Saturday, September 26, 2009

September 26, 2009 – A Day that Changed my Life



Plane crash under investigation
Posted: Sep 28, 2009 4:51 AM CDT
Caledonia, MN (WXOW) - The Houston County sheriff's department is investigation an accident involving an ultra-light aircraft at the Caledonia airport. The accident happened Saturday afternoon. Authorities say the pilot was trapped in the plane and sustained injures. The pilots name is being with held pending an investigation by the F-A-A.

Saturday, September 26th, seemed to work out as a good day to go taxi the JetWIng again. I called Steve and his schedule was clear, so I picked him up and we headed out to the Caledonia airport.
The previous week, I had made contact with a machine shop and had a new kingpin made according to my specifications. I was anxious to see if this pin would work. I had used the attachment hole in the king post as the guide, but as we assembled the wing at the airport, the pin turned out to be too thick to attach the wing. We went back to using the safety tie from the trailer to attach the wing.
I wanted to practice taxiing the JetWing on the hard surfaced runway. We were able to get the engine to start consistently. It ran very smooth and I was encouraged by that. I started taxiing with the wing in a negative angle-of-attack position. I was able to taxi at a relatively high speed under control, maybe up to 30-35 MPH according to the Hall's airspeed indicator. I don’t know how many times I taxied up and down the runway.
There was a guy at the airport practicing T&G landings from the right seat in a C-150. Before he took to the airplane, he stopped and talked with us for awhile. After talking with him, he explained that he had gotten his CFI recently and wanted to practice by himself, so we agreed to watch for each other and I would vacate the runway when he was setting up to land. There wasn’t any real conflict. I just taxied up and down, would stop and rest and talk with Steve between runs.
The last run was memorable. It was getting late and darkness was coming soon, but I was invigorated and decided to taxi one more run, and taxied out heading eastbound onto the runway. I got the JetWing up to a high speed, keeping the controls at neutral or negative angle of attack. But suddenly and with a “whoosh” of wind gust, the Jetwing smoothly took off and started to climb unexpectedly. It got to 30-40 feet of altitude, and since I had not anticipated leaving the ground at all, I had not anticipated what to do in this circumstance. I instinctively backed off the throttle, exactly the wrong reaction. After thinking about this after the fact, I realize that I should have given it full power to keep from an immediate stall, which is exactly what the JetWing did. After rising above ground effect it stalled and it flipped over on its right side. I saw the runway come up at me with dizzying speed. With a sickening crashing sound, I smashed onto the hard surface on my right side, the JetWing on top of me. My first thought was that I had suffered a spinal cord injury, but after flexing my fingers I saw things were moving. However, I saw the my right wrist was twisted grotesquely, and my right ankle was in great pain and contorted in an unnatural position.
Although I did not lose consciousness, things did seem to become a little distorted as I probably entered shock. My ankle was twisted around in a strange position, and I pulled it around so it looked a little like an ankle rather than a alien appendage. It was hard to breathe; the tubing of the JetWing was pressing against my chest and cutting off my airways. Steve abndthe otherpilot came running down to where I was, about half-way down the runway. They saw what was happening and held the JetWing up so I was able to breathe. Afterwards, Steve said they had called 911 and told me that the paramedics were on the way. It took them about 20 minutes to arrive, although I wasn’t keeping track of the time.
When they arrived they started to process of extricating me from the wreckage. They used the jaw-of-life (apparently) and cut much of the tubing to free me. Afterwards when I looked at the remains, I saw that they were especially ambitious and cut almost everything. I was loaded into an ambulance and carted to Gundersen Lutheran Hospital. There they started immediately to repair the damage. They immediately sent me to surgery to explore where things were or weren’t, and I lost track of the time. Afterwards they reported that the right ankle was very seriously broken and that saving it was not assured. The right wrist was broken in three places, but none of the breaks looked particularly severe, certainly not as severe as the ankle.
After three more surgeries to the right ankle and one for the wrist and three weeks in the hospital, I was able to go home, only to hear that our house had just sold and we had to move in 10 days. It was good news, but I felt bad because being wheel-chair bound, and a wrist that was in a cast and was not to be used, I couldn’t help with packing for the move at all. The furthersest thing from my mind was the JetWing.

Tuesday, September 1, 2009

Labor Day, 2009 – First Time Out


Today is the day. It will be my first time out with the JetWing. I had just gotten the carriage back from the mechanic who had tuned the engine up and said that it was in good working order. Time to put it to the test.
I picked up my friend, Steve Gund, at about noon and we proceeded to Caledonia Airport, actually the Houston County Airport not located in Houston. It was a beautiful day, warmish in the high 70’s and got hotter as the afternoon progressed. We were alone at the airport. We parked the Escort at the end of the parking area adjoining a large grassy area. That was good to protect the fabric of the wing. I got the instruction book out, hauled the wing bag to the grassy area, and opened it up. We took the wing out of the bag and assembled the triangular control bar and proceeded from there. Spread the wing, inserted the battens, top and bottom, and the end bars, and tensioned it. It took about an hour to do this, since it was the first time.
Once the wing was assembled, it was time to attach it to the carriage, which was still on the trailer. We unstrapped the carriage and lifted it to the ground. The wing was on its nose and in position to be attached to the carriage. After drawing the carriage with the main post still down to the attach point of the wing, we started to look for the attachment pin. This is what I call the “kingpin” because the entire weight and force of the wing attaches to the carriage and is suspended by this pin. It was nowhere to be found. Since this was the first time assembling the aircraft, we were not even sure what we were looking for. But somewhere either in Tennessee or here, this pin was lost. What to do!
Since my objective for this day was to assemble the aircraft and hopefully taxi it, the absence of the kingpin wasn’t the end of the world. Steve noticed that the safety pin from the trailer hitch would be a poor substitute, but would allow us to attach the wing for now. So we did that.
The wing on (sort of), we turned our attention to getting the engine to start. The battery had not been charged since it came back from the mechanic (should have done that, but hadn’t), so I didn’t know how much “poop” there was in the battery. We chocked and primed the engine and set the throttle to halfway, and started to crank and crank. The kill switch was in what I thought was the “on” position, but the engine did not fire at all. We both were holding the carriage so if the engine did start, it wouldn’t start to run out of control, and possible chop us up in the propeller in the process. But with the engine not starting, we relaxed our grip. Steve looked around to see if something was not set right, and in the process, moved the kill switch to the other position. Immediately the engine started wildly, and we almost lost our grip, but managed to regain control.
After throttling back to idle, I got the helmet on, stripped myself in, and tentatively started to taxi on the grassy strip paralleling the runway. It was rough and hard to control, but I was able to master it, increasing and decreasing the speed. I want the entire way down the taxiway and back. It was fun and encouraging.
After returning, I pulled up and shut off the engine. Steve had taken some pictures, both still and video (he’ll never make a living in photography!), and we rested and talked about our accomplishment. I decided to do another taxi run on the hard surface, so we tried again to start the engine. It would not start, and eventually the battery went dead.
But regardless, it was a satisfying accomplishment for the first time out. I’m pleased with the effort. Now I need to find the kingpin that was missing and figure out how to start the engine consistently.
We returned home. I was physically exhausted, but energized by the experience.