Friday was a super busy day. I got about 5 hours of sleep, and then we were up early to go out to Kokomo to meet up with 105 people from the Children's Christian Academy. We pulled all the planes out of the hangars, set up tables and chairs for 105 people, borrowing some from the airport, we got volunteers called in to monitor the airplanes, and we spent the morning showing the kids the planes, taking pictures with them, a little talk, and then they had lunch there, and I started up the T-6 and ran it around the pattern and did a couple of high passes overhead the hangar so they could see it fly by. I could see them out and waving at me. I wished I could take a picture of them and all the planes out down there, but I couldn't do that and fly the T-6 low and in a tight bank at the same time, safely, so I didn't. But my brain took a snapshot even if my hands couldn't. ;)
Right after they left, we cleaned up the hangar, put away all the tables and chairs, and put all the planes back away, and then I met up with a woman doing a "Pinch Hitter" course. She's afraid of turbulence, don't know anything about flying, her husband is a pilot, and she wants to know more. She's a quick study, and we had a good hour on the ground, and another hour in the air, and she felt hugely better after just that time than in the previous two years of just going on trips. So that was good.
When I finished with her, my next student had already texted me that the plane was ready. So I ran over there, and flew with him. We had a shorter time, went over to Glenndale for short and soft field. He *got* landings, and if he had his medical, I could solo him. I landed with him, and my next guy was walking up to the plane.
This was a guy who ran me over to Marion in the 172, so I could pick up Walt's T-6 and take it back to its home base, Metro. We flew over to Metro together in loose formation, and then he picked me up and took me back to Kokomo just before the sun went down. Long day, non-stop flying, and I came home and passed out and slept like a baby. In fact, I didn't want to wake up this morning.
This is the part I don't know if the Moms want to read. Mine will probably ignore me and read it anyway, but I don't know that it's a good idea.
Today Nathan and I had recurrent training, which is required annually for us now in the Cheyenne. I was nervous about it because as usual I hadn't flown an instrument approach in there in 5 months, and now I was on a checkride on it. That's just a little nerve-wracking to me. I hate check flights, I seriously do. I can't think on questions being asked me even if I know the answers, and I don't like being evaluated. You'd think I'd get over that by now, but I haven't.
So we did some ground, and then it was time to fly. I made Nathan go first so I could see what kind of flight it was going to be. The instructor, Dan, was really aggressive. It was funny, because I actually tightened up my seatbelt back there. He's an L-39, Extra 300, warbird, aerobatic pilot who also flies jets and about everything in between. He flew in to do our training in an Aerostar. So he admired Nathan's and we admired his Aerostar. I was driving up to the airport and he flew right over my head on landing. Anyway, he had Nathan do steep turns, stall series power off and power on, which is unusual, the other Cheyenne instructors didn't want to do that. And then he wanted to see a Vmc demo, all the way to loss of directional control. Also unusual. And then came the unusual attitudes. Nobody else had done these over the years, either. I'd already tightened my seatbelt, but this time I actually hung onto the seat and braced my legs. He threw the airplane around, and I mean hard. Kicking rudders, extreme banking, pitching way up/down. Harder than either Nathan or I have ever thrown it around, and we have thrown it around. He turned it over and wanted us to do a knife edge out of it, as in literally called it a knife edge, which is a 90 degree bank angle to the ground. My eyebrows were way up sitting back there. I don't know this guy, and I was not super relaxed. From there it was normal instrument approaches and holds. No problem. Then came the engine out ILS down to circle to land for Runway 14. That got interesting as well. A circle to land tight in on that airplane is a tricky maneuver, and one that can easily be goofed up. Add in a dead engine to that, and being only a few hundred feet off the ground, and let's just say it's not something to take lightly. In fact, the last time I was given a circle to land approach in the Cheyenne at a tower controlled field, I said no thanks, I wanted the straight in. So Nathan got to do one of those, and again, not a relaxing scenario, but I trust HIM.
