Richard Jernigan -> RE: Late night shop drawings (Mar. 13 2015 4:06:32)
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The older pilots I knew were versatile, though Lindbergh's intuitive grasp was indeed legendary. One of my father's stories was about having to adapt. At the very beginning of WW II, before he went overseas, he was briefly the engineering officer at the new gunnery school in Harlingen, Texas. The engineering officer is responsible for the flight line, maintenance, etc. One of the contingencies developed before the war was to take a large number of civilian planes into the military, for use by the military for the increased level of travel and liaison within the USA. One of the planes was a fairly rare 4-seater whose make and model I don't remember. When the planes were brought into the service, they were given a going over by the Air Corps mechanics, and any needed maintenance was performed. On this plane the cable and bell crank control system was given a tune up. Going over the records, Dad asked why the plane had sat for a couple of weeks without being flight tested. He was told that no one had ever flown one like it, so they were reluctant to take it up. He replied, "I've never flown one, but if nobody else will do it, I'll take it up myself." Fully committed to takeoff, no runway left, with his copilot along, just after they lifted off he noticed the controls were crossed up. Pushing the stick to the left, the plane rolled right. It was an easy mistake to make. All you had to do was swap the connection of two aileron cables to the wrong bell cranks. At this point Dad would pause in his story as though done with it. Someone would always supply a straight line. "Well, what did you do?" "Oh we went up and flew around a little, did a few maneuvers until we got used to it, and came back and landed." "That was it?" "Well, I had to get on the mechanics for crossing it up, and publicly humiliate myself for missing it on the pre-flight." ==================================================== Dad's younger brother was flying his business partner's plane cross country over New Mexico on a business trip, with his partner half asleep in the right seat. The plane was partially fabric covered. It had just come out of the shop from being re-covered. My uncle said he noticed that the new fabric was just tucked under the top of the windshield plexiglas, instead of being wrapped around the tubular frame and doped in place, as it should have been. As Uncle Cecil told it, "Sure enough, after a while I heard a big boom, and the plane started handling pretty funny. We had just passed a little airport out in the country. I turned around and landed downwind. The airport manager came boiling out of his office, cussing us for not calling for permission and for landing downwind." Uncle Cecil went on, "I was still in the cockpit, talking to him through the side window. I said, 'If you're through talking now for a little while, put your foot on that step, look at the top of this plane, and tell me what you see.' He did that, and he said, 'Jesus, the whole top of the plane is gone.' Excuse my language, but that's what he said." "I told him, 'That's what I thought. You can get down now. I'm going to taxi over there and then I'm going to use your telephone. Have you got somebody who can tie this plane down?' " ===================================================== By the late 1950s "Uncle Bob" Weller had the world's biggest crop dusting operation. His pilots and planes worked from California all across the southern U.S. and all the way down to Brazil. The crop dusting business tended to attract adventurous spirits. Uncle Bob's headquarters was at Stinson Field in San Antonio, where he leased three of the four hangars. One of his employees was Clinton Frakey, an airport bum he and Dad had known since pre-war days. Uncle Bob had hired Clinton because he felt he owed him a favor, but he grounded him when he won a bet by doing certain aerobatics in one of the Stearman biplane crop dusters with full spray booms rigged. Clinton had a Piper J-3 Cub. Landing in a strong crosswind he ended up with the Cub on its nose, but with nearly no other damage. Using space in one of Uncle Bob's hangars he rebuilt the engine. All the mechanics told him not to use the old crankcase, as it was bound to be warped. Clinton said, "Well I took it to the machine shop and had it line bored. It will be fine." All the same, when it was time to re-certify the plane, all of the FAA inspectors refused to fly with Clinton. By and by a new inspector showed up and took the job. They flew out east of San Antonio in a semicircle, planning to drop the inspector off at San Antonio Municipal on the north side of town. Half way around, as the mechanics had predicted, the engine seized up. Clinton turned to the inspector in the back seat and said, "One of the nice things about flying is it can be so nice and peaceful, don't you think?" I never heard what the inspector's reply was. But as they dead sticked into a corn field, the inspector objected, "What the hell are you doing? Haven't you learned not to land crosswind by now?" Clinton replied, "I'm just getting lined up with the plowing. I hate bumping over all them damned furrows." I went with Dad while he was still on active duty to Uncle Bob's office at Stinson. Walking through the hangar, Clinton called out, "Red Jernigan, I haven't seen you in ten years. Come on over here." Clinton was repairing the fabric in a panel of a wing on the J-3. He said, "I bet ten dollars you don't remember how to sew a baseball stitch." Without a word, Dad took off his hat with the "scrambled eggs" on the bill, laid it on the workbench, laid a ten dollar bill on top of it, took the needle and thread, adjusted his trifocals that had reading lenses at top and bottom--he was 56 at the time--looked up at the underside of the wing and sewed a perfect baseball stitch. He picked up Clinton's money, put it in his pocket, then poked his thumb through the brittle fabric in the next panel. He said, "Clinton, you ought to take better care of yourself." After rebuilding the engine again on a new crankcase, Clinton set out in the J-3 on a trip to see Angel Falls in Venezuela. After he took off in Venezuela he was never heard from again. RNJ
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