H. Clay Gorton
The
plans were made. I would fly with Don Mortensen in
his "Utah Too", beautiful yellow open-cockpit SA300, and Glen Olsen, in his
award winning Acroduster Too, would fly with his brother-in-law, Robert
Young. We would take off, Glen from Bountiful Municipal and us from SLC
Airport 2, 20 miles to the south, at 6:30AM, and hook up over the salt flats
en route to Battle Mountain, Nevada, where we would stop to refuel. BLM is
the halfway point, 250 miles from both Oroville and Salt Lake. We started
out apparently somewhat ahead of Glen, established radio contact, but our
first sighting of the Acro was on the ground at Battle Mountain, where he
and Robert were waiting for us. Leaving Battle Mountain, we climbed to
10,500, flew just north of Reno, Nevada, and slid down the Sierras into
Oroville--total flight time, four hours.
It was good to see "the
gang" again, swap lies about our flying exploits, and inspect all the
beautiful Stardusters as they came in. On Friday afternoon Glen and Robert
opted for the traditional houseboat excursion on Lake Oroville. Don, being
retired air force, seemed to have some aversion to water craft, so we stayed
behind and spent the afternoon swapping more lies.
Saturday morning
all assembled for the fly-in breakfast at Willows, 25 miles west of
Oroville. It's a thrilling sight to see up to a dozen Stardusters in the air
at the same time. Between Oroville and Willows we flew over some of the most
extensive rice fields in the world. From these fields rice is exported to
both China and Japan.
During the day, more lies and flybys. Saturday
evening we enjoyed a barbeque dinner prepared by the local EAA Chapter. We
enjoyed their hospitality during the entire stay, as they provided
accommodations at the airport and free transportation to wherever and
whenever we wished to go.
Discussing our return to Salt Lake, Les
Homan suggested that we try a route over the Sierras following the Feather
River. He reported that he had flown that route from Oroville to Reno at a
max elevation of 5,500 feet! Probably had some pine needles in his wheels as
he landed. That sounded a bit adventurous, so we decided to try it. However,
Sunday morning weather did not cooperate-ceiling 5000. Flight service
informed us that we would have to fly as far south as Merced (175 miles from
Oroville) to get over the Sierras VFR. However, when we got as far south as
Placerville (75 miles from Oroville), a little light over the horizon to the
east suggested that we might get over the mountains at that point. So we
headed east.
Leaving Oroville, the Utah Too suffered a little
instrumentation problem. We carry two GPS's-one on the GPS batteries in the
front cockpit and one on the engine battery in the rear cockpit. It is a
fact of nature that when things go wrong, they never occur as single-point
failures, but are always accompanied by one or more other failures, not
mechanically or electrically related to the first, but both effecting the
same function. Not long after take-off from Oroville, the rear GPS antenna,
mounted just outside the cockpit, vibrated loose and departed the airplane.
At the same time an open circuit developed between the GPS in the front
cockpit and its antenna. So it was required that Glen navigate and we fly
contact with him. Another related problem was that, somehow, "Old Yeller"
wasn't as perky as she normally is, and we had to use full throttle to
maintain 100 MPH in even a slight climb. On landing, Glen touches down the
Acro at 100 MPH. So he had to fly at an uncomfortable nose-up attitude to be
slow enough for us to keep him in sight.
Under these unfavorable
conditions, we turned east, climbed to 9,500, skimmed over Lake Tahoe, and
headed for Battle Mountain-over 260 miles from Placerville. Flying full
throttle at 90-100 MPH, it soon became apparent that we would not make BLM
before running out of fuel, so it was necessary to make an interim stop. The
most logical airport en route appeared to be at Lovelock, Nevada. (Have you
ever tried to open and study a sectional in an open cockpit biplane)?
