My Sky King Machine

 

       “Sky King” began as a radio program in the late 1940’s, came to television from ’51 to ’59, and continued in reruns.  It was a kid’s show, decoder ring and all.  And many kids who heard and watched it grew up to be pilots or even astronauts.  There is now a Sky King website and all of the TV episodes are available on DVD.

          Sky King flew the Songbird from his Arizona ranch. He landed here and there in the desert to apprehend bad guys, find lost people, save his niece, Penny from kidnappers, that kind of stuff.  Penny was a role model and could also fly the Songbird.

          Sky King’s original Songbird was an early Cessna twin, a WW II vintage taildragger built of wood and fabric with two radial engines.  Commonly known as a “Bamboo Bomber”, it was a Cessna T-50 “Bob Cat”.  It’s tail wheel landing gear made it good for off-field landings in the desert – handling that kind of stuff was designed into the airplane.

          Songbird II, however, was an early Cessna 310, sleek and fast, the fastest light twin of its day.  Speed was what the airplane was about.  It liked long, smooth runways and had a tricycle landing gear.  So it wasn’t the kind of airplane you’d want for routine takeoffs and landings in the desert.  However, Songbird II was flown by the original Cessna 310 factory test pilot.  He could do things with the airplane that you wouldn’t want other pilots to try.  What the airplane was designed for was to thunder down the runway until it had flying speed, lift off and clean up so it could get more flying speed, climb on course at two miles a minute or more to altitude, then cruise at two hundred miles an hour.  That was fast back then.  The Cessna 310 was state of the art for the time and had a twenty-six year production run.

          Western’s Cessna 310, N196R, was from the first year of production, 1954, pre-dating even Sky King’s machine.  But N196 Romeo also had a “Robertson STOL” conversion, which didn’t give anything like STOL (Short Takeoff and Landing) capability but did add auxiliary fuel tanks worth an extra hour and a half of flight time, made several aerodynamic changes, and added side windows that made 196 Romeo look even sleeker and faster.  The big “teardrop” wingtip fuel tanks, a dramatically distinguishing feature of the Cessna 310, added to the effect.  Though the aircraft’s papers said it was manufactured in 1954, N196R was licensed (or re-licensed) as a Cessna 310B, the same model Sky King flew.

          N196R was Rex Walker’s airplane, owned by Sombrero Ranches (his primary business) and incorporated into Western Flight Training’s fleet by lease.  I gave multi-engine training in the airplane for WFT but mostly flew it for Sombrero and did a number of trips of my own – I got the plane for fuel and oil, which was a real good deal… but, with a fuel burn of around twenty-five gallons per hour, it wasn’t exactly cheap.

          Rex’s flights were fun and interesting.  I flew Rex, his family, favored customers, CU football scouts, and assorted employees (wranglers, cooks, mechanics, and truck drivers) to various destinations for many purposes.  Most of the destinations were in Texas and Arizona, but also to Meeker, Colorado, in the mountains where Rex had a seasonal hunting camp.  Rex and I also flew to Little Britches Rodeos where his daughter, Freda, following in the footsteps of her big sister, Cindy, was competing – she usually won all of her events.  There was a room downstairs in the Walker house dedicated to the trophies and saddles that Rex and Queda’s kids won at rodeos.

          Except for some of the instructing, most of my 96 Romeo flying was cross-country, most of it in good weather, often over or into the mountains.  Sometimes when there was an empty seat and a deadhead leg, I’d invite a pilot friend who needed multi-engine time – I gave them dual on the deadhead legs.

          Many or most of the flights were with Rex himself, sometimes attended by a couple of ranch hands.  At first Rex wasn’t a multi-engine pilot so I sometimes gave him dual.  Sometimes he just let me do the flying.  We did a couple of fishing trips to Mexico and various trips here and there, but many were to his dude ranch stables and other interests in Phoenix, Arizona — especially in the dead of winter.  We would stay a week or so.  I got a guest room in a storage court that he owned and was given the keys to his number-two Cadillac.  I could ride stable horses into the desert, fly the plane, and do whatever else might catch my fancy.  And this was Rex’s chance to get real multi-engine lessons  — takeoffs, landings, maneuvers, procedures, and emergencies, stuff we didn’t get much chance to work on during the cross-country part of the flying.

