Never Again Online
Smilin' Jack's
BY RICHARD CUMMINS
I was a low-time pilot with
188 hours total, 135 of those in a 1972 Piper Arrow I had purchased at a
fair price from a business that might be called "Smilin' Jack's
Pre-Owned Planes and Air Drayage." The Arrow was represented as
having a recent major overhaul by Jack's A&P. The A&P at my FBO
did a prepurchase inspection and gave the Arrow his OK, although he asked
about the orange RTV (room-temperature vulcanizing, otherwise known as
silicone sealer) beaded around the middle of the crankcase and cylinder
bases. Jack's A&P said he had put the RTV on the engine because he
was looking for a mystery oil leak that turned out to be the prop seal,
and he just didn't bother to scrape it off.
The first hint of trouble with the Arrow was a rough engine at start-up
early one morning at Quad City International Airport, in Moline,
Illinois, where I'd stopped for the night, headed for Chicago on a
business flight. This was my first flight east of Denver from my home
field, the Missoula International airport in Montana, so I was a little
nervous. The first A&P to show up for work that morning helped me pop
off the cowling and run up the engine. At full rich, we heard a
"jick, jick, jick" sound. Once we leaned the mixture, it ran
smooth as an old Wankel rotary.
"I think one jug is running rich ... probably just a fouled
plug," the A&P said. "I'll set your injection pump to the
lean stop, but be sure to get it in the shop when you get home. It could
be something else." He ran his finger over the rubbery orange RTV on
top of the engine. "Any idea what all this RTV is
about?"
"The guy I bought it from told us they were looking for an oil leak.
Turned out to be the prop seal. My A&P signed off on it on the
prepurchase. He was suspicious, though."
The A&P shrugged. I taxied to the run-up area and took off for
Merrill C. Meigs Field in Chicago with the mixture leaned back more than
an inch. Nothing unusual showed on the gauges en route and I landed
relieved and ready to go to work on a new educational software publishing
project on Michigan Avenue.
On Friday afternoon, business done, I took a taxi back to Meigs and
checked the weather at Moline, Illinois. It was 5,000 feet broken, 8,000
scattered. It was 4:45 p.m. on an August afternoon, with plenty of
daylight left. I planned to overnight in the Quad Cities (what the locals
call Davenport and Bettendorf, Iowa, and Moline and Rock Island,
Illinois).
"Clear prop!" The engine jumped to life but no miraculous cures
had occurred: "jick, jick, jick." I took the foam plug out of
my right ear to listen closely, and when I put it on the right seat it
rolled off onto the floor. Never mind, it would be a short flight. I ran
up the engine and leaned aggressively. The "jick, jick, jick"
stopped.
This jicking sound was making me nervous no matter what the A&P said
about running a little rich. But there were no maintenance facilities at
Meigs so I decided to get to the Moline airport and take care of this
problem, even if it meant waiting until Monday and tearing the injector
pump down or even having to take a commercial flight home.
On takeoff the lightly loaded Arrow surged through the thick lake air and
leaped off the runway. Out under the Class B, I cut across to Interstate
80 cruising at 2,500 feet, setting the prop and throttle at 2,300 rpm and
23 inches. It seemed like there was more vibration than usual, and there
seemed to be a lot of cockpit noise too, but my earplug was on the
floor.
Maybe this is normal, I thought. Maybe I'm just spooking myself. I
switched between digital cylinder head temperature (CHT) and exhaust gas
temperature (EGT), which read 1,300 and 370 degrees Fahrenheit,
respectively, all green. The Quad Cities were just a few minutes out I-80
West. More vibration.
The Ottawa, Illinois, airport (Skydive Chicago) slid by underneath; I
thought about landing but it was only a few more minutes to the Quad
Cities. Traffic was heavy on I-80 below. Semis looked like an elephant
parade in the slow lane. A dead-stick landing would be an accordion
trick.