We made it to Lovelock about 11:00 AM on a very warm day, and were
encouraged to see a large fuel tank near the FBO. However, upon deplaning,
we found no one at the airport, the pump to the fuel tank inoperative and a
sign on the fuel tank listing four telephone numbers in Lovelock (12 miles
away, by the way) with instructions to call for assistance. That all seemed
workable, until, although we were able to get into the FBO, we found that
there were no telephones on the field. Since I was the oldest of the four
unfortunate adventurers (80 on my next birthday) and therefore the most
expendable, I was elected to run into Lovelock with the four telephone
numbers to solicit aid.
I started out at a comfortable dog trot,
which soon became uncomfortable, so I settled for the scout pace-alternating
50 running and 50 walking. Nearing the point of exhaustion-not very far from
the field-I flagged down the first vehicle to come by-a farmer in his
pick-up truck, headed for Lovelock, who kindly offered to let me ride with
him. As I explained to him our situation, he confessed that he too was a
pilot, and owned a Cessna 210. Then he found it necessary to pull over to
the side of the road, pull out a stack of photographs of himself and his
flying buddies-not the airplanes, just the buddies, and walk me through the
stack of photographs. (That ordeal was more exhausting than the scout pace).
Finally, we were on our way again, when he advised me that he had a cell
phone in the car, and would I like to use it? I replied in the affirmative
and so he again pulled over to the side of the road so I could use the cell
phone.
I called all four numbers and received from each one the
recorded message to leave my name and phone number and they would get back
to me. I suggested to my kind host that the cell phone would probably work
while the vehicle was in motion, and that if he would like to continue
driving, I would continue calling. Repeated calls brought no different
results, so my host suggested that we stop at his ranch, where he had a
phone with a cord on it, which would undoubtedly work much better.
After
pulling up at the farm house, he was anxious to show me his "spread."
So after a tour of the premises, we entered the house and I was able to use
the phone with the cord attached. The farmer was right about the phones-this
time instead of a recorded message I got a busy signal. Upon repeated tries,
I was finally connected with the ex-mayor of Lovelock, also a pilot, who
informed me that the pump on the fuel tank at the airport was inoperative,
and that the telephone company had removed the phone from the field because
of its infrequent use.
Enlightened by this revelation, and after some
rather heavy duty detailing of our plight, I convinced him that a suction
hose of sufficient length would probably solve our problem. So after about
half an hour, he met me at the farmer's house, and we returned to the
airport. On the way, discussing our airplanes-he had a Cessna 172-he
mentioned that he had never flown a tail dragger. I replied that we called
tricycle gear training wheels. That would have been better left unsaid-at
least until after we had obtained the needed fuel.
However, arriving
at the airport, I found that Glen and Robert had taken off for Battle
Mountain with the four phone numbers, planning to call from there to get
help. I imagined that they envisioned my carcass lying somewhere on the side
of that lonely road surrounded by buzzards. They actually made contact with
the ex-mayor's wife, who informed them that her husband had gone to the
airport to help out some poor pilots who had run out of fuel.
So
after siphoning out about 25 gallons and transferring them to the
Starduster, and handsomely rewarding the ex-mayor, we were ready to
depart-my turn at the controls. The reason that Glen had gone on ahead was
because Don had found the open circuit between my GPS and the antenna, and
it was now operative. So we took off and headed for Wendover, Utah. It was
fortunate that I took a wet compass reading on our heading, as the GPS
rather soon returned to its old inoperative mode. So we stayed on 80° and
made Wendover on the nose.
Out of Lovelock we had a rather strong
tail wind and received some welcome altitude boosts as we crossed over the
four ranges of mountains between Lovelock and Wendover, Out of Wendover,
however, we encountered a dense salt storm (any other place it would have
been a sand storm) with what appeared to be near zero visibility for about
2000 feet AGL. We also had a strong quartering headwind, and it was
necessary to crab by as much as 30 degrees to maintain course.
Finally,
at about 6:00PM we made it to Airport 2, weary, excited and
grateful to have survived another Starduster adventure.