When one is sitting around telling flying stories, one-upmanship is common. “You think that was something? I remember when … “
Happened to me a few years ago. But I didn’t mind. Ross’ story was just too good.
A bunch of Seattle-area EAAers were looking through old pictures showing chapter activities of years past. I found a shot of my younger self, smiling, sitting by Pete Bowers’ original Fly Baby with a flat tire. Pete let our chapter use N500F as a club airplane, and I’d blown the tire landing at a remote field hosting a chapter picnic.
Told the story to the group. Then Ross, who had checked me out in the Fly Baby several years earlier, leaned forward to look more closely. “Nahh,” he said. “That’s not the one I blew.”
His story blew mine out of the water as well.
Back in the early ’80s, our chapter restored N500F for the 20th anniversary of its winning the EAA design contest. Ross, not long out of high school, volunteered to fly it to Oshkosh for display. He didn’t have a whole lot of money, and brought camping gear along and slept with the airplane every night. He made it almost all the way to Oshkosh with no problems.
But at his last stop, his preflight found that the right tire was flat. Not just out of air; a massive blowout had shredded a section of the tire as well as the tube. The airport didn’t have any replacement tires and tubes in 800×4 size.
Ross sat down by the airplane and started trying to figure out a way out of his fix. He was only 80 or so miles from the biggest fly-in in the world … if he could just GET there, they could probably fix him up. One takeoff, one landing. The tire had only to retain pressure for an hour.
As he sat there, he noticed a tire resting on its side in the grass. Like many airports, it was used to mark the location of a tie-down rope. He rushed up and looked at it. Nope, wrong size. He went through all the other tie-downs. No luck.
Just then, Ross had an amazing inspiration. He crossed the street to a discount store and bought a bicycle tire repair kit. He used all the patches in the kit to close the torn tube.
Then he grabbed the nearest discarded tire. He cut out a section of it matching the location that was blown on his tire, with a generous overlap. Then he laid it over the torn section on the Fly Baby tire and stitched it in place. With safety wire, of course. Had to be aircraft-quality.
Insert the tube and assemble the wheel. Incredibly, Frankentire held air. Ross propped the Continental to life, climbed aboard, and started taxiing to the runway. He could feel a thud every time the wheel went around. Line up on the runway and go to full power.
Thud. Thud. Thud thud. Thudthud. Thudthudthudthud …
… and the Fly Baby was airborne.
He half-expected the tire to be flat when he landed at Oshkosh. It wasn’t. He taxied up to the “Emergency Aircraft Repair” area (thud … thud … thud) and the whole staff came out to shake their heads at the Transylvania-sourced tire.
The chief told Ross to go to the vendor area to buy a new tire. Ross went—and was astounded at the prices. If he bought a new tire and tube, he wouldn’t have money for gas to get home. He went back to the repair area, kicked pebbles, and said he couldn’t find any new tires for sale. The staff took him to the tire disposal area. There, he found a fairly decent-looking 800×4 tire, and that’s what he flew home on. And it wasn’t the one I blew, about five years later …
Great story. Pump it full of Slime to get home today and don’t throw out your old, almost serviceable tires.
For better or worse, some of my best stories involve the pilgrimage to KOSH, too. And while I am loathe to question this one’s veracity, I wonder how the aitch-eee-double-hockey-sticks does one “stitch” a piece of one tire onto another without a drill of some sort? All the aircraft tires I’ve ever seen were impervious to penetration by anything short of a drill and bit. The rubber smirks scornfully at any attempt to punch through it because, well, that’s what they were designed to resist.
Details please. I may need them someday.
I didn’t get the technical details from Ross, but remember, the tire blowout happened at an airport. He was likely to be able to borrow tools. Also, with a ~4000-mile round trip from Seattle to Oshkosh, he likely had some sort of tool kit along.
I carry a middling-sharp lock-blade knife when I fly. I wouldn’t WANT to use it to cut up a tire, but think I could do it. And in lieu of an awl, I think I could punch holes for the safety wire with it.
I had a similar event: I flew my Aeronca Chief taildragger to a remote airstrip, but only a 1/2 hour flight from home base. The old inner tube on the left tire gave up the ghost, and couldn’t be repaired. I remembered my dad telling how just after WWII he drove his brother’s car across the U.S. on tires stuffed full of rags since there were no inner tubes to be found. A local denizen drove me to a store that didn’t have tire patches or Slime, but had cans of foam insulation/crack filler. I shot the foam into the tube, waited a while, and wrestled the airplane into the air with a very ugly, very dicey one-wheeled take-off – the foam, as it turns out, needs contact with air to harden. When I landed at my home base, a minimum speed right-wing-low landing, the left tire deflated almost on contact, but by then I was well under 30 mph, and had no issues slowing down. Wheeling it off the runway was a different matter, and required strapping on an auto dolly and pushing it back to the hangar.
Very late one night half a century ago the front tire on my motorbike went flat 30 miles from home. I found out that if I kept my speed above 40 m.p.h. it would stay round due to centrifugal force with me sitting on the rear edge of the seat. I got home in one piece. Don’t try this kids…
Excellent story. Thanks for sharing!