Jack Pollack's 1956 DeHavilland Chipmunk is
in beautiful condition. Really nice!
It
was one of the first things I noticed as I came into his hangar early on
a Saturday morning. We were trading rides and this was my day to ride in
his beautiful yellow Chipmunk. It sits with it’s tail down unlike a Cozy
which sits on it’s nose. Strange!
The engine compartment shines. The In-line 4 sparkles with evidence of careful professional attention to detail. It holds more than a case of oil and has four oil filters!!! It rotates to the left (instead of to the right) so you need left rudder on take-off. Jack says he has a Rolls-Royce engine just like the P51’s. (Well, almost.) Seems like the spark plugs should be on the top instead of way down near the bottom! (But then, the people who designed this plane drive on the wrong side of the road too.) Oh well - the Chipmunk really looks great.
As we were finishing the pre-flight, Jack said he wanted to talk to me about his "Johnson" bar. I thought to myself – all I want to do is ride in his plane, not find out about his Johnson! So you can imagine my relief when I realized he was talking about his differential braking system and the "Johnson Bar" that is used to adjust the pressure on the hydraulic system. Whew!
Hey, the wings are really thick and you can walk on them! As I got into the back seat I quickly noticed the artificial horizon was all buggerd up –
Jack
has been having some fun! And I noticed the thick padding on the seat belts
which would probably come in handy so I tightened everything up pretty
good. I shortened up the shoulder belts so my face would not make contact
with the instrument panel. As I leaned forward to check the adjustment
I noticed a nice little leather covered pad right where my face would make
impact. Nice feature!
ATIS at DVT actually had air temp 4, dew point 4 – quite unusual in Arizona! There was lots of patchy ground fog but a beautiful day to fly a Chipmunk. We waited a few minutes to warm up the oil before we smoothly lifted off to fly around and under the Class B airspace. I asked Jack why he didn’t just jump over to Fountain Hills and slip down that way and he said "this ain’t no Cozy." We stayed at about 2500 feet and headed for Chandler with Jack being very courteous to all the Class D airspace along the way.
The Chipmunk is a joy to fly and much pleasure can be derived from being "low and slow." It has excellent visibility and a rapid roll rate. It takes very light pressure on the stick with lots of rudder input to keep the ball centered. I had fun over the San Tans on the way to Eloy for breakfast
Suddenly Jack spotted an enemy truck on the road below and we went after it from about 2500 feet like a duck after a June Bug. Jack banked hard left and pulled a few Gs. I could see the truck through the top of the canopy as we rolled over and came in at a steep angle on the unfortunate victim. I called out "bomb bay doors open" and "bombs away" as we swooped down and pulled up so we didn’t get any shrapnel damage.
As we were climbing out Jack said over the intercom that he saw numbers on the top of the truck and he thought we had just buzzed a cop! Holy s**t! I took comfort in the fact that our profile from the windshield of the police truck would not have presented any of the numbers and the FAA would not be able to do much with a report of a "yellow somethingorother" so we would probably be OK. By the way, don’t let Curtis’ wife see this!
We got back on course to Eloy and soon noticed a bogy at 9 o’clock and jack banked hard left. At 105 knots we soon overtook a Citabria and I noticed a contrail coming from the top, left wing root! Jack maneuvered over and behind to verify the leak and got on the Eloy radio frequency to the other pilot to give him a "heads up." The Citabria driver thanked us. We felt like boy scouts. Maybe that would convince the FAA to go easy on us.
Terry Emig was on the frequency. He had left Casa Grande on a short ride to Eloy and was going to get there before us. Soon we got into Eloy airspace and made right traffic for Two Zero. The Chipmunk really behaves in the pattern. Hey, it has FLAPS! Sqweak, sqweak and we made the first turn off after a short roll. Wow, that was really different than a Cozy landing! My Cozy would have used half the runway on the rollout!
Terry was waiting for us along with the two guys in the Citabria.
You could tell it was Terry because he is a big guy. He looked big even next to a big plane like his 1941 N2S-1 Stearman!
We
noticed lots of skydiving activity as we walked towards the Bent Prop Saloon
& Cookery restaurant. We got a ride in the bus on it’s way back to
pick up another load of waco skydivers. I had no idea about the size of
the sky jumping operation – two Twin Otters, Twin Beech, King Air, DC-3,
450 Stearman, something that looked like a Shorts 360. Today the Twin Otters
and King Air were in continuous operation with lots of people all over
and some falling out of the sky as we "jumped" out of the bus. Don’t they
know how dangerous that stuff is?
We had a nice breakfast with Terry and the Citabria guys. The coffee was good and we got huge pieces of toast. They have steak dinners for $5 on Thursday nights! Next time I go there I’m going to be in my Cozy and take Glenda out to dinner.
On the way back to the tie downs I picked up a brochure and price list on "Skydive Arizona" and found that a Tandem Skydive costs only $140. (I could fly my Cozy to Tulsa and back for that!) (And the Cozy ride would last a lot longer!)
We took some nice pictures on the ground in Eloy before we left. Here is Jack and his Chipmunk in a rare ground shot. See how it sits on it’s tail? Really weird.
We took off in formation with Terry on the way back to Casa Grande. We had a nice smooth, close formation. Jack was in total concentration, focused on position with the Stearman and relying on hand signals from Terry.
Here is a nice shot of the Stearman’s butt and Terry just as he was peeling off to enter the pattern at Casa Grande. Why do all pilots really like to show off???
We
had a nice calm flight back to Deer Valley where we cleaned up and put
things away. It was another one of those days when I realize how great
it is to be a pilot and to have some great friends who feel the same way.
Thanks Jack, for a great ride. Whoopee!
It was another great day in Paradise!