          I flew many flights in 96 Romeo over a decade, hundreds of hours.  I got to know the airplane well and 96 Romeo treated me well.  P&H Aviation, the shop in Western’s maintenance hangar, kept the fleet in good condition.

          A Cessna 310 was a systems airplane.  It had everything that a “high performance/complex” airplane had, times two if it had to do with the engines.  196 Romeo had a full instrument panel and a complete stack of avionics – it could fly IFR if there wasn’t ice in the forecast – it had no de-icing gear.  The cockpit was full of all sorts of switches, levers, wheels, circuit breakers, and selectors.  Of particular importance to the pilot was the airplane’s fuel system.  Each engine returned excess fuel to its particular main tank, which would vent it overboard if already full.  There were two sets of fuel pumps, mechanical on the engines themselves and an electric pump in each main fuel tank.  Auxiliary fuel was used in a particular way.  Crossfeeding fuel from one wing to the opposite engine was limited to the main tanks and there was a strategy on how to get maximum fuel to an operating engine if the other engine failed and the nearest airport was distant, including a strategy to arrive with the fuel load reasonably balanced for landing — especially since the main tanks were at the extreme ends of the wings.

          96 Romeo was much faster than most of the planes that I was flying, so I thought further ahead.  And one had to be ready to deal with an engine or systems failure just in case.  Back then a light twin, normally aspirated and at maximum gross weight, could climb well enough on one engine at sea level – assuming the airplane was up to specs and the pilot did things right.  Subtract a hundred feet per minute or more from its single-engine rate of climb for either not being up to snuff.  The computed single-engine performance for 96 Romeo at max gross weight on a hot day at Boulder was a hundred feet per minute rate of climb.  So if I lost an engine I was heading for the nearest airport.  I never had to do that except in training simulations.

          I had a joke that I selectively told.  When you lose an engine in a single-engine airplane, you do a forced landing in a field close at hand.  When you lose an engine in a twin, the other engine will fly you to the scene of the accident.

          Having two engines instead of one was a safety factor of course.  If one engine failed you had another to fly with.  On the other hand, your risk of an engine failure was twice as great – all other factors being equal.  However, the increased complexity of a twin-engine airplane made a pilot-induced engine failure more likely.  On top of that, losing an engine on a twin presents an immediate problem of keeping the airplane under control then setting the airplane up for single-engine flight – pitch, roll, yaw, and systems, including securing the failed engine.  Additionally, light twins of the day typically had only one generator/alternator, one vacuum pump and, if the airplane had a hydraulics system, only one hydraulic pump.  Which engine you lost determined which of those you lost and determined whether you would have to ration electricity, lose your vacuum driven flights instruments, or would have to hand-pump your landing gear and flaps for landing.  Then there was the single-engine approach and landing itself, which, if you got it right so far shouldn’t be much of a problem – but sometimes was.

          For a pilot who knew the airplane and stayed proficient, a twin was safer.  For a pilot who didn’t, a twin was more dangerous.  That’s what the joke about the good engine taking you to the accident was about.

          “Balanced field” could be a problem at Boulder.  If you lost an engine during takeoff while still on the ground, you closed both throttles and aborted.  The length of runway required to accelerate to flying speed and then abort and stop was an airplane’s “balanced field length”.  At maximum gross weight and sea level conditions, the 310’s balanced field was 3300 feet.  Boulder’s runway was 4100 feet long.  At Boulder’s elevation the only time 96 Romeo had accelerate-stop distance was lightly loaded, with a strong headwind, or on a very cold day (when density altitude was low).  There was a limbo following lift off until having the landing gear retracted and several hundred feet of altitude to work with.

