A Bearhawk Time Machine – Flying to a Remote Test Site in California

Source: 2021 Q4 Beartracks, Russ Erb
You’ve heard it before—“Airplanes are Time Machines”. Usually this is in reference to airplanes being faster than other forms of transportation, able to get you to your destination quickly and allow you to get more “stuff” done in a particular time. For the purposes of this discussion, however, I’m thinking more along the lines of H.G. Wells’ The Time Machine, where my Bearhawk Three Sigma took me back in time to a set of events in my Dad’s history that actually took place before I was born. You may have done a similar thing—someone told you about an event of significance that happened in the past. Later you happened to visit the location of said event and tried to imagine what it was like to have been there. But what do you do if the location is essentially inaccessible? To bring you along on this journey of mine, let me first take you back in history to the events in question.
Piasecki H-21C Hover In-Ground Effect Flight Testing
Lee (Dad) and Alice (Mom) had just returned home from their honeymoon in 1954 when my Grandfather (Mom’s Dad), the local letter carrier, handed Dad a letter from the US Air Force telling him it was time to go on active duty to serve his ROTC commitment. He was sent to Edwards Air Force Base to become a Flight Test Engineer (FTE), a job I would later adopt for a full career.
One of the projects he was assigned to was flight test of the Piasecki H-21C Shawnee helicopter, more commonly known as the “Flying Banana”, even though it wasn’t flown by Gru’s minions.

Above: Alice and Lee at the Armed Forces Day Open House, 21 May 1955, standing in front of his H-21C flight test helicopter. Lee is holding my older brother who is two weeks old
Below: Piasecki H-21C Shawnee, powered by a Wright R-1820-103 radial piston engine

One reason helicopter performance testing is different is the strong influence of ground effect. While airplanes do respond to ground effect (better performance within one wingspan of the ground), the effect is not generally that significant. I do takeoffs and landings in my Bearhawk without any noticeable feeling that I have left or entered ground effect. Helicopters, however, are strongly affected
by ground effect, sometimes able to hover a few feet off of the ground in ground effect but unable to climb any higher. This was especially true of older piston engine helicopters, where the power plant weight was high and the payload was very limited. In this case flight could only be established by flying forward in ground effect (or on a runway) until translational lift reduced the power required enough for flight.
Airplanes can generally be tested for predicted takeoff and climb performance at high altitudes simply by doing level accelerations and climbs at higher altitudes, thousands of feet above the ground, because the difference caused by ground effect is so small. For helicopters, this doesn’t work at all, and tests have to be run in ground effect at high density altitudes.
Of course, this requires having a suitable airport, or at least terrain, available for testing at high elevations. The elevation of Edwards AFB is only 2311 feet, which isn’t exactly high. One high altitude site available within a reasonable distance from Edwards AFB is Big Bear Airport at 6752 feet elevation. Big Bear is noted for its ski resorts and alpine climate, as well as Big Bear Lake. Dad said that they did some helicopter testing at the Big Bear Airport. I have even been involved with a flight test project flown at Big Bear to simulate the elevation of the US Air Force Academy. For really high density altitudes they would go to a place called Monache Meadow (type “Monache Meadow California” into Google Maps to see where it is located). This area was well up in the Sierra Nevada mountains with elevations of 7600 feet and higher. There was a large open area without trees or mountain peaks in the way, making it ideal for helicopter testing only 79 miles from the base and inside the MOA/Restricted Area.

Above: Dad’s Test Pilot, Gus Vincenze, with the H-21C, possibly on Monache Meadow.
Below: Flight Test planning in the field, possibly on Monache Meadow. Lee is in the white coveralls on the right. Then again, they may just be shooting craps…

Below:From his own annotation written on the back of the photo “1/Lt Lee Harvey Erb testing the H-21C helicopter at Monache Meadow, CA. 7600 foot elevation. June 30, 1955”. Note that his first son is less than two months old at this point. This is probably at the South Fork of the Kern River

