Source: 2013 Q4 Beartracks, Pat Fagan
Carol and I flew to Lynn Rigg’s Kanab Bearhawk fly-in in October. What a great time we had. It was a small turnout, but of course it was Bearhawk quality people so we had an absolute blast. Lynn hopes to put this on every year and we will certainly plan to attend next year.
On the way home, Scott Williamson and Kevin Deutscher in #509 wanted to hit a backcountry strip. Grand Gulch Mine in AZ was roughly on the way for both of us so we popped in there. Carol and I landed first and it was while maneuvering the airplane to the side of the x-wind strip I discovered we had flatted our tail wheel. I used to carry a complete tail wheel assembly, patch kit, tubes, jack and air pump when out doing this sort of thing, but it’s been a while since I’ve done this sort of thing and I didn’t have anything in the airplane other than a badly assembled tool kit.
We walked down to check out the mine anyway, and on the way back Kevin “McGyver” had a brilliant idea. Since the tail wheel is two wheel halves, why not pack the tire with what ever we could find then bolt the two halves back together. We managed to get enough tools together between my and Scott’s tool kits to get the tire apart. There was an abrasion on the side of the tube about the size of a quarter that looked like the likely suspect. What I was surprised to discover later was that there was a matching abraded patch on the inside of the tire. The chords were worn through and I could almost push my finger through the sidewall. Perhaps the tire was damaged in the wreck 4 years ago which then abraded the tube. Who knows.
We stripped a couple of pillow cases, twined them tightly together, than wrapped the whole sausage with tie down rope. After jamming this log into the tire we bolted the halves back together and had ourselves a serviceable tail wheel. We pushed the plane onto the runway and picked up the tail to align it with the runway to keep from putting any side load on the tire. After a soft field departure, we were on our way home. Back home I wheel landed near my hanger, braking with the tail in the air until the taxi turnoff. I then taxied about 100 yards to our hangar with the tail wheel thumping, but not riding on the rim.
Moral of the story, if you’re going to play in the backcountry, bring a proper tool kit, repair parts, and an out of-the box thinker like Kevin. What a great weekend.