          The characteristic danger of a taildragger airplane was a ground loop, which usually wasn’t fatal.  The characteristic danger of a multi-engine airplane was a Vmc stall, which, if allowed to fully develop, typically was fatal.  A Vmc stall (Velocity- minimum control) was a loss of directional control when a twin got too slow while flying with one engine at full power and the other failed – the airplane went into an uncontrollable turn and roll towards the idle engine.  An unrecovered Vmc stall had results equivalent to a stall-spin accident, perhaps the most common fatal accident in light airplane flying.  A characteristic cause of a stall-spin was a pilot being too low (if only in his mind) and sacrificing airspeed for altitude — possibly during a turn as well, which increases stalling speed, Vs.  For a twin-engine airplane operating on one, the number was Vmc.

          Vmc was marked on the airspeed indicator with a radial blue line.  It was the ragged edge when flying on one engine.  A better speed was Vsse, safe single engine speed, which was also too slow if you had a choice.  Then came Vxse and Vyse, the single-engine climb speeds.  Above them were Vx and Vy, your normal two-engine climb speeds.

          An engine failure before we were off the ground and with the landing gear not yet retracted meant abort even if it would wreck the airplane.  From gear retraction until a couple hundred feet of altitude an engine failure could mean an off-field forced landing using the good engine’s power to get you there and landing at a speed unfortunately high for off-field landing.  My plan for a late abort on Boulder’s Runway 8, which ends in a bluff, was to do an intentional ground loop near the end of the runway if I still had too much speed to stop.  If we were going fast, that would likely wreck the airplane but we would walk away.  I taught that there was a time to minimize your losses.

          I taught that kind of stuff but I never had to do it.  I credit the airplanes, their maintenance, my training and experience, the weather I chose, my preflight inspection, and luck – luck, by the way, is earned in other ways as well.

          72 Delta, the Cessna 190 of which I told, was tastefully painted, subtly beautiful.  N196 Romeo was bold and dashing, red trimmed in white and gold.  Along with its 310 lines, the airplane was remarkably handsome.

 

 

          Lets give 96 Romeo once around the patch.  I’ve done the preflight including a check of the Cleveland brake disc clips, which are sometimes a problem.  The auxiliary fuel tanks are empty, fueled only when extra range is needed.  I’ve done the starting engines list (22 items), before taxi list (6 items), and the before takeoff list (16 items including an additional eight items for engine run-up), ending with a review of the airspeeds that must be achieved before we are safely on our way.  I flew 96 Romeo by lists and numbers.

          “Boulder traffic, twin Cessna 96 Romeo departing Zero Eight.”

          Into position and hold, feet on brakes, pushing the throttles smoothly forward to full power, RPM at redline, maximum manifold pressure, engine gages good.  Brake release, a small surge of acceleration as the airplane begins its charge for airspeed.  (I generally did rolling takeoffs but full power, brake release takeoffs are more dramatic… especially when using a runway short enough to require the procedure.)  Airspeed is what it’s about.  “We have airspeed,” I say as the needle on the airspeed indicator comes alive, airspeed is indicating and building – a failed airspeed indicator is an abort.  We begin climbing a ladder of airspeeds, each rung higher than the last as the airplane thunders down the runway, through V1 and V2, computed go/no go speeds that are meaningless in our circumstances – an engine failure before landing gear retraction gets an abort.

          Vmc is eighty miles per hour indicated airspeed but 89 mph true airspeed at our density altitude, pretty fast to be rolling across the ground in any vehicle.  Vsse is ninety-five, a hundred and six mph across the ground in zero wind.  I’m using Vmc as Vr, rotation speed, raising the nose to lift off then keeping the airplane close in ground effect until Vsse, when I start the gear up.  Vxse and Vyse, our single-engine climb speeds, have merged at this altitude at one hundred mph.  At Vy, best rate of climb speed, I raise the nose to climb attitude and up we go.  At several hundred feet of altitude, a judgment made according to circumstances, I say to myself, “We’ve got an airplane now”.  That means that if we loose an engine now we will fly to an airport.

