Bill Crawford’s Flightlab Blog

I wrote last month about my days as a skywriter. The Flightlab column in the Atlantic Flyer wasn’t intended for personal trips down memory lane, but if you fly it’s hard not to drag out the anecdotes. Aircraft are wonderfully complex and perverse objects, and the related academic subjects can absorb a lifetime of study. But from student days on it’s the storyline that fascinates us—the personal cycle of good flights and bad, of hopeful ascent and grateful return. Becoming a pilot is expensive and hard, but the result is way cool. We’re gosh darn godlike. So why shouldn’t we write about ourselves?

Just to follow up on the subject of smoke coming out of airplanes, a final story. Jim Thompson was a wonderful aerobatics instructor some years ago at Plymouth Airport. I took my initial aerobatic training from him, as did a collection of scoundrels who later became good friends and flying buddies. My initial training was in my Citabria, which I then sold in preparation for buying a Pitts S1S. You don’t go from a Citabria into a Pitts without a Jim Thompson (or functional equivalent) to guide you along. Jim gave me a five-hour transition in a two-seat Pitts S2B.

When you transition a pilot to a single-seat Pitts, the typical deal is to put him in the front seat of the S2B. The visibility from the front of a two-seat Pitts is about as miserable as that from a single-seater, which is the idea. During my tenure in the front seat, Jim and I did lots of takeoffs and landings, plus the standard aerobatic maneuvers, including normal and accelerated spins.

Jim’s training was always first class, but the guy wasn’t omniscient. The S2B has a steerable tailwheel. You can knock it out of the steering mode by applying full rudder and brake on one side, while adding a healthy blast from the prop. The wheel will castor freely and the airplane will then spin around. When you resume forward motion, the tailwheel returns to the steering detent. A steerable tailwheel allows you to motor along without constantly working the brakes, as you often have to do with a locking tailwheel. I did my checkout with a steerable tailwheel. Trouble is my future S1S had a Haigh locking tailwheel, which I didn’t know from Adam. The difference was that with a steerable rig all you do is push the pedal. With the Haigh, if you want to turn more than a few degrees you have to pull and hold a cable attached to the locking lever, which then releases the tailwheel. Let go of the cable and the wheel relocks once it returns to center. The problem is that if you apply rudder and/or brake before unlocking the tailwheel the sideload on the locking lever prevents its release. Jim didn’t tell me that.

So I end up in Wildwood¸ New Jersey, ready to ferry home my new (used) Pitts S1S, which once belonged to the Peruvian Air Force as part of their formation aerobatic team. I gather they hit the Andes one too many times and had to disband. The aircraft had a smoke tank in the upper wing center section, which the seller had good-naturedly filled with smoke oil. A push-off, push-on switch at the top of the stick controlled the smoke.

I climbed in, thinking I’m way cool, possibly godlike, and started her up. I unlocked the tailwheel before taxiing, and held the cable tight. Everything was fine until I taxied past a hangar and hit a crosswind. The aircraft suddenly began to swing into the wind. I released the tailwheel cable and the aircraft headed straight. Trouble was, it was heading for a parked Cessna 172. I jammed on the rudder before pulling the tailwheel cable. The tailwheel, now under a sideload, wouldn’t unlock! Apparently, my brain-not-functioning warning light came on and my idiot-in-charge system took control. I cracked under the pressure and did a singular thing—I somehow turned on the smoke system. After a second or so, the entire airport disappeared. I could feel the tail rise as I hit the brakes. The story gets embarrassing from this point on.