The Cannibal Queen (40 page)
East of Two Guns and five or six miles south of the highway is Meteor Crater, which the first white men in this area thought was volcanic in origin. Nope. At least fifty thousand years ago and probably more a 300,000-ton meteor came into the atmosphere at so steep an angle that it escaped incineration. This crater is the impact point.
This eroded relic of an ancient catastrophe attracts me and I fly over it in the
Cannibal
Queen. From up here it doesn’t look so big. But that crater is 4,000 feet in diameter and 600 feet deep. I’ve stood on the rim. Big as it is, it’s still a dimple compared to the Grand Canyon, but then as meteors go, the one that hit here was a mere pebble.
Scientists say that if a meteor over six miles in diameter ever hits the earth, life on this planet will cease. So people who like to worry about things they can’t do anything about want the federal government to spend hundreds of millions to keep an eye peeled skyward just in case. What all of us humans will do if the alarm is ever given isn’t precisely explained.
The FBO at Winslow doesn’t answer my calls, but after the third one the FBO at Holbrook does. I ask him if he has fuel. Yes. So I overfly Winslow and continue the 30 miles to Holbrook.
The wind is out of the west—I’ve been enjoying another tail-wind—so I enter on a right base for runway 21. As I flare the wind gets squirrelly, gusting from odd directions. This is the desert.
Inside the FBO office they have a board with photos of some of the niftier planes that have stopped here. On the board are three photos of a Waco biplane owned and flown by a popular singer that was badly smacked in a crash here last year. The prop was bent around the cowling, the gear wiped off, the lower wing crumpled like a rag, the fuselage deformed. This was no garden-variety goundloop.
The guy who pumped the gas explains: “What the singer told the FAA was this: A gust of wind caught him on landing, after he had touched down on the mains but before he got the tail wheel down. The plane probably weathercocked on him. So he added full power and honked it into the air.
“But he was too slow to fly and stalled. Maybe a gust or the wind shifted while he was just a few knots above a stall. Whatever, he fell maybe fifty feet and hit with full power on, which is why the prop is bent like that. Wiped off the gear, really bent everything there was to bend.”
Looking at the photos, I think the pilot was lucky he hit in a flat attitude. I doubt if he stalled it 50 feet up—my guess is it fell about 20 feet. Much higher and the nose would have been more down at impact.
These pictures are a sobering lesson for a tail-wheel pilot. Once you pull the power to idle and begin the flare, never ever add power to go around. No matter what. It is better to groundloop at a low speed trying to get stopped than stall somewhere off the ground and drop it in. And in gusty, shifting winds, a stall is almost inevitable.
This story also illustrates the benefits of the three-point, full-stall landing. When the mains arrive on deck, you want the tail wheel down simultaneously or as soon thereafter as possible. Most tail wheels are steerable, so when coupled with the effect of the rudder, you can prevent the plane from weathercocking— if the tail wheel is on the ground and you are holding it down with full back stick. If it’s up, all you have is rudder and you may not have enough.
Some tail-wheel pilots feel more comfortable with wheel landings in gusty conditions. A wheel landing is flown at a slightly higher approach speed than a full-stall—in the Queen, 85 MPH—and the plane is literally flown onto the runway at that speed. The mains touch while the tail is still up in the flight attitude. One then lets the plane decelerate while working stick and rudder to hold the plane straight and overcome the effects of cross wind and gusts. If everything goes right these landings work out. Yet if something goes wrong, such as too much wind or a misapplication of stick or rudder, the plane will be badly damaged in the resulting accident. Perhaps totally demolished.
The amount of dynamic energy varies with the square of the speed, so obviously an accident at 35 MPH will result in much less damage than one at 70 or 75. The old tail-wheel pros I have talked to recommend the full-stall landing, which is precisely why I use it exclusively.
Scrub off every knot you can before you put her on the ground, then if things go to hell, all you’ll have to worry about is a scraped wingtip and damaged pride.
As I taxi out on the narrow taxiway that parallels the Holbrook runway, the waist-high sagebrush rubs against the underside of the Queen’s wingtips. This gently rolling desert is covered with the stuff—this summer the plants are green, healthy and big. An off-field landing in this brush would probably set the
Queen
or any other light plane over on its nose or back.
