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Regarding Mary's message -
The pleasure and honor was mine. And Mary is the one who deserves the
praise. Mary is a hell of a good pilot and I am so impressed with her.
She handled the emergency so calmly and skillfully.
Dummy me took me a little while to realize there was a problem. I have
never been in a plane landing on grass so I didn't know how it was
supposed to
feel. I just figured the roughness and jostling was because of the uneven
surface. About the time her plane started sliding and skidding sideways, I
got a clue that something wasn't right. And at that moment Mary calmly
told me she had lost a landing gear. Of course she lost her brakes too.
Thank
goodness for the cushioning and stopping capability of the tall grass and
wild blackberry bushes.
After we came to a stop, Mary and I sat in her plane discussing the
matter. I guess there is no way we could have expected that the folks at
the Fly-in wouldn't notice! :-) Our host, Bob Saville, came running over
with his fire extinguisher and a worried look. Then a bunch of the other
guys came on over too.
The consensus seems to be that the metal had a stress fracture and was
just waiting to break. I'm positive it was getting ready to go and in
light of this, it couldn't have happened at a better place in a better
way. We had landed and taken off from Eugene before we went back to
Walker. Eugene is a fairly large, towered airport. Thank goodness it
didn't happen there! I think it would have been a lot worse. Mary said
that even if it happened at the small airport where she keeps her plane
(Creswell), it would have been pretty bad. She said that she probably
would have slid into some other folks' planes that are tied down to the
left of the runway.
If the right gear had gone at Walker, it would have been bad also. She
might have run into one of the hangers or the line of beautiful coupes.
I don't want to think about the possibilities if the nose gear went! So it
couldn't have happened in a better way. She and I didn't get a scratch.
The rest of the day, she apologized to me several times. But she had
nothing to apologize for. It really was mechanical failure, not pilot
error.
She did everything perfectly.
I feel so bad for her. She has already spent a bunch on her plane this
year. All she needs is to have to pay out more. Seeing her poor
little plane in the weeds, with her left wing on the ground was too sad to
bear. And it's not my plane. I know Mary felt awful. Good thing her
finance and the rest of us were there for moral support.
I learned later that her fiance, upon seeing us about to land, said to
the other folks, "Let's grade Mary on her landing." Bob was in the back
of one of the hangers and wasn't watching but he could hear. Bob said the
next thing he heard after the fiance's statement was, "She blew a landing
gear." Bob, thinking the speaker was joking around, said, "Yeah, right."
Then another man said, "Does anybody have a fire extinguisher?" At that
point Bob realized that the observers weren't joking around any more and
went running out of the hanger with the extinguisher.
You now know, "the rest of the story".
Footnote: Obviously I'm unhappy that Mary's plane is damaged and I wish
it hadn't happened for her sake. But for me, I think it was a good thing
as a student pilot. I got to observe an excellent pilot dealing with an
emergency. I was also happy to discover that I remained calm. In fact, my
heart rate wasn't even speeded up. It's a validation of my decision to
pursue flying. Mary and some of the other people were worried that this
"incident" may have dampened my enthusiasm for flying. No way! I'm more
determined than ever. I learned some valuable lessons yesterday.
Georgia aka Spook
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