the sky.

That rare privilege will always be worth the asking price.