East of Holbrook the land loses a lot of its greenish tinge and becomes pink and beige. Somewhere here is the Petrified Forest. Today I can’t spot the park highway even with the aid of the chart. Maybe if I circled, but I don’t have time.
I’m going to Albuquerque and park the Queen. John Weisbart has arranged for a hangar and will send one of his employees, Scott Olsen, to meet me in my Cessna T-210. I’ll spend a week or so in Colorado on business, do some writing, wash my underwear and jeans.
I’m supposed to call John from Gallup, New Mexico, 110 nautical miles west of Albuquerque, and he’ll launch Scott to meet me. Yet there are thunderstorms building in western New Mexico. I can see them plainly now, dark clouds with high tops.
There’s one just north of Gallup as I make my approach. The airport at Gallup consists of a single runway, 6-24, lying in a valley with ridges on both sides. Field elevation is 6,469 feet above sea level. Temperature about 90. The wind is gusting and shifting from the northwest at about 12 knots as I make my approach to runway 24. I expect trouble on final and am ready when the wind flops to almost 90 degrees cross. The landing isn’t pretty but it’s safe.
Standing on the top of the rear seat trickling fuel into the tank, I can plainly see rain falling from that boomer to the north. Another storm is off to the southeast. Eastward seems clear enough, but for how long? I feel vaguely uneasy.
Inside the terminal the FAA has a Flight Service Station. One man is working there today. In a few minutes he gets to me. He tells me nothing I don’t already know, but I listen carefully anyway. Isolated thunderstorms across western New Mexico moving south at ten knots, chance of thunderstorms with 35 knots of wind and reduced ceilings and visibility all afternoon at Albuquerque. Thirty-five knots? Uh-huh.
I call John in Boulder from a pay phone in the lobby. He’ll launch Scott. “No hurry,” I tell John. “Tell Scott there’s thunderstorms around and to be careful.”
Outside I pause to smoke my pipe, look at the sky, and study the wind sock. Sixty, seventy degrees of crosswind, about twelve knots. The thunderstorm north of town is noticeably closer. The wall of rain is only a few miles north.
Time to get the hell out of Dodge.
The Flight Service specialist doesn’t answer my calls as I taxi out. I decide to skip the run-up and taxi straight onto the runway. There is a Cessna 152 in the pattern on the downwind.
I feed in throttle and rudder as I add power. Stick forward and right. The
Queen
accelerates slowly. The air is hot and thin.
Come on, baby!
As the tail rises the wind increases dramatically and shifts farther right, toward the north. Uh-oh! The adrenaline smacks me.
Fifty MPH. Fifty-five.
I can feel the wind trying to shove the
Queen
sideways. I have left rudder crammed in and the stick almost full right.
Sixty!
The stick is full right when the left main wheel comes off. Only the right main is on the ground.
Sixty-five!
I ease in back stick and the right main breaks loose. The plane immediately goes sideways toward the left edge of the runway. This I counter by a gentle turn to the right—ten degrees, fifteen, twenty.
She’s climbing slowly, very slowly. There’s a hundred feet … two hundred. The altimeter reads 6,700 feet. I have the
Queen
at 70 MPH and she’s sluggish, doesn’t want to accelerate or climb faster than this snail’s pace. But she is going up.
The heart rate begins to slow. Made it!
If I turn south the wind climbing that ridge should give me a lift upward. I’ll try it.
Gingerly I lower the left wing and keep the ball centered with rudder. The nose tracks around and I can see the ground begin to pass beneath faster as the wind starts to push. I keep the needle on the airspeed indicator right at 70.
The ridge is coming toward me, now dead ahead. Altitude 6,800. But the needle on the altimeter is
motionless
.
She’s not climbing!
God! The air is descending here, not ascending! She’s climbing, but only as fast as the air is going down!
The ridge ahead is getting closer. The combined velocity of the moving air and the plane drives her at that ridge at a sickening rate.
She’s still not climbing! Maybe 150 feet above the ground now. Why, oh, why did I ever leave that valley? Coonts, you are a fool. A crash here would serve you right. You’ve earned it.
Now the needle moves. Up 50 feet … now 100.
