My students look at me with great incredulity. “No way!” one says. “Six inches?”
“Yep. At least we think it was six inches. It might have been closer.”
“How could you measure a miss that close?” another asks.
“Simple. We moved the airplanes to the closest point we could estimate and then put the prop of the Ercoupe vertical. There was about five and a half inches between the top of the prop arc and the bottom of my wing,” I explained. Then I went on to tell the rest of the story, as Paul Harvey would say.
We were headed to the Tampa Bay area for a fly-in of our little aviation group. The little grass field where we landed had a road paralleling the runway and the local hosts parked us in a line tails to the road. There were about 30 airplanes parked wingtip-to-wingtip.
Most of my friends had acquired hotel rooms or set up tents for the evening. Since I grew up in Tampa and my best friend still lived there, I decided to fly over to an airport on the North side at about 10 p.m.—Paul was still working until after 11 p.m.
I went out to my Cessna 170, pre-flighted, climbed in, and fired up the engine. Since the tail faced the road and there was no traffic and there was a pasture on the other side of the road, I did a quick engine run-up in the spot. Then I taxied out to the end of Runway 9. After my departure call, I applied full power and began rolling.
The night was dark. Real dark.
At about the time I my tail lifted off the ground, I saw the Ercoupe. It was right in the middle of the runway without any lights. The silver airframe appeared as a ghostly figure in the beam of my landing light.
The prop arc of the Ercoupe passed about six to 12 inches outboard of where the strut joined the wing on my Cessna. I instinctively threw in full right aileron to try lifting the left wing. I went by the Ercoupe while looking at it to confirm the lights were out. They were.
I lost my direction on the dark runway. I knew fences bordered each side of the runway. I had to fly and fly now!
I reached down and grabbed the flap handle. I snatched on 20 degrees of flaps; I was very happy for manual flaps–there’s nothing better than being able to get half flaps instantaneously.
I didn’t know where the needle was pointing on the airspeed indicator; I was flying the airplane by feel. After I knew I was airborne and clear of the fence, I felt compelled to look back over my shoulder at the Ercoupe once more. I had to make sure I was right about the Ercoupe’s lights being off.
They were. As I looked at the dark apparition sitting in the middle of the runway, the nav lights suddenly popped on.
I circled overhead to pull my heart out of my throat and the seat cushion out of my… Down below, a couple of my friends were watching. They had witnessed the whole event.
They would tell me later both the Ercoupe pilot and I yelled “Clear!” at the same moment. Neither of us heard the other and then we stared our respective airplanes simultaneously, so again, we did not hear one another.
After I settled down, I landed to have a little “debriefing” with the Ercoupe pilot. I asked him why he was moving an airplane around in the dark without lights. I also asked if he was aware of the regulatory requirement of turning on nav lights when moving an airplane in the dark.
Months later, he told me “the rest of the story.” As he was moving across the runway, his nosewheel fell into a “gopher hole,” causing him to stop. Then he had to work the nosewheel of the airplane out of the hole very carefully.
“Had I not fallen into the hole,” he said, “We more than likely would have hit spinner-to-spinner.”
We were very lucky that night.
-30-
© 2010 J. Clark
Wow, a very lucky night all around! Happy it turned out as well as it did for you. Good thing you were as observant as you were and an uncluttered mind and cockpit!
And I remember it well. I think my heart stopped, the feeling of helplessness was awful. Glad all went well – Esther
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