So I'm just rotating.
Pulling back, mains off. As soon as the mains broke ground I caught another gust of wind from the north. Normally this wouldn't be a big deal, but in this case it was. When the gust hit me I corrected but not enough. The gust pushed me to the south and even though I was continually correcting it just wasn't enough. I heard a sharp bang and from then on it was outta my hands. I had caught the last three inches of my left wing on one of the telephone poles that you see in the picture on my last post. The impact from the pole slammed the airplane down on the ground and caused the tail to start coming up. Remember, I had just rotated and had over 200 gallons of 100LL on board and a full hopper of urea so I estimate my speed at that time was ~85mph.
As noted, the tail came up and right up onto her nose she went. Of course when the tail reached a certain point the other end with the spinny thing met the hard road. The prop hit the road and time stood still.
Until you have experienced it, if you're unlucky enough to, it's hard to imagine what it's like when a 600hp radial engine goes from full power to dead stop in a second. It goes from so overwhelmingly loud to dead silence in a heartbeat. It's one of those "silence is deadening" things.
But that wasn't the end. There was still a heck of a lot of inertia that wasn't going to be denied.
The nose hit, engine stopped, dead quiet, or so it seemed, and then the metal started screeching. The airplane continued it's roll toward its back and still kept going. As it rolled on the tail feathers, virtually everything from the cockpit back crumpled, which made the whole jumble a little more round to accommodate the roll. The wings acted as outriggers keeping the whole mess stabilized. I would estimate the airplane rolled a total of six times before it came to rest, nose down, as it appears in these photos.
And there wasn't a darn thing I could do but ride. I never lost consciousness but I can't say I was fully aware of how much I was spinning either. About halfway through the accident the front windscreen shattered and I remember glass flying at me. I distinctly remember thinking "so I guess this is how it ends".
Finally it stopped. From start to finish, maybe three-four seconds. But they were those yearseconds.
So here I found myself, buckled in and staring at the ground. My first thought was of how so many guys successfully survive the accident but are injured getting out of the aircraft, which was quickly followed by the thought that there were over two hundred gallons of gas on board and I needed to get the hell out. As I was trying to brace myself so that I wouldn't fall when I undid my belt I noticed the blood dripping off my nose and then I noticed where I had bled all over the windscreen in front of me. No pain, just blood. After another couple of seconds I got my belt undone, got the door open and jumped out to the ground. I'd say twenty seconds had elapsed since the beginning of the accident. I took my helmet off and threw it on the ground and a despair that's hard to imagine started coming on into my head. And it took its coat and shoes off in anticipation of staying a while.
It was about then that my dad came screeching up in his truck. He hadn't seen me yet as I'd exited on the side away from him. But here he was running through the field to get to me. Then he saw me. And I could tell by the look in his eyes that I didn't look too good. He ran up and the first words out of his mouth were "thank God Stephen, you're alive, I was telling myself the whole way up the road that I was going to be pulling your body out of the wreck after what I saw!". Then he started insisting that I lay down and he'd go call an ambulance. I told him no, I was okay, just get me a paper towel for my head. Anyway, I realized there was not a thing I could do so I went ahead and walked with him to his pickup. He ripped off a paper towel and I gingerly started wiping the blood off my face. Once I could finally see the wound I felt a little better. It wasn't good but it wasn't bad either. I had a pretty good size gash diagonally across my forehead and another small gash right next to it. The gashes were just a bit more than superficial but, as I'm sure you're all aware, head wounds are fantastic bleeders.
Dad drove me to the hospital in SIK to get stitched up. The ride over there was horrible. I had been married less than two months and I felt like this job was going to make my wife a widow. I told my dad I was quitting. Hehe, I think he was a bit relieved. So I set there for a minute or so and thought about the implications of what I was thinking, of what had happened, the whole nine yards. Then I realized what I was doing. "Hell no I'm not quitting!" I told him. He didn't say anything and in another five minutes we were at the hospital.
I walked into the hospital covered with blood and holding a blood soaked paper towel to my head. The nurse had seen that before I'm sure, but she kinda freaked when she asked what had happened and I told her I'd just wrecked my airplane. I think she must have been expecting something like Sioux Falls because she got a scared look on her face and started asking "how many more, how many more?" I told her it was just me and she calmed down and told me to go on back. A nurse met me and took me to the room. The doc came in and started sewing. He laughed and said he'd seen it all, even sewed up a guy that got attacked by a lion one time but I was his first airplane wreck. I told him that was probably because most people in airplane wrecks needed immediate attention but it wasn't medical it was mortuarial. He got a kick out of that. Then he kinda said under his breath "oh no". It's not a good thing when a doctor looking at you says "oh no". He was done sewing but I still freaked and immediately started demanding to know what the hell was wrong. "I'm sorry Stephen," he said. "I gave you thirteen stitches. If I would have realized it I would have given you fourteen."
Now that struck me as pretty damn funny. I had just survived that mess and he's worried about me getting thirteen stitches. I told him not to worry about it, I'm not superstitious and off he went.
They wanted to keep me for a couple of hours to make sure I wasn't concussed. My dad was back there with me and I knew I needed to let my wife, who was at work, know what had happened and that I was okay but my pride and ego were starting to death rattle. Her work was across the river in Illinois but the company had a toll free number so I reeled it off to dad who wrote it down and went off to call Sherry. A nurse and a paramedic came in and started cleaning the blood out of my fingernails and off my hands when dad walked back in.
"Uh, Stephen," he said, "you gave me the wrong telephone number. I just spoke with Bob Reeves."
I was totally stunned. "Oh my God," I said, "you didn't tell him did you?"
Dad kinda laughed and said he hadn't. But I had noticed when I said that the nurse and para kinda laughed too, because they realized who Bob Reeves was.
Now you know too.
The next day every muscle in my body was stiff as a board. And I wanted to crawl under a rock and die. But instead I called
Mid-Continent Aircraft Corporation and started making arrangements to get a new aircraft. I was flying again two days later.
.jpg)
.jpg)
