Page 21 - July18T

perhaps just taxiing it around a little bit would not hurt anything. Besides, no one would ever know.
The Cessna’s carbureted Continental started immediately and so down the taxiway he went with great care. Com- pared to the tailwheel horror stories he had previously heard about, he was sur- prised how easy it was. This led him to think that since he was obviously gifted at this, maybe he should try taking off. His takeoff was indeed a bit wobbly but with the prop pulling forward and the airplane very light, he was airborne before anything too scary happened. Once airborne, he discovered that the tailwheel airplane behaved exactly like a normal one, causing him to have yet even more confidence in his outstand- ing abilities as a pilot. So around the pattern he flew, setting up for a long final with the airplane’s landing lights off, partly because he couldn’t find the switch, and also because he did not want to be noticed.
The touchdown was main gear first with a huge bounce. Following what seemed to Jim as an eternity, the air- plane finally returned to the runway, but this time the wings were not quite level. The left wheel touched first prob- ably because Jim in his now suddenly anxious state had his arm muscles flexed tight pulling the wheel slightly down on the left side, while his feet firmly found their way to the brakes. When the left wheel touched down first with its brake locked, a 720-degree ground loop immediately occurred with the outboard wing making two very ar- tistic circles of scrapped paint on the runways pavement.
Desperately hoping no visible dam- age was done, Jim slowly taxied back to the hangar and carefully put the air- plane away. In the morning, the fastidi- ous owner arrived to fly his airplane, and soon noticed the damaged wing tip. Jim was the obvious culprit and duly confessed his sin. He was fired, but the sheriff was not called nor anything re- ported to the FAA. We did not see much of Jim at the airport after that. As it turned out, he used the time to attend an out-of- state aviation school. Today, he is flying Embraer jets for a commuter airline and prefers that his life as a line guy not be discussed.
The Unforgivable Sin
A new line supervisor (age 23 and recently out of the Army) was hired to specifically watch out for Jim’s kind of behavior. One morning as I was driv- ing to the airport for a 9 a.m. Learjet 40 departure, Gary, the head mechanic, called me and asked, “Hey Kevin, did you pre-flight the Lear 40 before you guys left Reno last night?”
Gary’s worried tone of voice sug- gested something was wrong. I replied, “Yes I did, Tim was PIC, he was filing
the flight plan, I supervised fueling and did the preflight.”
Gary cleared his throat a bit, waiting long enough to significantly increase my anxiety, then says the airplane is damaged, and they are trying to figure out who did it. As a result, it is not fly- able for the trip.
Twenty minutes later, I arrived to the maintenance hangar where the Lear 40 was surrounded by concerned- looking mechanics. I walked around the airplane and when I looked up at the
AOPA Product Marketing
1/2 Page Island aopainsurance.org
July 2018
TWIN & TURBINE • 19