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- Oct 12, 2014
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Yesterday I crashed my Starduster.
I was making a short cross country (100 miles) from my home in CT to near where we have a cabin in upstate NY. I had just crossed over the mountains where the cabin is and was about 5 minutes from my destination airport where my wife was waiting to pick me up when I smelled oil and suddenly lots of smoke came from the engine. I'd had an oil leak issue before during the trip home from Memphis where I bought the plane, but nothing like this and there was no smoke then. The engine was still running, but my feet felt warm and I was worried about fire, I decided it was time to get down FAST. In retrospect my feet were probably no warmer than usual as it's always warm down there, given the proximity of the exhaust to the firewall. Anyway, right under me was a huge field, 3/4 mile long , between the NY Thruway and Rt. 17. I briefly considered landing on the highway, but the field looked like the better choice and I didn't have much time to think about it. I chopped the power but didn't shut the engine down right away, made a normal approach. On short final I saw a stream across the field and added a bit of power to go over it, field was starting to look not so good but I wasn't going to risk going around. Pulled the mixture to kill the engine and shut the master switch before touchdown, didn't seem so bad, and... WHAM! Turned out the grass was about 5 feet high and the ground was muddy under it. Wheels caught, plane nosed over, and (this part is fuzzy) the plane cartwheeled, before ending up more or less upright.
I was completely unhurt, that was a stout little plane. Only my ankles are chewed up from walking back and forth through the sticker bushes dotting the field.
Naturally I was mobbed by police, emergency crews, and newscritters. One of the police, a forest ranger actually (the landing was in a state park), is my next door neighbor at the cabin so that probably smoothed things a bit. Getting it out of the field was an ordeal as it was several hundred yards from the road across the swampy ground, and the park wanted it removed immediately once the FAA said they weren't going to investigate. One of the cops called a wrecker that has some experience with moving airplanes (and is one of only two allowed to operate in the park). They showed up an hour or so later with a backhoe and a Bobcat set up as a forklift. Had to clear some trees along the road to get into the field, then they lifted the plane with the forks under the upper wing center section, carried it back to the road, and set it on a flatbed. Amazingly, no further damage was done. They wouldn't let me leave it on the roadside long enough to take the wings off and wanted to cut the wings off, but my daughter made a phone call and got permission to leave it in the parking lot of a junk shop about a mile down the road. Fortunately, NY17 is a wide four lane undivided highway, so with police escort they took it to the junk shop and left it there. Cost for all that, $2700, yikes. I'm hoping maybe my liability insurance might cover that since the park required me to remove it immediately as opposed to disassembling it on site and carrying it out in a less expensive manner.
I'll leave shortly to start taking the fairings and such off in preparation to pull the wings. Not yet sure what next, I'll probably bring it to my cabin (about 5 miles away) until I can make arrangements to bring it back to Connecticut.
Of course I'm second guessing what I could have done differently, but there weren't many good options. The highway might have been better, but landing on a busy road is a risk, too.
The damage appears limited to the upper right wingtip and fin/rudder, and of course my brand new landing gear is trashed. The prop must have stopped turning before it hit as it looks undamaged. Still, the entire plane will have to be stripped to know for sure... but that will be a job for somebody else, I don't have the time, space, or heart to do it. So there will be a project plane for sale, contact me if interested.
Pictures later, I'm on a real slow internet connection now.
Dana
I was making a short cross country (100 miles) from my home in CT to near where we have a cabin in upstate NY. I had just crossed over the mountains where the cabin is and was about 5 minutes from my destination airport where my wife was waiting to pick me up when I smelled oil and suddenly lots of smoke came from the engine. I'd had an oil leak issue before during the trip home from Memphis where I bought the plane, but nothing like this and there was no smoke then. The engine was still running, but my feet felt warm and I was worried about fire, I decided it was time to get down FAST. In retrospect my feet were probably no warmer than usual as it's always warm down there, given the proximity of the exhaust to the firewall. Anyway, right under me was a huge field, 3/4 mile long , between the NY Thruway and Rt. 17. I briefly considered landing on the highway, but the field looked like the better choice and I didn't have much time to think about it. I chopped the power but didn't shut the engine down right away, made a normal approach. On short final I saw a stream across the field and added a bit of power to go over it, field was starting to look not so good but I wasn't going to risk going around. Pulled the mixture to kill the engine and shut the master switch before touchdown, didn't seem so bad, and... WHAM! Turned out the grass was about 5 feet high and the ground was muddy under it. Wheels caught, plane nosed over, and (this part is fuzzy) the plane cartwheeled, before ending up more or less upright.
I was completely unhurt, that was a stout little plane. Only my ankles are chewed up from walking back and forth through the sticker bushes dotting the field.
Naturally I was mobbed by police, emergency crews, and newscritters. One of the police, a forest ranger actually (the landing was in a state park), is my next door neighbor at the cabin so that probably smoothed things a bit. Getting it out of the field was an ordeal as it was several hundred yards from the road across the swampy ground, and the park wanted it removed immediately once the FAA said they weren't going to investigate. One of the cops called a wrecker that has some experience with moving airplanes (and is one of only two allowed to operate in the park). They showed up an hour or so later with a backhoe and a Bobcat set up as a forklift. Had to clear some trees along the road to get into the field, then they lifted the plane with the forks under the upper wing center section, carried it back to the road, and set it on a flatbed. Amazingly, no further damage was done. They wouldn't let me leave it on the roadside long enough to take the wings off and wanted to cut the wings off, but my daughter made a phone call and got permission to leave it in the parking lot of a junk shop about a mile down the road. Fortunately, NY17 is a wide four lane undivided highway, so with police escort they took it to the junk shop and left it there. Cost for all that, $2700, yikes. I'm hoping maybe my liability insurance might cover that since the park required me to remove it immediately as opposed to disassembling it on site and carrying it out in a less expensive manner.
I'll leave shortly to start taking the fairings and such off in preparation to pull the wings. Not yet sure what next, I'll probably bring it to my cabin (about 5 miles away) until I can make arrangements to bring it back to Connecticut.
Of course I'm second guessing what I could have done differently, but there weren't many good options. The highway might have been better, but landing on a busy road is a risk, too.
The damage appears limited to the upper right wingtip and fin/rudder, and of course my brand new landing gear is trashed. The prop must have stopped turning before it hit as it looks undamaged. Still, the entire plane will have to be stripped to know for sure... but that will be a job for somebody else, I don't have the time, space, or heart to do it. So there will be a project plane for sale, contact me if interested.
Pictures later, I'm on a real slow internet connection now.
Dana
