bnt83
Final Approach
Gary (a retired airline captain I’ve known for years and fixed his nose wheel shimmy fresh out of A&P school) and I were working his ship Saturday and Sunday. I flew up in N2221Y Saturday and we ran his 1978 C177B with the cowling off while I was looking over the very happy good sounding machine. I left a primer nozzle at home that we needed to complete the priming system so I was all set to fly home in 21Y and come back with the part the next day. I climbed in and discovered the master switch was on. CRAP! I can't remember the last time I did such a thing but I'm sure I was in high-school. We robbed the battery out of his 177B and he put 21Y's battery on his super-duper Batteries Plus special charger and I was on my merry way. I swung through Yankton on the way home and picked up Troy from high-school. I yelled at him to hustle because there was a HUGE thunderstorm to the North-Northeast on its way south that we were easily beating. We arrive at Lincoln late with the Husker football TFR still in on the ATIS. Since Troy has never seen Lincoln and it was a nice night, we do a touch & go on runway 17 and as I turn the crosswind leg Memorial Stadium and downtown is outside Troy's window. We land the next approach and call it a night. Then next morning we takeoff under those low clouds that aren't really a ceiling and there's tons a great clear where our destination is, but again, we want to make a half orbit of the city so Troy can see it during the day and we flew through a flew clouds that we could see through and avoided those we couldn't, then head towards Yankton and the beautiful painfully clear skies to the north. I drop him off and head to Tea (Y14 near Sioux Falls) where Gary is already at the shop playing. We get the engine parts installed and the rest of the fairings screwed down and the two front seats in and we are ready to test fly his airplane that hasn't flown in 5 years. I'm sitting in the pilot chair Gary sitting copilot. She fires right up and I start taxi to runways, crap, I have little to no brakes with my bad feet so Gary picks up the slack. The memory of Tate (CFI who first soloed me, we did the spins over Lewis & Clark Lake in Yankton) being killed at Tea when his engine quit on climbout in his homebuilt poking at me so we are being diligent. We pull onto the runway and I tell Gary to hold the brakes and I'll tell him when. Sitting at full power with the brakes locked for about 10 seconds I was satisfied and motioned to Gary to go. We start the ground roll, already at full power and she immediately starts to peter out like the carb bowl is running dry. Taxi back to the hangar disappointed I say, "well I'm glad we held the brakes because we would have been at rotate speed or flying otherwise”. Gary’s short & sweet reply of “no ****!” made me chuckle as he rarely uses curse words. We troubleshoot the airplane a while and it becomes obvious there is a fuel system problem.
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