Grass Landing Strips

Not long after I met Dave Cook, I was summarily kicked out of the main hanger at Henley Aerodrome. Gary Norton, Wayne Norton’s [mentioned earlier] brother, was converting Henley into a theme park named Silverwood. His aircraft museum was a big part of that conversion. He had acquired millions of dollars worth of vintage airplanes and wanted to display them in his big hangar. Mine had to go.

I moved my Citabria over to Hackney Airpark, which was three miles away. “Airpark” implies a place for pilots who want to live where their airplane is. The legendary Steve Wolf lived there and had a workshop there too. It’s where I first saw Sampson in skeleton form. Jerry Cooper, my aircraft mechanic, had his maintenance shop there too.

The runway at Hackney is grass. That may not sound as good as asphalt or concrete, but it is actually very nice. It’s like landing on velvet. If you’re not lined up perfectly your tires slide on the grass until you get straightened out. Of course, if it has rained or the grass is worn out you might have a little trouble.

There were half a dozen other airplanes in the same hanger along with mine, including two big ones — a Stearman biplane and a twin-engine Beechcraft. Sometimes the Stearman was parked in front of my plane. It was too heavy for me to push out of the way but I found I could stand on one tire and “walk”  it along. By moving from one tire to the other a few times I could make enough room to get my plane out.

I thought I’d had it one day at Hackney. My car was parked in the big open area in front of the hanger and I had gone out to it to get something. A fellow I’d seen at Henley had been buzzing the short crosswind runway in a little biplane. He had purchased it from the same guy at Henley who sold me his parachute. He was landing on the main runway though when I got to my car. His touchdown went OK, but then things got out of hand. He applied power to regain rudder control but veered sharply off the runway and was headed right at me with full power on at forty miles an hour.

I was standing on the other side of my car from him. I had a few moments to decide what to do but my none of my options were good. If I ran left or the right he might veer enough to hit me. I decided that the car might protect me. I closed the door of the car and crouched beside it. The fuel tank might rupture and I’d get burned, but by now all my other options were closed out.

Amazingly, he was able to turn at the last second and head back toward the runway. There was a three-foot bank up to the runway there and he bounced over it. Now he headed across the runway at an angle. He had enough speed to veer again and take off before he crashed into the pine trees he on the other side of the runway. I never saw the pilot or the plane again. I didn’t check for residue on the runway.

I’m getting a little ahead of the story line, but it wasn’t long until I landed on another grass strip. That was at Lee Olmstead’s place called Olmstead Sky Ranch. Four of us flew over to his grass strip from the Sandpoint airport. It was two or three miles away. I landed last. As I turned to final approach I saw a bright yellow line between the pines. Had to be dandelions on the runway.

I then made a second little mistake. I aimed to touch down near the start of the runway so I’d have ample room to go around for another try at landing if things didn’t look good. My first little mistake had been not asking a few more questions before we left Sandpoint.

My plane immediately started sliding off the runway towards the ditch to the left. I reflexively corrected that, thanks to my outrageous experience with drifting cars sideways on gravel roads in my high school days. But now my tires were sliding down the runway at a decided angle. I feared that my left tire would dig in. It didn’t.

By then I figured out what had happened. Smashed dandelion stems are slippery as goose excrement and the runway sloped sharply to the left at this end. That explained both the slide and why the left tire didn’t dig in. I wouldn’t have had this adventure if I’d asked about the best point to touch done at when we were still in Sandpoint. I’d have known the runway wasn’t level on that end, and to land further down the runway. But I’d have missed the adventure.

I used to tell my kids two wrongs don’t make a right. They’d always say, “Yeah, but three do.” In aviation, one mistake rarely creates a problem, but two often do and three are often fatal.

More about the Steve, the Beechcraft and grass strips later…