Never Again: Stuck controls

I was taxiing a Cessna Aerobat to my assigned taxiway at the DuPage County Airport (DPA) in west suburban Chicago for an hour of sky dancing.

The airplane was owned by a flying club with a half-dozen Cessnas. I was a perennial renter of acrobatic birds wherever I could find one in good shape, and at that moment the Aerobat filled the bill.

“Cessna Four-Six-Zero-Six Alpha cleared for takeoff Runway Two-Eight,” advised the tower and forward went the throttle. A 15-minute straight-out departure took me to my practice area, just outside the Mode C ring around Chicago. At 4,000 feet agl, I checked my parachute and Hooker harness fittings and began practice using that year’s Sportsman Aresti chart. The Aerobat is not an aerobatic superstar. Rather, it’s a standard Cessna 152, beefed up for basic aerobatic maneuvers. It can do loops, rolls, and spins and a good number of combinations of these fundamentals reasonably well; hammerheads with down quarter-rolls, Immelmanns, Cubans, and short bursts of inverted flight with acceptable precision.

That morning my focus was on sharpening my Immelmanns. A shallow dive to 150 knots, pull up smoothly but aggressively to maintain proper curvature. Dissipate just enough energy as you go inverted that you have solid aileron response to roll out level at the top. Not bad, I thought, Let’s try it again.

Still feels good at the top, I thought. One more time. Angle down to 150, start the pull-up and…crack. The noise sounded like a pistol went off in the cockpit.

Aviate. No time for guesswork,I thought. Let’s do a damage assessment. Get this airplane upright in the least stressed position possible. Reduce airspeed. Level the wings. Wait. I’ve got no aileron response. OK, let the airplane slide nose-down to an upright position.

Looks good. What’s my altitude? 3,500 feet agl. OK, I’ve got height safety. Try to level the wings. The yoke won’t move. Try the elevator. No response. Rudder pedals? Working. Throttle? Full to idle. Check the tail section. Looks solid. Check the wings. No flutter. No skin buckling. No propeller vibration. Let’s see if I can make it back to the field with frozen ailerons and elevator.

Should I force the yoke and see if it frees up? Better not. Whatever is the problem might get worse if I use brute force.

Navigate. I’m still over my practice area with DPA 15 miles to the east. Can I maneuver the Aerobat with just the rudder and throttle? Let’s see. Rudder to a heading of 110 degrees and work the throttle to maintain altitude. Yes, it works. Sloppy but I’m there. I think I can pull this off.

It was time to call the field.

Communicate. I called DuPage Tower with my location: “I’m 15 miles due west of the field at 3,500 feet. Except for rudder controls and a working throttle, my other controls are frozen. I can basically fly the plane in the direction of the airport, over.”

The tower advised me to declare an emergency, and I did, requesting the wind vector and routing to the best runway for a straight-in approach, with or without a tailwind.

“Cessna Four-Six-Zero-Six Alpha, we can give you a straight-in to Runway 10 with a quartering tailwind, 7 to 9 knots variable off your left side. Do you feel you can make the field or do you want to bail out over the cornfields?”

I said I was sure I could make the field.

“Cessna Four-Six-Zero-Six Alpha, report at 5 out and 2 out. Good luck.”

Reduce throttle. Start descent. Keep on that left rudder to stay lined up to the left of Runway 10 to adjust for the tailwind. Looks good. Five miles out. Runway in front of me.

“Cessna Four-Six-Zero-Six Alpha, this is DuPage Tower. We have you in sight. Be advised the winds are now at three-zero-zero at 8 knots, gusting to 10.”

The situation was getting dicey. Put in more left crab and hold it all the way. Three miles out. Reduce power. Stay a little high on the glideslope. One mile out. Reduce power. No flaps. Maintain crab over the numbers. Idle, hold the crab. After a nice, smooth flare, I straightened the nose and touched down. A real greaser.

I taxied to tiedown, killed the mixture and the battery, pulled the keys, and chocked the nosewheel. Once inside the flight standards district office building, I contacted the manager of the Cessna club and described what happened. He was at the field in 20 minutes. Popping open the door of the airplane, he stuck his head and flashlight behind the yoke just aft of the firewall. Straightening up, he grabbed the yoke and yanked it hard to the right. Another crack and pieces of brittle, yellowed plastic rained down on the rudder pedals. The yoke was free.

The plastic was part of the airspeed feed tubing from the static port and the pitot tube to the airspeed indicator. It had hardened with age and had come loose from its support as a result of my 4-G pull-ups, wedging into the chain pivot controlling the ailerons and elevators. Had I yanked the yoke, I would have regained bi-directional control, but without airspeed input.

In retrospect, I realized I was never in serious danger. I had altitude, time to plan, and a situational awareness gained from my many hours of aerobatics. How ironic, though, that in 50 years of flying various high-performance aerobatic aircraft, it was the lowly Cessna Aerobat that gave me my biggest scare.AOPA

David Werdegar is a private pilot who lives in Illinois.