The cockpit noise level seemed to be getting louder. Something definite
was jiggling up through the yoke. A resonance frequency? The prop and
throttle fighting each other? The EGT was now up to 1,360 degrees F. I
advanced the mixture a little, and the EGT came down, but the vibration
got worse. The gauges were still green. The yoke was making small circles
in my left hand like a power sander. The engine noise was deafening. I
needed to turn back to Ottawa and land quickly!
I entered a left 180-degree turn and the vibration was shaking my
eyeballs. I throttled back and advanced the mixture to full rich, which
caused a loud explosion.
The left-front cylinder head was popping in and out of the engine cowl.
Acrid blue oil smoke poured into the cockpit through the air vent in the
left wing root. The nose of the Arrow was thrashing back and forth like a
shark shaking a fish with every revolution of the engine. I yanked the
mixture to idle cutoff and the engine shuddered to a stop.
The prop was not windmilling because the engine had seized. There was a
long cornfield about half a mile ahead, and I had about 800 feet of
altitude to get there. Trouble is, there's just one chance when the only
sound in the cockpit is the rush of wind over the airframe.
I pushed the nose over to pick up airspeed. At 300 feet agl, the
cornfield was dead ahead with a ravine at the near end and power lines
and a road at the other. No way to set up on the road without a low and
slow 90-degree turn to final.
Thwackity-thump! Cornstalks banged against the leading edges, then the
emergency gear horn erupted � I forgot to lock out the low-speed
automatic Arrow gear-down release when I left the gear up for the
cornfield landing.
There were starbursts of light and enormous deceleration. The Arrow yawed
sideways in a fast ground slide, then flipped up on the left wing. My
head broke out through the pilot's side window. The Arrow balanced like a
Tilt-A-Whirl, then slammed back down right side up on one descended gear
leg.
Wisps of smoke curled up around the bent prop; the gear warning horn
sounded like a fire siren. I switched off the master rocker to postpone
explosion, having missed turning it off on the emergency
checklist.
I discovered an ominous problem. Blood was dripping onto the jumbo ear of
feed corn in my lap. Probably coming from my carotid artery, which a
piece of broken windshield had severed. I touched my neck and face,
though I felt faint, and found a divot of flesh hanging down from a flap
of skin on my cheek. I pressed it back in place like a plug with my
finger. The bleeding stopped. Corn must have punched back through the
windshield as the seized prop sheered off ears on the way in.
I remembered that an explosion and fire could happen at any second and I
unbuckled my seat belt and leaped out of the door onto the wing, which
was slimy with cornstalk juice. I walked around the Arrow and lifted the
broken cowling to look at the engine. A chunk of crankcase was gone where
the left-front cylinder blew off its station; engine oil was cooked onto
the cooling fins back to the firewall. That was where all the blue smoke
came from. I paced off a swath of flat corn, where I went from 90 mph to
a dead stop in about 30 yards. Because I forgot to override the automatic
gear-down mechanism, the right gear had started automatically dropping at
80 mph, yawing the Arrow sideways as it flew through the forest of
stalks.
In its final report, the NTSB determined that the cause of the accident
was "improper engine maintenance, mechanical component
failure." What the report did not mention was that at teardown the
investigators found that the RTV silicone sealer had been beaded between
the crankcase parting surfaces so thickly it hung down in orange
stalactites inside the engine. It had also been used to make a gasket
between the cylinder stations and the crankcase. This is strictly
forbidden by Lycoming's overhaul manual and was probably done because the
engine was leaking large amounts of oil. I did a little detective work
and discovered that my crankcase came from a Texas aircraft junkyard with
no overhaul documentation because it was run out. Always take care of any
mechanical problems on the ground before taking chances with your
passengers' lives, not to mention your own. If anything seems amiss in
flight � rough running, excessive cockpit noise, any of your gauges
abnormal � land immediately at the nearest airport and get the problem
diagnosed and fixed, even if you have to take a commercial flight home.
And if a recently overhauled airplane is advertised with a price below
market value for quick sale, there probably is a good reason for this �
which is an excellent reason not to buy it.
