This is a cautionary tale for pilots, new or old. To protect identities, I won’t mention any names or locations. I was a glider pilot with about 150 hours when I decided to get a Sport Pilot rating, and soon purchased a Luscombe 8A. I wanted to get some stick time in a tailwheel aircraft before I actually attempted the rating, so I started looking around for a flight instructor who offered lessons in a taildragger. I found a tattered advertisement with information about a CFI who seemed to suit my needs and met him at a remote gravel strip next to a two-lane highway.
An ancient Taylorcraft touched down and pulled up near my car. Now, I’ve seen ratty T-crafts before, but this one took the cake. There were different-color patches of fabric and off-color splotches of paint covering repairs made probably before I was born. The CFI was an affable, grizzled sort—with a gray beard—who seemed a perfect match for the airplane.
I informed him that I wanted to practice tailwheel takeoffs and landings, and two hours of touch and goes should do the trick. After giving me a quick hand-propping lesson we were buckled into the sparse, aged cockpit. The airplane had been equipped with wing tanks, and the fuel lines ran down from valves near the wing roots and under the instrument panel. Placards were either faded Dymo labels or Magic Marker. The throttle was a huge black knob, and other controls, such as the fuel-shutoff knob (behind what looked like a homemade piece of tin), were lurking underneath the instrument panel.
For two hours we did one landing or touch and go after another. The morning sun changed to afternoon and, finally, we decided this would be the last circuit. As I turned from crosswind to downwind, he mumbled something about a loose screw on the instrument panel. He reached for the screw, and it fell out in his hand and he put it in his pocket.
During some of the circuits, my grizzled CFI had chastised me for wandering too far from the airport on the downwind. As a glider pilot, I knew better than to get too far from the airport, but as we approached the turn to base, I realized we were way too far out. I pushed on the throttle. The propeller was spinning in front of us, but nothing happened—no increase in rpm. I pulled the throttle and pushed it all the way in—nothing.
My first thought was that the throttle cable had become disconnected from the carburetor. Somewhat calmly, I said, “No throttle.” The CFI was gazing out the passenger window, perhaps daydreaming from two hours in the cockpit, and did not respond. I shouted: “No throttle! Your airplane!” He jolted to attention, grabbed the yoke, and pushed on the throttle and, of course, nothing happened. We were on base, losing altitude, and clearly too far from the airport. Maybe 100 feet below us were the tops of thick trees and below them a rocky stream.
He furiously pumped the throttle, flipped fuel valves, and checked the magnetos. The trees were closer now; I could see individual leaves on the branches and we were seconds from going in. At the last moment, he reached under the instrument panel and shoved the fuel shutoff valve forward; the formerly windmilling propeller sputtered to life, and the throttle came alive. “Your airplane. Go ahead and land,” he said.
The screw that had fallen out of the instrument panel was the screw that secured the small, homemade piece of metal under the panel that acted as the safety for the fuel shutoff valve. Without the safety, the knob had vibrated out into the Closed position, cutting off the fuel supply on that last downwind. Later, we talked about being ready for anything as well as the dangers of straying too far from the threshold in the pattern.
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