Now we are airborne, rocking and rolling in the gusty air. I expect this to continue for a few minutes at most; experience suggests that the air will smooth out as we climb away from the mountain airport toward our home field in the flatlands to the southeast. I am busy keeping us in some sort of a wings-level climb as we pass just west of two 2,000-foot peaks, so we are a good nine miles from the airport when I level off in the still-choppy air. That is when I realize that something is very wrong with our little airplane.
Every pilot of a single-engine airplane with a propeller that rotates clockwise (as viewed from the cockpit) knows that a combination of forces causes this type of aircraft to yaw to the left, especially under conditions of high power or low airspeed. This means that right rudder is required to maintain a heading as you travel down the runway for takeoff or climb to cruising altitude. In level flight, design characteristics generally neutralize this tendency. Slight right rudder pressure (or rudder trim) may be necessary. But today our lumpy flight conditions have masked a discomfiting mystery. To maintain straight flight, I am forced to hold considerable pressure on the left pedal. Easing up on it even for a second causes the airplane to yaw and roll sharply to the right. We are flying in turbulence with partly jammed controls. Had we taxied out under calm conditions, or in a wind from the opposite direction, the problem would have been noticeable immediately. This realization is, to say the least, a bit sickening. But that feeling lasts only an instant as training comes to the fore and I push distractions and foggy thinking onto the back burner. This is no time to "go wobbly," as former British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher is quoted as once having said in a crisis. I go into coping mode.
The airplane's owner is aboard. We have flown hundreds of hours together - for work and for play - and this is not the first time something has cropped up. My apprehension is muted by the fact that we are a tried-and-proven team. At this moment, he sits absorbed in tinkering with the cascade of wires and gadgets in the cockpit. I nudge him in the ribs, and he looks up. Without a word, I remove my hands and feet from the controls. Immediately, we lurch to the right.
He takes the controls, and I have some time to think. I also have time to appreciate my ability, earned at the hands of capable instructors in a variety of airplanes and conditions, to set anxiety aside in the knowledge that it can only make finding the solution to our problem more difficult. This skill has been acquired by much practice of emergency simulations and dealing with distractions of various types. I have also taught myself a trick that has worked well in the past when things really did go wrong: If the urge to capitulate to fear becomes pressing, I simply promise myself that I will take a good fear bath later, when I'm on the ground and can truly appreciate it. But right now, I tell myself, I need to concentrate. And to rest my left foot.
What is going on? The owner runs through a battery of trial-and-error attempts to troubleshoot while I look on and try to sort out the issues. Are we under control? Basically, yes. Are things getting worse? No, but they're not getting better. Is the engine in question? No, it's humming right along. Could we have committed an unthinkable act of carelessness and left a rudder gust lock in place? No, it is sitting in the grass at the home field. Was the preflight to blame? Negative. Before we began to taxi, all controls were "free and correct." Is there any reason for an immediate return to the point of departure, requiring descent through moderate turbulence to a crosswind landing? Not a great idea. Is this an emergency? No - if things don't get any worse.
Which brings up the question: Where should we land? At home, as planned? We're still 30 miles away, for one thing. Who knows what this airplane is going to do once it gets on the ground, for another; that narrow, crowned grass strip might be a liability. On the other hand, the home airport is more aligned with the reported surface wind than any other we'll come near on this short flight. A crosswind is something that we want to avoid if possible, and certainly minimize. But you also can't deny that the long, wide, tower-controlled field located just two miles from the home strip may become a very tempting target for an airplane with a mind of its own.
My companion has a puzzled look on his face. I can feel his left foot straining on the rudder pedal as mine had done. Not a word has yet been spoken. Now he flashes me a grin, shakes his head in disgust and says, "That's not good."
He motions for me to take over the flying, and he twists around in his seat, trying to look back at the empennage. He even cracks his door open a tad and sticks his head out into the breeze. He can't see much, but he has a theory: The cables linking the pedals to the rudder have somehow become entangled, placing the rudder in a right-deflected position. Fortunately, this blockage is only partial and some rudder travel remains. And the elevator and aileron controls are normal.
After a short discussion, he opts to make his landing at the home field, and I appreciate the wisdom of this less-than-obvious conclusion. As I fly, I marvel at how preposterous is the rudder pressure needed to keep us on course. When we get back home, the owner, with far more time in type, will take over and land. It seems that the key to doing this will be a "wheel landing," the time-honored technique of flying a taildragger onto the runway in a level attitude and keeping the tail off the ground with forward pressure for as long as possible, followed by adroit use of brakes once the tailwheel does come down. Fortunately, he routinely employs the wheel landing technique.
We're on short final, down in the bumps again. He rolls her on nice and flat, like a bowling ball making for the headpin. As we decelerate, the veteran taildragger captain pushes forward on the yoke, striving massively to keep the tail up. Now it's down; his feet stomp this way and that on the pedals. We come to a thumping stop. It's OK to exhale. We shut down and get out. Examination reveals that his theory was correct. Somehow - probably when we turned from the grass and bounced onto the pavement while taxiing - one of the chains running from the rudder horn to the tailwheel had slackened enough to loop itself behind a protruding bolt on the bottom of the tailwheel assembly.
You've heard it said that it takes a sequence of events to cause an accident ("Poor Judgment: Breaking the chain," AOPA Flight Training, July 2000). Indeed, we were part way down that trail. I wonder how many more steps that path would have required. Possibly, just one - a bad decision on where to land. This could have been prompted by a desire to get back on the ground as soon as possible, subjecting us to a turbulent descent and, if we got through that, the strong crosswind on landing. Or we could have made the next-most-obvious error of judgment and opted for landing at the largest airport along the route, again sacrificing the runway best aligned with the wind. Or we could have landed at the correct airport and used an incorrect technique - in this case, a three-point full-stall landing - and instantly groundlooped. In any of these instances, the second-guessers would have had a field day. It was comforting to know that training and the confidence to think clearly were able-as intended-to foil fear and folly, depriving the armchair critics of their fun.
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