A Fledgling Amongst the Tombstones

               When I first started flying helicopters, I had zero exposure to aircraft maintenance. The obvious concentration during those early years was in eliminating the sloppy manipulation of the flight controls. For me, that was enough. I stomped away many times from that unconquerable R-22, vowing never to return. The drive home allowed my heartbeat to return to normal and make excuses for that radio controlled looking agitator, promising to return the following weekend.

               To foster a more thorough coordination of the “complex” flight control inputs necessary for positive aircraft control, I would sit in my recliner at home with a sawed-off broom stick. I would practice the up collective, increase throttle, left pedal over and over. If I wanted to make the process even more realistic, my little brother would rock the chair back and forth while I was twisting on the handle, screaming “ride ‘em Billy!” Once, I wore a cowboy hat. I won’t go any further with this part of the story.

                In looking back over the years, there was another group of memories that collectively made just as much of an impression on me as a pilot. I ventured into the mysterious and oily world of aircraft maintenance.

               When our flight school leased our first Schweizer helicopter, we had a fixed-wing company performing most of the general maintenance work. It didn’t take us long to understand that our helicopter was a complex machine and that specialized training would be required to identify vulnerabilities in the aircraft’s design.

               Hiring a full-time, experienced helicopter mechanic named Stanley was a tremendous investment for our young company. Since Stanley worked alone in the hangar, sometimes I would go out and help. It was then that learned how important it was to consider flying and maintenance as co-dependent endeavors. Stanley used to tell me that he was just “turning wrenches.” He was being modest. His factory training alerted him to potential issues before they became expensive oversights.

                The FAA’s basic pilot training requirements offer little exposure to the maintenance side of the house. As a former FAA pilot examiner, I would like to see the Practical Test Standards reflect an increase in maintenance exposure at all airman certification levels. A nice way to introduce a pilot to a more in-depth understanding of aircraft maintenance is to complete an aircraft pre-flight inspection with a factory-trained mechanic. I feel that this should be a regulatory requirement prior to certification.

                At the commercial level and above, instructors should encourage (and write into their flight training programs) students to attend a 100 hour or annual inspection on the make and model aircraft they fly the most. Understanding potential failure points and common maintenance errors (like the weep hole being turned too far forward on the tail rotor gearbox accelerometer mount) will assist in developing a more safety minded pilot population, increasingly proactive in breaking the accident chain early.

                I can remember flying pipeline patrols in a Schweizer 300 helicopter in 1999. It was cold in Clarksburg, West Virginia and the aircraft had been on the ramp all night. I went through my pre-flight that morning as usual. Everything checked out and I fired up the engine, bumped the rotor up to speed and I was back on patrol.

                I picked up a pipeline near the end of the runway and began to follow the wide right of way in a westerly direction toward Parkersburg.  The long hand on the altimeter crossed over 300’ when the rotor RPM and engine RPM needles began to split. 

                I lowered the collective and was able to keep the rotor needle green as I slid into a snow-filled field just west of the Clarksburg runway. As the helicopter skipped forward during the landing, I knocked over some large stones. There was a green tent nearby and the people gathered under it watched as my white helicopter went by bouncing in the snow like a happy rabbit or a frustrated, bald bird with a black nose.

                Unfortunately, the kink in my flight interrupted a funeral at the local graveyard. The “stones” were grave stones that my plexi and fiberglass flying machine did not like very much.

                The first thing I did was set the tombstones back up. The second thing I did was call the mechanic. After some discussion, we determined that the cold precipitation the previous night had frozen the fuel shut-off valve. Even though the fuel shut-off lever was moving on the pre-flight inspection, the valve itself was frozen closed and I failed to notice it.

                This was the catalyst that forced me to seek additional knowledge about maintenance, what to look for and the all-important reasons why. I also sought forgiveness for the cemetery incident. This is something I still feel strangely about, especially when I hear strange creaks in the middle of the night.

                Those early maintenance experiences with Stanley in the hangar, combined with my growing experience as a pilot, combined to foster the type of insights that made me a better pilot. I was confident when situations required it because I understood the “mystery machine” I was sitting in.