If you couldn't tell by the title of this post, this is not Emily speaking, it is Mark. Have you ever been in a situation where it feels like you're hopelessly stuck, but then the solution presents itself and seems unbelievably simple? That happened to me a few weeks ago, and I felt it was a story worth telling.
One of my students who is working on his instrument rating, Daryl, needed to do some
IFR cross-country flying . Daryl has a tendency to be very enthusiastic with his flying, so when I asked him where he wanted to go, he decided on flying to KDXZ, the brand-spanking new airport in St. George. When a 50 mile flight will qualify, Daryl wants to go 295 miles. Understand, I'm not complaining... in fact I was quite excited about the prospect. I had flown past St. George on the way to Las Vegas once, and the scenery is spectacular.
After a series of delays, we were finally ready to go at 4:00 in the afternoon. The flight had been planned and the flight plan was on file with ATC. We took off and the flight went without a problem. The weather was fantastic, ATC was helpful, Daryl did a great job staying right on course and altitude. My cousin, Cameron, also came along. The best part of the flight was passing
south of St. George and cutting along the ridge of the Cedar Breaks National Monument. Flying affords you the best view of this striking landmark as the lower terrain completely blocks them from the view of drivers on I-15.
After an approach to landing that involved a Skywest Airlines
Brasilia doing S-Turns on final approach behind us (We offered to give them room, I think the pilots were just bored) we set down and were greeted by
an FBO attendant who seemed downtrodden that we had shown up when we did. We needed to borrow a car to go get dinner but he wanted to close up and go home, so we just went to the nearest place which turned out to be Wendy's. After a hurried trip back and a quick walk-around inspection, we got back in to the plane.
A piston single engined-aircraft is started just like a car. Once you know the fuel can get to the engine you turn the key to engage the starter, and the propeller starts cranking. This time, though, we put the key in, turned it and heard a "click." Nothing else. There we were, as far as we could be from home while still being in Utah at 8:00, and instead of 360 cubic inches of fuel and air combusting all we get is "click."
Now part of being a pilot is being expecting things like this to happen, but when it actually does it catches one off guard. The school will usually fly the mechanic to a disabled aircraft to fix it, but I knew that wouldn't happen before the next day. Seeing as it was then 8:00 PM, that was out of the question without a hotel stay, and that was not an appealing prospect that evening. Anyway, I called our mechanic, Steve, who asked a few probing questions and, after determining that the battery was not dead, he told us to take off the engine cowl to look at the starer. After that was done, I called Steve back, who's advice was to find something heavy and pound on the starter.
Hold on... the chief mechanic is telling me to pound on the starter? On a $250,000 airplane, this is the recommended procedure to get the engine running? We didn't take anything heavy that could be used for pounding with us. Fortunately, though, the majority of the airport is still under construction so, after scouring the area for a short while we found a metal bar that would fit in the area in question. We pounded on it a few times, then Daryl got in the cockpit, turned on the battery, turned the key and... cough, cough, sputter, ROAR! All four cylinders came alive and stayed that way. Daryl cut the engine and, after a few more pounds on the starter, we put the cowling back on and climbed into the cockpit. We crossed our fingers, twisted the key and the engine started just like it is supposed to. So, we taxied to the runway and took off. It ended up being a very late night but the return trip was non-eventful.
As it turns out, the electrical contact that allows the current from the battery to get to the starter sometimes comes a little loose from the engine vibrations. This is of no concern in flight, once the engine is started, it will keep running until we stop it. It can be a concern, though, when trying to start the engine from a standstill. I couldn't help but think of The Empire Strikes Back when Han Solo gets the Millennium Falcon to start up by pounding on it. Regardless of the advances in technology and sophistication around us, it seems like crude and simple methods still get the job done.
