Category: Airplane

Another student disabled one of my airplanes, so we had to go do a recovery run to Pismo/Oceano California. The propeller on our Tomahawk took a bit of a beating, and when there is the possibility that a propeller impacts the ground or a heavy object the entire engine must be disassembled and inspected before it can fly again. Since we can’t fly it back, it had to come home on a trailer.

It was a nice day, sunny with a slight breeze and a temp of around 78 degrees. There was a slight overcast that showed up late in the afternoon. First things first, we took a look at the prop and assessed the damage. There were some chunks of aluminum missing from the ends and it was pretty beat up for about 4″ from the end on both blades.

We were told by the person that damaged the prop that something had blown into the prop while they were on the ground with the engine running. After looking at it in person, me and my recovery team were a bit skeptical about that. Still, we needed to get the plane home and daylight was burning and the process to tear it apart and load it on a trailer started. 

We got the trailer positioned and the tools unloaded from the truck. Off comes the engine cowling so we can get to the nose gear and compress the strut, meanwhile another person climb in and starts undoing the interior so we can get to the bolts that hold the wings on the airplane.

While one person is getting the interior bolts prepped for removal, the other two of us pull panels off the lower side of the wing and start disconnecting the brake lines, fuel lines, control cables, and electrical connections that go from the cabin area (fuselage) to the wings.

One of the other panels we take off is a cover that hides where the wing passes through the airplane, so that we can drop the wing straight out of the bottom when we separate the two pieces. You can see the actual wing spar in the upper right corner of the picture above, its aluminum with all the rivets in it.

All of the interior wing attach bolts are out, the landing gear is off of the wings, and the tow pieces are actually separate in this picture. The wing is resting on the two supports under it, while the fuselage is supported by the two red stands in the back under the tail and the lift on the engine. We then removed the stands under the wingtips and lowered the entire wing to the ground and put it on roller dollies. We slid the wing out of the way and began to remove the center supports so we could separate the wing halves.

Next was to get the fuselage stabilized and loaded on the trailer. It’s a bit of choreographed movement to do it since the tail is taller than anything else and makes the entire body want to roll over to one side or the other. Basically one person has to stand under each side of the horizontal part of the tail and lift while a third person works the engine lift and pushes it where needed.

I got a good picture of the wing channel that the wing spar sits in when the wing is in place, I’ll show it above a pic of the wing spar that sits in the channel.

That got all the pieces in broken down, we got them loaded on the trailer and strapped down for the journey home. It took us 12 hours to drive from Fresno to Oceano, break the airplane down, load it, and drive back to Fresno. Not a bad days work.

Oh, and a helpful person who saw what happened gave me the real story about how it got damaged. It wasn’t something blowing in the wind. Maybe I’ll share that story with you if we ever meet up over a glass of home made mead.

Today has been a Monday, but this made it a lot better for a few minutes.

So I havent posted a lot the last few weeks. It’s not because I’m slacking in Vegas eating really good food and enjoying the suites at my favorite hotel, although its been a while and I really need to get back to my 5 Vegas trips a year schedule. Nope, work has been crazy. On the bright side I have been able to see some really neat stuff. I was up at Yolo county airport last week while they were doing air-ops for the big California fires. I took a bunch of photos and then got a new phone so I don’t have them with me to post. This week I was up in Oakdale to rescue another of our planes and got pics on the new phone. It looks something like this.

I laughed at the other end of the runway though because its like they got most of the way done on leveling the area and then gave up and just paved it. There is an obvious change in the elevation on the last few hundred yards. Even better is that it’s the end most often used for landings. Wanna see what I’m talking about? Click on the picture to make it bigger so you can *really* see the thing.

One final pic of just how nice a day it was out there.

So, I am often asked ‘what do you do’? Most days I am in the hanger sorting parts and handing out work to the techs to try and keep airplanes in the air so we can keep teaching students. But on days we go out and recover an airplane that has been left by a student it usually looks something like this.

That is 08L, one of our fleet of Piper Tomahawks. It was left there because the student flew up there and then couldn’t get the airplane started again. So we load up the parts and tools and get on the road. Most of the time we will fly up, fix it, and then fly it back but lately the truck has made a handy tool bench and work surface. Turned out to be pretty handy for overhauling a magneto.

On a side note, I work with these planes every day, fly them, and have known some of them since I first started training for my license in 1990. I know their tail numbers, their quirks, even far enough to say each one has a ‘personality’. Many of them I have gone and pulled out of salvage yards, people’s backyards (see an earlier post), and even flew one back from Florida (90G, my favorite of all our Tommy’s). To me, and a couple other A&P’s here at the school, they aren’t machines anymore. They aren’t dispassionate lumps of metal to be used, abused, and thrown away. They are more like pets, each having it’s own set of markings and characteristics that makes that plane unique and special. Some are temperamental and some are tough as nails, and a few are ‘special’ like that dim-witted nephew that at 13 years old still says ‘airpwane’ and stares vacantly into the distance. But each one has a special place in my heart and I’ll do everything I can to get them home and keep them flying.

Part of my job is to find and recover airplanes that have been forgotten or not wanted anymore. I’m usually looking for Piper aircraft since thats what we use as our trainers at the school. Last week I found one, it had been disassembled and sitting for quite a few years, but before that it had barely been flown. It’s kinda like finding a 70’s era muscle car that someone barely drove then sold it to a guy who tore it apart and let it just collect dust in the garage. In other words, a prime find. Heres a couple pics from the ad I found it in.

Overall, very promising and the price was good too! Unfortunately the trailer its sitting on wasnt for sale, so I had to make arrangements for that. A quick call around the Auburn area found a u-haul trailer about half an hour from the airplane, so I could at least do highway speed for half the trip there and back.

Some hours later found me navigating the most twisted warren of roads I have ever seen, and dragging a trailer to boot. My coworker that went with me didnt think the trailer would make some of the curves, but we got there and got it swapped from trailer to trailer. This is what an airplane on a trailer looks like.

Yup, thats how I brought it back. I did the same for another Tomahawk I found in Chandler, Arizona last year. The rest of the parts were scattered around so we gathered them up and loaded them in the back of the truck. And for those wondering, it’s just like going and getting a project car, all the extra parts are in whatever bin happened to be handy at the time. Take a look.

Heres a final pic, just before we hit the road for the 55mph, trailer hauling journey home.

Probably the most fun of the whole retrieval is watching the looks on peoples faces as it dawns on them that it really is an airplane on the trailer going down the highway. I always get several cars that speed up or slow down to take a good look and sometimes a couple of pics. Sometimes I have to drag them though a town or city and there you will get people on the sidewalk pointing as you go by. I much prefer to fly them home, like the tomahawk I brought back from La Belle, Florida. That was one fun flight and a lot of good memories. Maybe that would make a good post all it own. If you think so, leave a comment saying so.