We landed out of that, and then it was my turn. Same scenario, except he wanted to see a "maximum performance takeoff". Heh heh. Noooo problem. ;) I did that, which he really enjoyed. Steep turns, which he said were "beautiful", because I got lucky and they went smoothly all the way around. He later told me I win the "best steep turns ever" award, which made me laugh. I do a bunch of very steep turns all the time mostly in the T-6 doing rides. But it does feel a lot different in the Cheyenne. Power off stalls, and he wanted me to redo it and get in more power (he was right) and not push the nose down so far (I didn't do that, the stick pusher did). So did that a couple times, then a power on stall, then an accelerated stall. From there a Vmc demo, all the way to losing directional control. Then unusual attitudes. This time he did it aggressively enough that stuff went floating past Nathan's head. We were zero g enough that a bag, papers, a coat, etc. went floating back past Nathan sitting back there. *snort* We did two of them, and he was satisfied, and it was time for the approaches. RNAV 32 with the hold at Kokomo, ILS 23 full approach to missed, then ILS 23, engine out right as the course was coming in, followed by a circle to land Runway 14 to a full stop. Still not relaxing when I'm doing it either, for the record.
We taxi back in, put everything away, and go get lunch. We sit and debrief the flight. He told me that I'd have easily passed an ATP checkride today, which is nice. He had a few nits to pick, and I disagreed with him on something that I wasn't smart enough to just shut up about. I'm going to try to remember next year to just shut up. Nathan shut up, he was smart enough. lol So we ate, debriefed, and then ran to Tipton to get a checkbook that Nathan forgot, back to Kokomo, hung out for awhile, he did the paperwork and signed us off, gave us our copies of the completion certificates plus a copy for the insurance company, gave us our logbook stickers, and we talked about maybe going down to FL next year if there were three of us doing training anyway, spending the night, and he'd take us to a nice restaurant down there.
I drove him out to his airplane, he gave me a big thumbs-up that he was fueled up and ready to go, and then I drove back to the hangar. I heard his engines start, but I didn't see him leave. About 30-40 minutes later, I got a text. "You OK?? Crash at OKK??" So I pull up Kokomo Scanner, and sure enough, plane crash with fire, with an address that is only about 3-4 miles away from the airport. We have a student pilot up solo doing checkride prep, so Steve gets the handheld radio out and starts calling for him. We didn't breathe until he answered us. We had another guy up but he was with an instructor and the report said "Single occupant fatality". Somebody asked about our instructor, and I said "Nah, he left quite awhile ago. He'll be on FlightAware." Steve said "Look him up", so I did, and...he wasn't there. He hadn't picked up a clearance. That wasn't right, he was headed to Florida, no way would he not go IFR. The fire chief contacted the airport manager and let him know it was an Aerostar, and they recovered a partial driver's license, and it was from Florida. It was Dan. His plane went down in a field. A witness said the wing dropped when he got close to the ground, and when it hit, he went in hard. There was such a big fire that they couldn't get to the plane for quite awhile. Steve, Nathan and I sat around at the airport pretty well stunned for a few hours, fielding phone calls, texts, private messages, etc. When people heard an Aerostar went down out of Kokomo, they panicked, for obvious reasons. I put up a Facebook message to try to combat some of that early, but most people heard about the accident before seeing a FB post. We went to dinner, and finally quit trying to think about it. Then we got home, and Steve got a call from the FAA. They'd found a partially burned copy of my completion certificate in the wreckage, and were calling to verify he'd been to Kokomo to do training for me.
It's really surreal. A beautiful October day, good training, a highly experienced pilot, we spent the day together talking about life, made plans, and nobody knew the clock was ticking down the last moments of his life. The last thing he did was throw me a big thumbs-up that he was good to go, and I rolled down my window and yelled "See ya next year, have a good flight!" I feel sick to my stomach.
Prayers for his family as they're having the worst night of their lives.
Not much to say after that...
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