Airplane Story - C-120 Ride

 

I bought my 1946 Cessna 120 right after I got out of the Air Force in 1976 or early 1977 (hard to remember exactly when). The C-120 was a post WWII civilian airplane with very few extras we come to expect on private airplanes today. It had no electrical system which meant no battery, no radios, no lights, no starter, no anything except an airplane and an engine that used magnetos to keep it running. It was also a taildragger meaning the main gear was in front of the center of gravity and the tailwheel was way in the back. This is a critical issue compared to modern airplanes that use a nose wheel. Tail draggers are always trying to get the tail in front of the center of gravity, so the pilot must always be conscious of this fact if he does not want to experience the dreaded ground loop. Nose wheel aircraft naturally want to center the aircraft behind the nose gear so much easier to take-off and land. A taildragger also has another handicap in that while on the ground, the nose is much higher than a nose wheel airplane therefore you are blind straight ahead until you start your takeoff roll and raise the tail once you have about 40-50 mph airspeed (take off is around 70-80 mph). This is also why tail draggers S-turn while taxing so the pilot can look around the nose to not hit anything while on the ground. This information is all necessary to understand this story.

I loved the C-120 and flew it all over the mid-west states around Oklahoma where I was working for the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) as an Air Traffic Controller at Burns Flat, Ok. My home was in the Tulsa area and I would fly the C-120 home every couple of weeks to visit family and friends. Since I had no radios, I would get bored on this 100+ mile trip (cruise airspeed about 110 mph) and would occasionally start to get sleepy which is not conducive to good flying safety. To keep alert, I would go down to about 100 feet above the ground and fly the whole trip running parallel to the main highway which ran from Western Oklahoma all the way to Tulsa. I would occasionally have to climb a little higher to pass over Okla. City, etc. but it did stop me from falling asleep.

On one trip, I landed at a grass runway at the 81^st Street Airport in Tulsa (no longer exist) because it was an uncontrolled airport and my taildragger loved grass over paved runways. I had some longtime friends (Bill and Sharon) that were to meet me there to give me a ride to my folks, but they also wanted to take a flight in my C-120. They were there as planned, and we talked for a while before I asked if they were ready to go fly. My C-120 had only 2 seats that were side-by-side which meant they had to take turns for the flight. Bill was to go first so he got into the right-hand seat while I hand-propped my C-120 to get it started. This is another one of those handicaps of an airplane with no electric starter. Engine started easily since I had just landed a short time before. Sharon was going to stand on the left-hand side of the runway and take pictures while I took off and made a few touch and go’s with Bill as my co-pilot.

As I stated earlier, the taildragger is blind straight ahead until I got the tail off the ground during take-off. I S-turned to the start of the runway, lined up then applied full power for take-off. During our take-off roll I kept it aligned with the runway by glancing out the side window to make sure I was not drifting to one side. I finally pushed the wheel forward to raise the tail and that is when I see Sharon start to run across the runway right in front of the airplane to the other side. When I first see her, she is directly in front of my propeller and I do not have enough airspeed to get over her. I immediately aborted the take-off by pulling power back and started to ease the C-120 to the left to try and miss her. Somehow, I did miss her, and I pulled off to the side of the runway and killed the engine.

I got out of the airplane and started yelling at Sharon saying something like “What the F___ were you doing!” She said the sun was in her eyes on the left-hand side of the runway, so she wanted to get on the other side to get better pictures. After calming down and explaining to them both not to do stupid things like that again, I finally took off with Bill and did several touch and go’s and even let him fly some.

After landing with Bill, I asked Sharon if she now wanted to fly. I cannot remember if she had ever been in an airplane before, but I know she had never been in a small private airplane. She finally got up enough courage to want to go. We loaded up and I told Bill not to run across the runway like Sharon which he just smiled. Sharon and I taxied out, lined up and started our take-off roll. That is when I realized this might not be a good idea.

As soon as I applied full power, Sharon grabbed my right arm with both hands and dug in her fingernails with enough force to almost break the skin. I use my right hand to control the throttle, so this distraction was not at all welcomed. My mistake was to continue taking off. I thought she would let go once we were airborne, but I was wrong. The higher we went the more pressure she applied to my arm. I tried to get her to let go but she was freaking out by this point. I finally just made one circuit in the pattern and landed as soon as I could. Only after we had come to a full stop did she finally let go of my arm. You could see the deep gouges still in my arm when she did. The funniest thing was she then said she loved it but did not want to go up again which suited me fine.