Dad told me the story that the Air Force was very welcome at Monache Meadow. A man who lived there had a daughter who was very sick and needed to get to a hospital. Unfortunately, Monache Meadow is only accessible by 19.5-mile Monache Meadows Jeep Road that is rated as “moderate” and 4WD recommended—not exactly ambulance accessible. Instead, he called the Air Force requesting assistance. The Air Force sent an H21C up to Monache Meadow, but the density altitude was so high that the helicopter could not take off with the pilot, the patient, and the crew chief on board. Therefore, the crew chief got off the helicopter, and the pilot flew the patient to a hospital. The crew chief waited at Monache Meadow until the pilot could return with the helicopter to retrieve him. Needless to say, the father was very appreciative and gave great support to the Air Force whenever they were there.
Road Blocks In The Space-Time Continuum
My Dad had told me these stories long ago. From several of his visits while I worked at Edwards AFB, I had managed to piece together much of his history in my mind, including locations where he had worked. Part of the problem was that he was at Edwards at the time that Edwards was transitioning from what is now called “South Base” to what is now called “Main Base”. If you look at an airport diagram of KEDW, Chuck Yeager, Jack Ridley, Bob Cardenas, and Bob Hoover did not take off on Runway 23L-5R, the current main runway of Edwards AFB, on 14 October 1947 to break the sound barrier. That runway didn’t exist yet. They took off on Runway 25-7, which at the time was labeled 24-6.
The movie Toward the Unknown was shot around this time and helped with understanding the previous base configuration. I had also flown to Big Bear multiple times, so I knew where that was. Monache Meadow was another problem, though. Dad couldn’t really remember exactly where it was, other than “up north in the mountains”. Adding to the problem was the way he said the name, which sounded like “Menanche Meadows” to me, which didn’t show up on any of the maps (this was before Google Maps). For that matter, it isn’t called out on the sectional or any other aeronautical charts. I often wondered if that was just a nickname for the location, named for someone who lived there and not officially recognized by the US Geological Survey. When Dad passed away in February 2020 I figured
that I would never know.
Somehow recently I stumbled across something that mentioned “Monache” and I wondered if it could be related to what I was looking for. After some Google searching, I found Monache Meadow in about the expected location. It fit the description of a high altitude plain in the mountains within the Edwards flying area, empty of trees and obstacles. As mentioned before, I couldn’t drive there since it was way up in the mountains and I didn’t have a suitable vehicle. I could possibly fly over it, but there were very high peaks around it. I would have to plan carefully and watch out for high terrain and strong winds that could cause turbulence.
Going Back In Time
I asked Aaron, a coworker and student pilot, if he was interested in some Bearhawk flying. He had been waiting for this offer for a long time, and said he was interested in looking at some wooded mountain terrain near Tehachapi for an upcoming project. I agreed, and asked him if he would also be interested in a high altitude overflight of Monache Meadow. He agreed, which was great, because I needed a second crew member to do the overflight safely.
On 20 November 2021 the sky was clear and winds at altitude were light. Flying up the narrow VFR General Aviation corridor between the Sierras and the China Lake Restricted Area, we approached at an altitude of 10,500 feet, which near the mountains still seemed low. Because of the high peaks just East of Monache Meadow, we turned in early over a lower ridge to stay over relatively lower terrain, as shown by the red arrow.

Over the mountains I drifted up toward 11,000 feet as the ground still seemed close. I handed my phone to Aaron and asked him to take “a whole mess o’ pictures” while I made two right hand turns over the meadow. I knew from previous experience that it is dangerous to try to fly turns over a point on the ground at low altitude while looking at that point on the ground and studying it. It’s even worse if you are trying to take pictures of that point on the ground. The problem is that while staring at the ground it is very easy to lose your pitch control, either descending without your knowledge or slowing to a stall. That’s why I had Aaron take the pictures while I divided my attention between maintaining altitude, not running into high terrain, and occasionally glancing at the ground.
While it looks flat and possibly landable from this altitude, I wasn’t interested in biting off that much risk, especially at these high altitudes. It appeared completely deserted. Even so, it was very fulfilling to see the place from altitude. Now I knew where it was, and I could imagine my Dad down there, struggling with an underpowered helicopter trying to collect flight test data for the good of the Air Force. The Bearhawk had taken me there to feel a connection to the work that my Dad had done which inspired me to follow my career. The best part is that I can go back there again.

