A week or two later I had another lesson with Steve lined up. I was eager to learn new things, and I knew it would be fun all over again. It turned out to be more fun than I anticipated.
When Steve showed up, he told me he had an ulterior motive. There was a radio-controlled model airplane contest at a nearby park that day. He had promised to fly a routine for them. Steve asked, “Would you mind if we do that first?”
Would I mind? I knew this would be a special treat. Steve flew most airshows “on the deck,” which means low-level aerobatics. We would be flying at 500 feet AGL, because he had not arranged an FAA waver for the performance. But it would still be exciting.
A good professional routine is a fluid sequence of aerobatic figures. There are few or no gaps in the action. Now I was getting a pilot’s-eye view of the routine I’d seen before from the ground. Most airshow routines take ten minutes or so. Steve narrated the routine as we went, which helped me keep track of what was happening.
Time seemed to fly by (no pun) and we were done. Then I flew the Pitts to our usual practice area. I flew the figures from the first lesson when we got there, and then we added spins (vertical) and snap rolls (horizontal spins).
Those last two figures were a bit disorienting. I was glad there was someone behind me in case I lost the bubble. That didn’t happen, but I would have been too tense to enjoy those figures without Steve behind me. [Aerobatic Figures: https://www.iac.org/legacy/aerobatic-figures]
After we landed we went to the diner to have lunch, and do some hanger flying. Steve told me about his trip to teach precision aerobatics for the pilots in the Royal Jordanian Air force.
Some time before 1975 Steve and Dave Rahm joined up as an aerobatics team. I think Steve was as impressed with Dave as I was with Steve. The King of Jordan had seen Dave fly, and invited him to come to Jordan to fly there. Later on, the King asked Dave and Steve to come teach aerobatics for his air force pilots.
They crated up twelve new Pitts Specials, and put them on a ship bound for Jordan. After the planes arrived, they reassembled them and began instructing. Near the end of the training, one of the pilots wanted to see what low-level aerobatics looked like from the cockpit.
Everything was going well until they started a Cuban 8. On the way down in the first loop, the elevator would not travel far enough for them to finish it before they hit the runway. Using his usual quick thinking, Steve rolled the Pitts inverted and “pushed” instead of “pulled” it around the loop. Later they found that a screw had jammed in the elevator horn (where the control cables attach).
Steve knew where the screw came from. Before the flight they dropped a screw in the cockpit while replacing a fairing (aerodynamic trim piece). They had searched and searched but could not find it. The screw worked its way through the tail cone to the elevator horn during the flight, and got stuck in some soft paint there. Murphy’s law at work.
The King had arranged an airshow for the next day. Dave Rahm was flying some of his more extreme aerobatics when he crashed and burned. Steve said he didn’t know why, but Dave had done the one thing he had warned Steve never to do in a Pitts. I don’t know what that was, but it must have been a figure that needed a bit more kenetic enerty or altitude than he had. Murphy’s law again. [Article: Spokane Daily Chronicle]
Didit.Live 