The Gift of Flight - Part 6 – Escaping death in the Zlin

 

The Gift of Flight - Part 6 - Escaping death in the Zlin

Published January 2023 by P.K. Odendaal

 

ZLIN 50-LS 325 HP

And so it happened that, after I got all my flying licences and flying ratings, that I got bored with flying ‘straight and level’. That was lesson one in my training, and I did not want to stop there.

I could now fly commercially, at night, in clouds, piloting tug planes, gliders, helicopters and instructing on some of them. What next could interest this fool who pushes the envelope to its limits, even where angels fear to fly.

I ran a flight school over weekends and taught pupils, whose fathers wanted them to fly  …  well, others as well. It went well for some pupils who really wanted to fly out of their own volition and where flying was number one on their bucket list or enjoyment list. The others I needed to explain in flight what an aeroplane looks like. Stuff they could read up in their own time.

How do I explain to their fathers that these talented sons of them should not be allowed to ride a bicycle. My fok Marlize! I then decided it was better to train myself than to train lethargic pupil pilots.

So I decided to try my luck at aerobatics, and what better plane to fly, at the time, than a Zlin 50-LS. A real Formula 1 plane. It could fly vertically upwards, inverted, backwards  … even sometimes straight and level, but I did not mind that!

But there was one problem. It only had one seat, so no instructor could teach me to fly it. I had to read in a book, which did not exist, how to fly it, much like the German team in 'Those Magnificent Men in their flying machines’. If you have not seen the film, get it now and view it. My only help was to talk to the previous owner for an hour and mount the steed alone.

It is one thing to fly it, very difficult to land it, but quite a different kettle of fish to do your first aerobatic manoeuvres alone in it. Scary stuff, but I persisted and after some time I could even compete in aerobatic competitions to hone my skills. I progressed quite well and came fourth in the (old) Transvaal Aerobatic Championships in my first competition.   

But that is not what this story is about. The introduction is just background noise.

However, modern aerobatics did not satisfy me. It is about breaking the plane or killing yourself, I forget which. It is so haphazard, unnatural, rigid, twitchy, jerky   and a pain to look at, except when you look at it with the intention of seeing when it crashes. It concentrates on being sensational - doing with a plane which was never intended by the Wrights Brothers.

If one reads the book 'Jonathan Livingstone Seagull' by Richard Bach, a former USA fighter pilot, he describes the excellence and shortcoming of the seagull in aerobatics. It does not do rolls, loops and reverse Cuban Eights, but if it had to do it, it would have been smooth and gracious, not six pointer roils with instant stops every sixty degrees rolled. Ask ballet dancers. They will hate it, and so did I.

But what is more interesting is that his seagull became so good in flying, that he entered the spiritual domain, by pushing the envelope. That is right up my alley.  

So, I did 'smooth and gracious aerobatics for years, although smooth for me included spins, stall turns, flick rolls and tail slides, but in a way any respectable citizen should do it.

Some ten years ago, to be exact, in 2014, I took my Zlin to a maintenance organization for a thorough inspection and service, whilst I was quite far away in the Western Cape on a project ... and then one day they phoned to tell me that I could come and fetch my plane.

I told them that I was far away, and that they could push the plane into my son's hangar next door to them.

I never knew, at that stage, that it could become so dangerous to collect a serviced plane, and I was totally unprepared for it. If you have your plane serviced, let somebody else, preferably their mechanic who worked on it, do the first flight.  

Strike One.

I had a dream. In no uncertain terms God told me not to fly the aircraft. I concluded that there was something wrong, which I knew God would reveal to me at a later stage.

Strike Two.

Out of the blue, an old friend of mine, who flew with me when we flew in the Bush War as Bush Pilots for the Air Force Volunteer Air Squadron part time, phoned me. He told me that he dreamed that I was dead, but that he fought in the Spirit to overcome Satan, which I then did as well. Wrestling with God and rebuking Satan for trying to inflict fear, destruction and despair in God's loved ones. Satan then always comes last. That we know for sure. When God allowed Satan to prove and pester Job, He said, do anything with him, but do not kill him.

Strike Three.

Not long afterwards I had another dream. I dreamed that I was in a workplace where two other men worked. It looked like a laboratory. After a time of them moving around, I come to the conclusion that they do not see me and are not aware of my presence.  They walk right through me without noticing. The dream changed and a book roll was rolled down before my eyes with the names of people who have recently died on it, and I see my name on the roll with the date on which I died. I knew in the dream that I had died.

Did I fear. No not at all. Satan wants us to fear and God wants us to trust Him. It is much easier and pleasant to trust God.

Strike Four.

Again I had a dream in which God told me that I could fly the aircraft ‘straight and level’ to my home base which I did without any incident.

Well, when the aircraft was in my hangar, I was enticed to start aerobatics the first weekend home, because it is quite easy and convenient to interpret God’s word to suit us. Flying ‘straight and level’ to my home base convinced me there was nothing wrong with the plane, but God speaks only a few words, all of them full of meaning and easy to understand – be sure to follow it naively. I have learned through the years to listen intently, but the human free will knows no bounds.

Strike Five - not out!

I take the Zlin up to a safe height over our airfield and start my usual aerobatic sequence.

A few manoeuvres into the sequence I was ready to do a tail slide. A tail slide is quite difficult to control precisely, especially when you have not done it for more than six months, as I have then. After I pulled her up vertically, I close the throttle, wait for the speed to bleed down to zero as indicated by a string on my left wing, I pull the stick full back for a pendulum swing to recover right side up. However, I lose partial control and she starts to tumble head over heel, nothing unexpected and easy to recover.

In an instant, while I am tumbling, there is smoke and sparks all over the cabin. This is lethal in this plane. The circuit breakers are a hundred millimetres in front of my right knee. Another hundred millimetres forward of them is the small fuel tank between my legs and the engine. The fuel tank may leak and there may be fuel vapours in the cabin due the inverted tank releasing  its vapour from the inverted flight. An explosion which will explode and burn the aircraft and myself to ashes in a few seconds due to the fire feeding back into the fuel tank. I know that there is two seconds for me to live. My hand stretches out mechanically, without me thinking, to the circuit breakers to switch all the breakers in the bank off. A normal emergency procedure. The sparks stop immediately, but the smoke still fills the cabin. I am high above the airfield and dive to make a quick landing, which I did in a record ninety seconds.

I have escaped death by the skin of my teeth.

It took me some weeks to figure out what happened. I had to fix the electrical system before I could fly again. Trying to cheat death again is not my scene. I was sure there was a short in one of the circuits, so I opened the dashboard cover and looked down behind the instrument panel. To my surprise I found a spanner lying on top of the radio, which the mechanic must have forgotten there. The radio sits right next to the circuit breaker bank. So every time I make a steep turn the spanner moved over the circuit breakers and short them all and when I make a steep turn in the other direction, it moves back to the top of the radio. There were many burn marks on the spanner, which now adorns my office pen holder as a constant reminder of how God spoke to me step by step to keep this fool from killing himself.

Fortunately the initials of the mechanic who worked on the aircraft was imprinted on the spanner.

But. ... what use would that have been if I was dead. I know aircraft can bite, but never knew people gave it its teeth. They are a docile species.