          Normally when I was teaching takeoffs and landings in 96 Romeo I would have the student depart the pattern, set up cruise, then turn back to re-enter the pattern as an exercise in procedures and speed control.  I’m going to fly a closed pattern to show how clever I am, which is also sometimes necessary.  I get a couple hundred feet of extra altitude before turning crosswind, reduce throttles and props to cruise climb settings, keeping airspeed low, at best rate, 110 mph.  I begin the pre-landing list turning crosswind to downwind, gas (fuel pumps and selectors), undercarriage (landing gear coming down as we reach pattern altitude), mixtures (already set for max power), props to go, flaps fifteen degrees, adjusting throttles to maintain 110 mph.

          “Twin Cessna 96 Romeo wide downwind, Boulder Zero Eight.”  We are half again or twice as wide as the downwind that basic trainers fly, which are twenty to thirty mph slower than us.  It is incumbent on us to fit in.

          Midway along downwind leg I see that a little guy, inside of us and ahead, which I’d expected to turn base leg by mow, is still on downwind, making a long approach.  I slow to one hundred, Vyse, as slow as we go until the field is made on final, and maintain pattern altitude as we pass the end of the runway.  Gas, undercarriage and mixtures.  Props and carburetor heat to go.

          Turning onto a wide, high base leg, the little guy is on short final, and I begin the descent, carb heat on, throttles reduced, props high, full flaps to go.  Halfway down our long final, about where our normal final approach would begin, I see that the little guy missed the first turn off, is taxiing toward the second turn off, and won’t be clear of the runway by the time we get there.  We’ve got to go around.  Full throttles, flaps already only fifteen degrees, landing gear retracting, carb heats off then flaps the rest of the way up.  But instead of bringing the nose up to climb, I keep it down, diving towards the end of the runway, rolling in forward elevator trim to help hold the nose down as airspeed builds.

          “Twin Cessna 96 Romeo going around at Boulder.”  We are well up into cruise speed as I level off fifteen or twenty feet above the runway, still accelerating, streaking down the runway at full power.

          I always called my airplanes by their N-numbers, not pet names.  Otherwise I might have nostalgically referred to 96 Romeo as Songbird but, more likely, Thunderbird.  We are flying as fast as 96 Romeo will go in level flight approaching the departure end of the runway and I am holding forward elevator to keep the nose down.  Then I let the nose up and we streak for the sky.  Up, up, and away!  Maximum power for maximum climb plus trading our great excess of airspeed for altitude.

          As airspeed slows to 110 mph, best climb, I nose over to level flight, reducing throttles, props, and mixtures to low cruise settings.  We are well above the traffic pattern.  I put the nose down, diving away from the Airport.  We’ll get down to pattern altitude, slow down, turn back towards the field, and re-enter the traffic pattern.

          My go around was not the orthodox go around taught to students and might seem a bit showy or even unprofessional.  I didn’t do that sort of low approach often, but I wanted to do it this time.

          Power at low cruise, down to pattern altitude, a sweeping turn at high speed back towards the Airport, 15 degrees of flaps below 160 mph to help the slowing, on the forty-five degree approach to downwind, with an imagined line across the Front Range of the Colorado Rockies as our horizon reference.

          120 mph IAS.  “Twin Cessna 96 Romeo entering wide downwind, Boulder Eight.”  Gear coming down during the turn, rolling out at 110 IAS.  Gas, undercarriage, mixtures — props to go.

          Opposite “the numbers”, carb heat, throttles back some, airspeed 100, nose down, trim back.  No traffic.  A full thirty-degree bank turn to base leg, a brief roll out then roll right back in, rolling out on final.  Props high.

          Short final, field made, gear green, full flaps, a tweak of power to adjust glide path.  Approaching the threshold, nose easing up to brake the glide, beginning the flare, throttles closed, easing the nose up to slow our descent to the ground, then clunk, clunk, the main wheels are on.  Confirm throttles closed, lowering the nose wheel, brakes as required.

          I came to where I could frequently get a “greaser” out of old 196 Romeo, but the Cessna 310 is a bit stiff-legged and “clunk, clunk” is fairly normal.        

          The Cessna 310, November One Nine Six Romeo flights, my Sky King machine – Thunderbird.  Most of my 96 Romeo were to destination airports.  The Cessna 310 was designed to get you there.  All of our desert landings were at airports.

 

©  Jim Hutchinson