Sherry and i hatched a delightful plan for a weekend excursion. A trip to visit Sherry’s good friend, Cat, who lives in Santa Barbara. We would load our bicycles into the 1966 VW Bus, drive to Buchanan Field in Concord, put the bikes in the UC Flying Club’s Mooney 201, fly to Santa Barbara, and bike to Cat’s place. Santa Barbara has a sweet system of bicycle ‘highways’ complete with miniature highway signs, roundabouts, and speed limits. We checked with Cat, set a date, and reserved the Mooney.
The Mooney 201 is a 4-passenger high-performance single-engine low-wing airplane. It has a longer passenger compartment than the Mooney 20B in which i flew many hours while a member of the Afro-Cuban Flying Club at Oakland Airport’s North Field. Of course it could easily hold two bicycles. Or so i thought.
Early Saturday morning, i removed the middle seat from the VW bus and put both bikes in. We started shortly after dawn from Oakland and arrived at Buchanan Field 20 minutes later. We removed the front wheels from the first bike and Sherry lifted it up to me as i knelt on the wing. Nothing about stowing the bicycles was easy. We tried everything we could think of to fit in both bikes. My knuckles got scraped; some of the plane’s interior paint got scratched. Half an hour later we somehow wrestled the bikes inside along with our backpacks of clothes and cosmetics for the weekend.
Low clouds with a base of 1200 feet covered Concord and the surrounding area but clear skies were reported further south above the Livermore airport. Disconcerting but manageable. I planned execute a 180 degree turn after take-off and follow Highway I-680 to Livermore Valley. I had the usual difficult time starting the 200 hp Lycoming engine. The fourth try brought it to life. We finished the pre-flight checklist and taxied to the runway. I opened my flight plan over the radio, requested special VFR and permission for takeoff.
We lifted off and i retracted the landing gear. Instead of at 1200 feet, we unexpectedly flew into clouds before we reached 800 feet and i lost all ground references. I turned to my desired compass heading, throttled way back, and eased down out of the clouds to locate I-680. I could see a residential neighborhood below but no major roads. Then we were in another, even lower cloud. I held our heading until a minute or two later when we popped out of the low clouds and could see the ground once more. Another residential neighborhood; no highway. More concerning were the hills that surrounded the houses. Clearly we were not in the middle of the valley that I-680 follows. I banked right toward where the land was lower. And then again we were in clouds.
I considered determining our position by triangulating with the VOR transmitters in the region. I had done exactly that on an FAA certification flight while very near here. But that takes time and i wasn’t certain we had that luxury.
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I checked my compass heading again and glanced at the map on my lap. I realized that i had better climb before we flew into something. I shoved the throttle all the way to the control panel, pulled up the nose, and stabilized our airspeed at a ridiculously low 70 knots for best angle of climb. Sherry called out over the roaring engine, “What are you doing.”
“We’re going to get above these clouds.”
Seconds later we were in clear air and bright sunlight and … damn tree. Shit. Right into it. A short scream from Sherry and then a fierce lurch. The yoke crushes my midsection and then for a quiet fraction of a second we’re in freefall surrounded by pieces of windshield and pieces of tree. I braced for the collision with the slope. The immense deceleration is tearing everything apart and my left arm is shredding.
Smoke from the burning plane led firefighters and emergency personnel to the crash site. The light plane had partially disintegrated on impact, the onboard fuel had ignited, and the resulting brush fire raced up the slope. Two passengers were located in the wreckage but were burned beyond recognition.
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Suddenly, i knew what i had to do. I shoved the throttle all the way to the control panel, pulled up the nose, and stabilized our airspeed at a ridiculously low 70 knots for best angle of climb. Sherry called out over the roaring engine, “What are you doing.”
“We’re going to get above these clouds.”
Seconds later we were in clear air and bright sunlight … and a mere 200 feet above the tops of trees growing on a steep slope that rose in front us. I angled the nose off to the left to avoid plowing into the slope and kept climbing. When the slope of the hillside permitted, i lowered the nose until our airspeed increased to 90 knots for best rate of climb.
I set the Mooney on our planned route and trimmed it for cruising. A seat-of-the-pants estimate suggested that had i waited another 3 seconds before going to full throttle and max angle of climb, we would have hit those trees.
We had a great weekend in Santa Barbara.
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