Unmanned Plane Takes Flight
Thursday December 27, 2001 5:20 AM
PETALUMA, Calif. (AP) - An unmanned aircraft somehow broke from its
moorings as its owner worked on it and took to the air over a rural area
north of San Francisco on Wednesday.
Authorities weren't sure where the Aeronaca Champion, a two-seat plane from
the 1950s, was headed, or how it took off without a pilot.
The owner ``was working on the engine, I guess, and it got away from him,''
said Sonoma County sheriff's spokesman Phil Coughlin.
Police suspect the plane has crashed, but hadn't found any evidence of it
by Wednesday night.
The sheriff's office dispatched helicopters to look for wreckage east of
Petaluma, about 40 miles northwest of San Francisco, but later called off
the search due to darkness.
The plane had less than 15 gallons of fuel, according to theFederal
Aviation Administration, and would not likely have bee able to stay in the
air for long.
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That [plane taking off on its own] used to happen occasionally with hand start airplanes like the Champ. Someone here commented.
"I used to fly a club Champ for $3.00 (dry) an hour back in the '60s. Fun plane to fly, if you like seeing the scenery. You see
it, see it, and see it - since the Champ was fabric, had only 65 horses and cruised only about 60-70. The Champ I flew had no
electrical nor lights, so you couldn't (legally) fly it between dusk and dawn, and the turn and bank, which was powered by the
vacuum from a venturi was the only attitude instrument besides a magnetic compass.
If you were alone and without someone or a passenger to either hold the brakes or crank the prop for you, it was a problem. I
used to tie the tailwheel down with a lot of slack, fasten the stick fully back with the seatbelt, set the brakes, pump the
primer once or twice if the engine was cold, set the throttle and mixture, crank the engine a couple of times with the mags "on"
("on" meant the mag switches were closed which shunted the mags so they didn't spark the engine), then turn the mags to "off"
(open), make sure the throttle was just a quarter inch open, and give it another hard crank, which would usually start the engine.
Then upon startup check if the brakes were holding (the tail wheel tie still slack), then if everything was ok and the plane not creeping, release the tiedown and quickly jump into the pilot's seat get situated and proceed to taxi. When starting you had to make sure the friction knob for the throttle throw was set so the throttle didn't creep - if you didn't, it would be almost guaranteed that the aircraft would suddenly take off without you or crash into other aircraft in front of it. That would be very embarrassing!
I flew from a non tower field, and the plane had no radio, so you always had to keep your eyes peeled and head on a swivel for taxiing or planes taking off or landing. The airport was Fresno Air Terminal just west of town and had some high poled clearance lights well above the trees at the boundary - and one of them was right in the middle of final approach. I used to refer to it as a "rectal thermometer" because when making a low enough approach to land at the numbers it really caused some anxiety - since you sometimes cleared it by as little as ten feet. I've flown closer to conventional approach lights and they didn't bother me - but that tall pole really stood out and was much less three dimensional in perspective. During the day when it was not lit and tended to blend with the trees you really had to watch for it.
Upon flying into a pattern for a controlled airport like Hammer Field or Meadows Field (Bakersfield) with a tower, you would pick
a safe spot behind another aircraft on downwind and rock your wings to let the tower know you had no radio. (later on, no-radio aircraft were not permitted in airport control areas). I would then keep a watch on the tower, follow the aircraft in front of
me, maintain a good spacing, follow the aircraft in front of me onto base leg, then final and watch the tower for a light. If the
tower gave me a green light, I was cleared to land. If I got a red or no light, it was a go-around and back into the downwind
leg again.
The Champ was a fun plane to fly locally, and the price was right - though for cross country I would use a 172 or larger
aircraft with Omni and radio. You really had to be on your toes with your navigational pilotage, since you didn't have Omni or
range receivers and had to make sure you didn't lose your landmarks. But then you could land in a pasture and ask a farmer
where you are if you got lost - something you don't do today without risk of getting charged with trespassing. Farmers were
much less litigious then and behaved in the laicez faire mode where if there was no harm done there was no offence.
I used to love to practice precision flying - circles around a point or square and weaving patterns across a farmer's fencelines at about 600-700 feet above terrain. It didn't bother the cows, because the plane was high enough, the 65 HP was fairly quiet, and you didn't risk stampeding the cows enough to churn buttermilk causing the farmer to get mad at you because
buttermilk doesn't get a decent price."
10B
