An Interesting Month for 49R and An Interesting Day For Me

At the end of April, when we went to retrieve 49R from the repair shop fresh off its annual, we were informed that some damage occurred. It wasn't major damage and certainly wasn't something that affected the airworthiness of 49R, but it was something that could effect the value of our aircraft so needed to be repaired.

While 49R was in our mechanic's hangar awaiting our arrival to return home, another customer of our mechanic was a little careless and put a crease in the underside of 49R's left wing. The crease wasn't deep, but it was about 15 inches long and spanned across a row of rivits that held the skin to one of the ribs in the wing. As it turned out a rib was damaged as well as two stringers that run the length of the wing. All needed to be replaced, which required draining fuel from the fuel tank in that wing, removing the wing from the plane, drilling out all the rivets holding the skin in place, replacing the skin, rib and stringers, and putting it all back together. In total, that 15" little crease yielded a repair bill of about $8000.

In any event, we got in touch with the insurance company and made arrangements to bring the plane to a shop recommended by our mechanic at Flying T Ranch near Anna, TX. It's a short grass strip 14nm northeast of McKinney Airport. Once the insurance company finally gave the go ahead to proceed, it was time to ferry 49R up to the Flying T... but first, because I had only done soft field landings in theory (that is to say, I've only practiced soft field technique at a normal hard surfaced airport) I needed some practice. So a couple of days before dropping of the plane, I did some touch and goes at McKinney to make sure I had my technique down. After about an hour, I was pretty good again too. During practice, the wind was a nice easy 7 knots right down the runway. On "game day", the wind was blowing pretty hard from the south and creating quite a strong crosswind...when you have to deal with a crosswind that's close to the demonstrated crosswind component of the aircraft with 40° of flaps extended, it can get pretty hairy. Let's just say, that my soft field landing was not so soft... I bounced it on the mains, and would find out later that the ELT was activated. More on that later.

While I was coming in and dealing with the wind, I had to be careful not to float it too much down the runway. The length is only 2000 feet, and there is a significant terrain change at the southern end of the strip. I wanted to avoid that, so when I came in and was hit with a gust that caused me to drop, I didn't want to add too much power for fear of floating too far and eating up too much runway. As a result, I lost all my lift and came down with a thud. I did keep the nose up which is an important part of preventing damage during those hard landings. Mains can take a lot of punishment, but the nose gear and firewall it's attached to, are not nearly as robust.

That was two weeks ago. As of this week, the repair was completed and the insurance adjustor received the repair shop's invoice and our signed release, so they were able to request a check for payment and I was allowed to pick up 49R just in time for a trip to San Antonio tomorrow. When I called our repair guy to arrange a time to pickup the plane, he informed me that in fact, my ELT was activated during that hard landing from two weeks prior. I had never heard an ELT go off before, and when I landed there two weeks prior, there was a loud siren sound in my headset. When I suggested that the ELT had been activated originally, the repair guy, who was watching my landing, thought that the landing wasn't hard enough to do so. I said, "It sure field pretty hard from inside the plane, but okay we'll see what happens." We convinced ourselves that since the airport does not exist in the 430W's airport database, that the sound I was hearing was from our 430W that thought we had hit terrain. It turns out that our repair guy received a call from the Civil Air Patrol inquiring about a downed aircraft at his airport. He went to my plane, fired up the power, and tuned the radio to 121.5... and sure enough, the siren was going off. He went ahead and turned off the ELT from inside the avionics bay and let the CAP know everything was okay.

I went to pick up the plane and made a great soft field takeoff and touched down beautifully at Sherman Airport (In fact, all my landings were outstanding today) for fuel -- I was greeted to a nice 30 cent drop in fuel prices that had just taken effect today -- and went talk to my mechanic who proceeded to call around to repair shops in the area who might have a new ELT battery (when an ELT is activated, the FAA requires that the battery be replaced). He found a shop that would stay open until I got there at Dallas Executive Airport (KRBD) -- also known as Redbird Airport -- so I went on my way. I proceeded directly to Redbird and got on with approach and was able to transition Class Bravo airspace direct to KRBD by overflying Love Field and bypassing downtown Dallas to the west. It was a nice little view of the downtown Dallas skyscrapers from 2500 feet that not too many pilots get to see because of how busy DFW Class Bravo airspace normally is.

I got the ELT Battery, returned to McKinney and installed the new battery to end my day. The ELT battery is one of a list of items aircraft owners can replace themselves requiring only a Private Pilot Certificate to perform the work. All in all, a longer day than I thought, but the plane looks great again, we're ready to go to San Antonio tomorrow morning and everything is taken care of. After all, long days at the airport are always pretty good.