Shortly after I bought the C-120 in late 1970’s. I paid $3,500 for the C-120 back then but it is worth 10 times that amount now and it is still flying somewhere out west.

Picture taken after I had painted the C-120 and was taken by a friend, Charlie, flying formation with me in his 1947 Aeronca Chief (neither airplane had radios). This is also the altitude I would fly between Burns Flat and Tulsa, Oklahoma.

This is my C-120 and Charlie’s Aeronca Chief at Clinton-Sherman Airport in Burns Flat, Oklahoma. This was a closed Strategic Air Command (SAC) Air Force Base where I worked for the FAA. The building behind the airplanes was a hanger used when the base was still active. A tornado lifted off some of the roof which landed on my C-120 that took a year to repair and generated the new paint job. That is another story that is in my blog.

Air Force 1

Occasionally you have a friend that is just as crazy as you are and you seem to have some great times together. Charlie was that kind of friend for me. I met him about the time I was rebuilding my Cessna 120 and he was my primary helper through the whole process. Charlie had a private pilot’s license (no tail dragger experience) and was always hanging around the shop where I did most of the rebuild. After I got my plane flying again we decided we needed to find a plane for Charlie. You always hear stories about finding an airplane or old car in a barn; well that’s exactly where we found Charlie’s 1940’s Aeronca Chief. It was disassembled and covered with chicken crap. It looked like all the pieces where there and the engine wasn’t frozen (rusted solid) so he picked it up pretty cheap. I promised to help him get it back together using my FAA Airframe & Powerplant license in payment for all the time he helped me.

We hauled the pieces to the hanger and started cleaning and reassembling. Luck was with us and we found all the hardware required to reassemble the airplane. The engine was also in pretty good shape with good compression. Several of the pictures show us starting the engine (hand propping as usual) and doing other tasks. There is also a picture of our two planes together. I won’t go into detail about the reassembly except for one item. After we had the wings attached we started noticing that the right wing was closer to the ground than the left wing. We checked the landing gear and it all seem ok so finally started taking measurements of all the key attachment points to each other; i.e. distance between wing attachment points to the landing gear attachment points. What we found was a big surprise. The distance between these critical points was about 2 inches shorter on the right side than the left. Evidently this plane had been wrecked and when it was rebuilt they didn’t take the time or effort to true up the fuselage. After much discussion we finally decided the only way to get back to true was to cut the main vertical fuselage frame just behind the engine mount and put in a 2” longer splice. So here is Charlie watching me cut his airplane with a hacksaw then use a car’s bumper jack to push the parts apart so I could weld in a 2” metal tube splice. His job was to made sure I didn’t catch his wood and fabric airplane on fire with the acetylene torch while I did the welding. We made the repair, re-measured the airframe and the wings were now level to the ground.

This is when we really got dangerous (to us the fun just began). Charlie had never flown a taildragger airplane. Lots of pilots now days have not but they land and take-off totally different than a tri-cycle type landing gear airplane. In fact they are significantly harder and the term ground loop came from the tendency of the tail flipping around to the front on taildragger type airplanes. It is pretty common to drag a wing during this flip and do significant damage to the airplane. The scientific reason is because the center of gravity is behind the main gear and wants to get in front of the main gear where it is on a tri-cycle gear airplane (you will have to research the rest yourself). As we got close to first flight for the Chief I started giving Charlie lessons in my airplane to get him some taildragger experience. He was terrible and would continually land 10 ft in the air and fall the rest of the way to the ground. My airplane was taking a beating with these rough landings and I finally told him I would teach him in his plane once we got it flying. As a result, I totally expected that I would take his Chief up for the first flight.