Bearhawk Patrol First Flight: Paul Johnston

You are not yet authorized to view this page. Learn more here.

How-Not-To: Burn Down the Hangar

Source: 2021 Q3 Beartracks, Jared Yates
Beartracks is largely a “how-to” publication, though I’ve enjoyed providing a few “how-not-to” tidbits over the years, usually in rather light-hearted cases with minimal impact. I think it’s important to share mistakes as much as triumphs, if we are to promote safety and success. This time I’ll share one that is far more consequential and unfortunately also much less educational, at least with regard to prevention.
I was in a hotel on a work trip, as I often am, when I got a call from the owner of our local small airport where we rent our hangar spot. He was at the beach that weekend, taking a break from his non-stop jobs at his grading business and at the local fire department. His friends at the fire department said they were responding to a call at his place, to give him a heads up and see if he was burning brush piles or something. He wasn’t, so he started calling the tenants and pretty soon we got word that our hangar was on fire. Relatives had been through the airport to check on things around 3:00pm and everything looked normal. Sometime around 5:00pm the neighbors heard things and saw the smoke, and called it in. By 5:30 the fire was out, and you can see what was left.
I was scheduled to be home around 24 hours later, and seeing that there wasn’t much for me to be there to secure or protect, I completed the work trip and arrived at home the next afternoon. I had lots of questions, as I’m sure you do. Most pressing, was there anything to try and save? Was there any indication about what might have started the fire? The county has investigators who were on the scene right after the fire, and they would eventually report the cause as undetermined. I don’t think there was very much left for them to investigate. Before arriving I wondered if any of the small batteries, like those for the electric drill or flashlights might have been to blame. Oddly, all of those things were in a part of the building that didn’t seem to get very hot. In the days after the fire, when restoring electrical power to the other hangars on the same service, we found that the breaker was damaged. The power company’s meter records usage in 30-minute increments, and there was a spike in usage on the afternoon of the fire, but we don’t have any way to know if that was a cause or an effect. The meter usually has such small demand that even the relatively large increase was still a small amount of total kilowatt hours, so I doubt that’s a solid indication of a problem. All of these things may have been effects rather than causes. There’s not a smoking gun that we can point to, or a simple moral to the story of “don’t do this or your hangar will burn down”. Some things that might have mitigated the impacts of the fire would include having an all-metal building and not one with a wooden structure. Same with tool storage and work benches. Thankfully I didn’t have any welding gasses in the hangar or any fuel in our storage containers. I don’t think it’s a reasonable expectation to have a hangar/workshop with nothing plugged in, and no sources of energy.
As for trying to save anything, there were a few mementos worth digging for. One was a stubby 7/16” wrench that I carried in the airplane’s travel toolbag. It was part of a high-end SK stubby wrench set that I had received as a gift back in college from a mechanic I worked for. In the early days of flying the Bearhawk, I had lost it, and then replaced it with a new wrench. During a subsequent condition inspection, I found the original 7/16 rattling around in the wing, evidence of a cardinal sin of aviation maintenance. When the airplane insurance adjuster came to visit the site, he asked about the airplane’s data plate. I hadn’t thought to look for it, but after his asking we poked around and eventually found it, so I saved that. One of the strangest things was how in one sense, there was nothing there. But in another sense, everything was there. At least everything that hadn’t combusted. My wooden toolbox was a pile of charcoal, but excavation yielded the remains of most of the steel tools, charred and absent their necessary heat treatment. The wooden pedal plane Bearhawks we had made for the girls were gone, but their steel parts like the pedal crank and steering mechanism were left behind right where they dropped. Nearly everything had left some evidence of itself and nearly none of it was of any use but recycling.
The airplane structure was an interesting study. The area around the boot cowl experienced some very high temperatures, probably because of the fuel on board. When a steel truss from the roof fell down onto the fuselage, the strongest tubes in the airplane were hot enough to bend like spaghetti. Copper wires draped over the tube that passes under the instrument panel, along with the engine control cables. Anything aluminum in this area was completely gone. Some of the thickest parts of the wing structure, such as the spar at the wing strut, were still present but badly deformed. There were puddles of aluminum on the ground where the wings had been. The steel structures from the wing were on the ground, and control cables still connected back to the stick. Interestingly, some portion of the paint on the fuselage survived the heat. Fiberglass parts like the nosebowl and wingtips were reduced to piles of what looked like virgin fiberglass cloth. The binding plastics were burned away but the glass fibers persisted. I removed the engine and took it to Bob, and we’re waiting to hear back if any of the internal steel engine parts are serviceable.
