“Go on to Mount Pleasant. They’ve got a long, wide runway up there.”
— Center Airport Manager Bill Neve’s advice after I reported instrument issues with my airplane.
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It was almost forty years ago. Give or take a flight or two. A sunny Saturday afternoon. Piloting a Piper Cherokee 180 out of the Center Airport. Destination Mount Pleasant, to visit my parents.
The short 45-minute hop with a panoramic perspective of East Texas was easy. A familiar one made many times flying a variety of aircraft. Previous trips had been routine, but this one went in a different direction from the get-go.
Before we got the bugs worked out, you might say.
Memories of that trip grew wings again last week in a discussion about airplanes and the old Mount Pleasant airport. The field where I learned to fly was located smack dab in the middle of what is today Preifert Manufacturing’s complex.
The present-day Preifert event center, in fact, started life as a hangar at that old Mount Pleasant Municipl and remains as the last reminder of where the airport used to be. Whether it is the one that was called “the main hangar” back then, I don’t know. The hangar once adorned with a Mobil flying red horse and a windsock at the roof’s peak. The one with faded letters noting the airport’s name and field elevation. About 400 feet above mean sea level as I recall.
Bill Phinney was the airport manager. Pilot friends who encouraged my interest in aviation to take off at there included David Brogoitti, Frank Glover, Ronny Narramore, Jim McGuire, Gale Braddock, James Spann, and others for which brain cells are failing to fire at the moment.
Instructor Doyle Amerson got me through ground school and my first solo before his untimely death. Soon afterward, Grady Firmin returned from military duty as a Vietnam-era military pilot and flight instructor, guiding me across the finish line to getting a private pilot’s license.
The preflight for that trip to Mount Pleasant a few years ago was routine. With family on board, I taxied onto the runway and applied full power for the takeoff roll.
Midway of the runway, the airplane began to feel light and started to fly. That was good. However, clear of the ground and just as I saw Highway 7 passing underneath us, the airspeed indicator fell to zero. That was not good.
Contradictory to the instrumentation, we had power and the airplane was performing as it should. We were airborne and climbing. I could feel it. But critical flight instruments were not functioning.
This lack of primary data gave new meaning to the old saying, “flying by the seat of your pants.”
“Center unicom. We’re airborne, but we have instrument issues. Pitot instruments not functioning.”
“Probably a dirt dauber,” Bill said. “Come on back around and land, and I’ll clean in it out.”
The pitot-static system controls three flight instruments: airspeed indicator, altimeter, and vertical speed indicator. So, we were flying but I had no idea how fast. I could tell we were gaining altitude, but I had no idea how high or how fast.
Silence. “Ahhh …,” I hesitated before replying. “How do I set up a landing approach without knowing airspeed, altitude, or rate of descent?”
After silence on his end, Bill suggested I continue to Mount Pleasant and the bigger runway.
What was typically a short trip felt like an eternity. Time to listen to the plane. Pilot training emphasizes becoming sensitive to the feel and sound of your aircraft at all times. I felt and heard everything this one offered me for the duration of the flight. It was a 40-minute relationship best described as intimacy between man and machine.
Mount Pleasant appeared on the horizon. Using my “oneness with the airplane” and little else other than the seat of my pants, I began descending. Runway in sight, I executed an approach catching every clue the airplane offered. Then the sweet feel of tires touching asphalt offered visions of a bumper sticker popular at the time … “God is my co-pilot.”
Taxiing the plane to a stop at the terminal was followed by a long sigh. Which was followed by wiping sweat from my brow before pausing for a prayer of thanks.
No maintenance on weekends. An attempt to clean the blocked pitot tube with a piece of wire was the best amateur effort I had to offer. However, the only test I could administer was to fly it. “We did this once, we can do it again,” I told myself. After a shortened visit with Mom and Dad, we were back at the airport, loaded and ready for take off. In time to beat darkness back to Center.
The second trip sans flight instruments was not as scary as the first. Shadows were long and the sun’s orange glow mere moments from the horizon behind me when wheels gently kissed the runway. Again. At Center. Perhaps one of my best landings. Sleeping kids in the back seat didn’t even wake up.
Re-flying that trip in my mind last week reminded me that some things never change.
One, it’s been a while since I was “pilot in command” of any aircraft, but memories still stir up a smile. Two, apparently, dirt daubers are still a threat to working the bugs out of flying. I still see red “Remove Before Flight” flags on pitot tube covers.
And the most important. That God is still my co-pilot. In the air or on the ground.
—Leon Aldridge
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Aldridge columns are published in these newspapers and magazines: The Center Light and Champion, the Mount Pleasant Tribune, the Rosenberg Fort Bend Herald, the Taylor Press, the Alpine Avalanche, The Fort Stockton Pioneer, The Monitor in Naples, and Motor Sports Magazine.
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