The day finally came for first flight. We were at the hanger and Charlie said he was going to do some taxi practice and he got in the Chief and disappeared around the corner towards the runway. Nothing unusual about this because he had been doing this same thing for several days. Suddenly we see Charlie’s airplane taking off and entering the traffic pattern. We all ran to the end of the hanger so we could see the runway because we knew Charlie was going to put on a show when he tried to land this thing. Remember this is the first flight for the Chief and Charlie has proven he can’t land a taildragger worth a da…. The runway he was using was actually on the parallel taxiway for the big 13,000 ft main runway. Smaller airplanes would use this so they didn’t have to taxi so far to the ramp area. It just so happened that on the ramp only about 100 ft from the taxiway/runway was a business jet and an army UH-1 helicopter both of which had recently landed and the aircrew and passengers were still standing by these aircraft. They didn’t take notice of the Chief as it made its final approach only a short distance away. Charlie made a perfect approach and touched down just like you would expect then he immediately ground looped in a big circle on the runway. One wing was close to the ground and almost hit but he managed to get it back on both main gear and stopped. The folks on the ramp then took notice. We all expected Charlie would taxi back to the hanger but no way. Charlie aligned the Chief with the runway and took off again. We all watched in disbelief. The folks next to the jet and helicopter watched also as Charlie circled in the pattern and made his second approach. Once again a perfect touchdown followed immediately by another ground loop. Not as severe as the first so Charlie must be getting the hang of it after all. Another takeoff and another approach to the runway for landing number 3. This time the jet and helicopter folks had moved to the rear of their aircraft thinking this would give them some protection if Charlie’s airplane suddenly decided to head their way. Good approach, perfect touchdown and a perfect ground loop followed. At least he was consistent. Charlie had had enough and taxied back to where we at the hanger had been watching his air show.

I had to ask what in the world he was thinking taking off when he didn’t know how to land the thing. He only smiled and said there was no way he was letting someone else make the first flight in his airplane. I finally got Charlie where he could land this thing reasonably well but Charlie would ground loop occasionally and would always say he did it on purpose; liar. I have to admit the Chief had terrible brakes compared to my C-120 and brakes would be the only thing you had to stop the turn which preceded a ground loop.

Neither of our planes had a radio so we practiced formation flying (non-radio). One of the pictures of my C-120 was made by Charlie as he tucked into the wingman position. This is important for what comes next.

One day shortly after Jimmie Carter became President he flew into our airfield (closed Clinton-Sherman Air Force Base located a Burns Flat, OK) to visit several close towns to fulfill some campaign promise. Here is Air Force One on our ramp plus a C-141 carrying his bullet proof limousine. In addition, a charted 727 carrying the entire press core. We had a secret service sharp shooter in the control tower and all the entrances to the air field had secret service guards. There were also lots of people walking around Air Force One with M-16s. I got off work and went home and called Charlie asking if he wanted to go flying so we could get some pictures of Air Force One. Of course he said yes so we drove back to the airfield in my car. We were stopped at the gate to the hanger by a secret service guy with an M-16 and he said the airfield was closed. I knew the airfield was NOT closed because I worked in the tower and told him so. He was not going to let us in so I said he better call the airport manager to get this straight. The airport manager came up (remember he and I didn’t get along after my airplane was smashed in his hanger) and he tried to talk me out of flying while Air Force One was on the field. It didn’t work and they finally let us pass.

Charlie and I decided we would taxi out in formation, take-off together and do three touch and go’s then land and taxi back in. We got in our planes and taxied out. As soon as we came around the corner of the hanger and in sight of the guards around Air Force One all eyes were on us. Remember the small runway was on the parallel taxiway so we were very close to AF-1 as we taxied down for take-off. We took off as planned and had a great view of AF-1 as we passed in formation. We did our 3 T&G’s and I landed and taxied back to the hanger. As I pulled into parking Charlie was no longer behind me. Since I was in the lead all the time I never really did see Charlie too much during the flight. I got out of my plane and started walking back to the corner of the hanger so I could look down to the runway. That is when I hear a terrible racket heading towards me. Here came Charlie in his Chief but it was swaying back and forth while it taxied and sounded like it was dragging across the ramp. That is exactly what was happening, his tail wheel and spring had come completely off his airplane on his last landing and he was dragging the tail on the ground and trying to taxi back to the hanger. When he finally stopped I asked him what happen and he said that it broke off at touch down but he was not about to stop out next to AF-1 with all those guns pointing at him. Only after AF-1 took off later that day did we go look for his tail wheel and found it in the grass next to the runway.