It was Saturday morning. We had just had a very cold night in Corvallis, Oregon, which caused me to adjust my flight plans. I had walked out of the house to fetch the newspaper about 7 a.m., and, noticing the layer of frost on my truck, moved my online reservation from 8 a.m. to 10 a.m. By 10 a.m. things were warming up nicely, so the next thing you know I was preflighting 46439, an Oregon State University Flying Club Cessna 172. Three years earlier, I had finally fulfilled a life-long dream and gotten my pilot certificate. Since then, I had challenged myself to do my utmost to be a very safe pilot—I had flown every month since gaining my certificate, completed the FAA Wings program in each of the three intervening years, gotten a tailwheel endorsement, and was working on an instrument rating. My logbook showed me closing in on 280 hours of total flight time.
I had also had the sad duty of attending a funeral the month before (because of an airplane crash) of a far more experienced pilot with whom I had flown a couple of times. That funeral experience had kept me humble (as had some of my landings), and fairly risk-averse.
Let’s see, mixture rich, carb heat cold, prime as required. Hum, hasn’t flown in a couple days, give it three shots. Throttle open a half inch, master on, beacon on, propeller area clear!
The propeller spun for a while, but the engine failed to catch. I tried again, and goosed the throttle a bit like I’ve seen some of my instructors do. No luck. Dang! The last time I had this much trouble starting was when I was a total newbie and had the throttle rich/lean settings backwards.
There were wisps of vapor coming off the cowling. Looking around at the other aircraft and tarmac, I didn’t see any vapor rising from any other surface. Could I have fried the starter? Or, yikes! Could I have an engine fire?
I jumped out of the aircraft—no mean feat, this is a 152 we are talking about—to peer at the air filter intake area and front cowling. The filter intake area was illuminated with flame and crackling sound. The engine was on fire! I grabbed the fire extinguisher, pulled the pin, and discharged it experimentally. It worked! I fired it into the intake.
At this point, a flight instructor and his wide-eyed student arrived (the instructor had heard the engine backfire, looked up, and diagnosed the issue from afar well before I had), along with an FBO line serviceman making a mad dash with much larger fire extinguishers. The instructor invited me to continue emptying the extinguisher in my hand into the engine compartment, and then with a very satisfying “whoosh” settled the matter with the aged but extremely effective large extinguisher he had brought. I’m very grateful for all the help I got from those FBO folks; things might have been much worse had they not been so quick to step in and help out.
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