If I can’t clear the ridge I’ll chop the mixture and stall her in, minimize the damage.
But she’s climbing. Agonizingly slow. Now 6,900 feet, now 7,000.
I decide to risk a turn to the east. If I can stop her progress southward I’ve saved this situation. Why didn’t I think of that thirty seconds ago?
Now 7,100 feet. Wings level heading east. The land slowly falls away as the
Cannibal Queen
claws for the sky.
Now I am aware of the radio. The 152 is waving off. Too much crosswind. He asks the Flight Service specialist what the wind is.
“Ninety degrees off, eighteen gusting to twenty-one knots.”
Mother of God! Twenty-one knots of crosswind! And I took off in that!
Still shaking, I fly eastward climbing slowly as the 152 pilot talks to the FAA man about the wind. Now it’s out of the north, coming right out of that solid wall of rain and black cloud. The Cessna pilot decides to try an approach to runway 6.
I don’t want to listen. I turn off the radio and meditate on the fortune that sometimes saves fools, sometimes destroys them.
Ten miles east I look back over my left shoulder. The storm is now over Gallup, the leading edge over the field. Behind the storm is clear sky. If I had just waited an hour, it would have passed completely.
I-40 takes me to Albuquerque. A desert storm looms over Mount Taylor north of my track and a couple darken the high ground to the south, but over the highway I have a relatively smooth ride. And Albuquerque is clear, with only a high scattered layer.
The man in the tower is advising airliners of wind shears east and west of the field as I make a sedate straight-in approach to runway 3, but he informs me that all is calm to the southwest.
“Thank heavens,” I tell him.
There is only a little burble near the ground. The
Queen
settles onto her wheels thankfully. Or perhaps she is thanking whoever it is that has just delivered another sinner from the consequences of his folly.
T
HE AIRLINER DESCENDED THROUGH PUFFY CLOUDS INTO
A
LBUQUERQUE
. Everyone aboard, including me, was reading newspaper accounts of the coup in the Soviet Union, but I lowered my paper to look out the window and check the clouds. I parked the
Cannibal Queen
in the hangar at Cutter Flying Service nine days ago and now I’m coming back to fly her. Gorbachev deposed, the Soviet Union on the brink of civil war, the stock market down 95 points at 9 A.M., and I’m going flying in an antique biplane.
The talking heads on television at the airport cafe in Denver made me feel superfluous and gave this trip an air of unreality. The black type of the newspaper congealed the mixture to guilt. Maybe I should be at my office with the television on, sweating World War III along with everyone else.
Newspapers and news broadcasts have an edge to them. That harsh reminder of the real world is what we go on vacation to escape, at least for a little while.
I tucked the newspaper and my guilt into the pocket of the seat in front of me and left it there when I got off the plane.
After the line boy helped me roll the
Queen
into the sunlight and fuel her, I had a major decision to make. Should I go east through the mountain passes or south down the Rio Grande valley to El Paso, then east around the southern end of the mountains?
Decisions, decisions. I stood on the ramp and looked east. The cumulus clouds drifting eastward might not obscure the passes, but they would spawn thunderstorms that would be hard to circumnavigate in that rough country. South it is.
A gent named Steve Jones was carefully inspecting the
Queen
when I returned from settling the bill. We visited a moment and he told me he owned the blue and yellow Stearman I had seen in an open hangar on the trip over from the terminal.
“Been working on that plane for eighteen years. Haven’t flown her yet. Was going to try it this morning but I had starter trouble. Seems like it’s always one little thing after another.”
Eighteen years! My God, he started on his plane in 1973.
“Got her in a basket from a guy in Phoenix. Been a hell of a job, but sooner or later I’ll get the bugs worked out.”
Eighteen years! If I were him I would have hired someone to haul the pile off to the dump years and years ago. Even if the pile were the
Cannibal
Queen. I don’t have that kind of patience.
The Queen’s engine fired the instant I turned on the mags. She sprayed oily white smoke from her stack in a spectacular cloud. I leaned her all I dared but it still took a half minute before the white smoke ceased.
She’s just glad to see me.
Mr. Jones waves good-bye and I hesitantly flap my hand as I let the
Queen
roll. Eighteen years! The man is not human.