The airplane was insured fairly well. Not for enough to build another one at today’s prices, and not for as much as I would have liked to have sold it for, but at least something to offset the loss. In deciding on a hull value I had considered several possible loss scenarios, especially an off-airport landing or wind damage while tied down away from home, but I had not considered losing the plane and everything in it. Having that perspective, I might have chosen a little higher hull number. The good news was that the airplane insurance folks were very good, and they got us a settlement quickly. The structure itself was not insured, though it was fairly modest. The tools and contents other than the airplane appear to be covered as personal property under our homeowner’s insurance. I took lots of pictures of the aftermath to help remind myself of everything that was out there, and made a fairly exhaustive list of around 200 items. Several things aren’t on the list because there’s no way to assign a value or replace them, like my collection of scrap lead, or half a sheet of leftover Makrolon. So far it has been a month and I don’t think we’re very far along in the process on that claim, though thankfully we aren’t depending on that settlement for important day-to-day needs. I can only imagine how bad it must be to go through this process with one’s living space instead of one’s recreational space. We’ll have to provide another follow-up once we know how the claim turns out.
This was the same hangar that we used to build the airplane, and though I stopped logging the time spent there after the first flight, I had over 2000 hours up until that point. Since then there have been 7 condition inspections, a panel re-do, and countless other projects big and small. It was a special place full of special things and we hate to see it gone. There’s a fellow named Ron from up the road, and he would drive by the hangar around dusk. He’s a hunter, and would be scouting out of season and hunting during the season. Responsible hunters are good folks to have around, they pay close attention to the details. Over the years I had gotten to know Ron pretty well, based on our mutual hours on the property and our mutual interest in each other’s pursuits. I had thought maybe I wouldn’t take the kids out to the site after the fire, worried about all of the sharp edges and hazards. But I realized they had earned the privilege, having entertained themselves at the hangar so many times while I was out there working on things. A few days after the fire the whole family was out there with me. We had several good discussions and lessons as we poked around in the charcoal and found things, speculating what they used to be, and adding to the list. The afternoon was winding down and we were just about to pull out when I saw Ron drive up. I told Tabitha I needed to hop out and talk to Ron, so she left with the girls to go procure some supper, and come back to get me later.
I’m glad I waited, because Ron had some pretty insightful things to say. He said, “you know, lots of folks don’t know what it takes to build a hangar and airplane like that, but I do, because I watched you do it over all of those years.” He was right. Our interactions along each step of the way had given him good insight about the scope of building these projects. We talked for a little while, and it was time for him to head out. We said our goodbyes and I walked back over to poke around. Passing by on the road, he called out from his truck, “Hey, if it wasn’t for that pile of burnt metal over there, I’d have never met you!” This was something that I didn’t realize that I knew, but he was exactly right. The airplane and hangar were special but some of their best value came from the relationships that we formed over the years. Fellow builders and Bearhawk prospects who came to visit, friends and relatives that went for rides, more Young Eagles than I’ve counted, and a few transition training folks. There were so many people that we wouldn’t have met if it wasn’t for that burned pile of metal.
So what’s the next step? We aren’t in a rush to buy a replacement airplane, in part because we can’t just buy one unless one comes along for sale. Until we have a replacement hangar, there’s not a place to start another build project, and I’m not sure we are in a stage of life with enough free time to build another, even though I suspect I could do it in half the time of the last one. With our daughters being 7 and 9, there is a lot of life to be living in the time it would take to build another airplane. So for now, we are going to focus on constructing a new hangar, and wait to see what comes along in the way of a flying Bearhawk or a repairable project.

You are not yet authorized to view this page. Learn more here.