My real estate employer had a passion for betting on horse racing and traveled to Vancouver from Victoria from time to time for that purpose. So on one occasion I boldly offered to transport him in my venerable, newly re-covered Piper Tri-Pacer to YVR. It had droop wingtips and a modest 135 h.p. Lycoming engine, the first airplane I owned.
I was a fairly inexperienced pilot, but had become familiar with the Piper. However I didn’t always adhere to standard pilot procedure, in particular W&D, namely calculating weight and balance before a flight.
This omission was never so obvious as we rolled down the approximately 1800′ grass Butler-Howroyd airstrip in central Saanich where I kept the plane.
I had offered to deliver my heavy-weight employer, (of approximately 300lbs), plus another 160 lb realtor friend, about my size, to Vancouver airport, even with significant fuel on board to boot!
As we accelerated down the airfield I began to realize this was not going to be an easy takeoff. For those who are familiar with the Tri-Pacer (also known as a flying milk-stool owing to its fairly high tri-gear wheels, it has a unique ability under normal conditions to actually leap off the runway when full flaps are timely applied.
As we gained speed perhaps 2/3 of the way down the field I applied full flaps but was shocked there as no response! Now recognizing the fact I had not properly calculated the W&D, I withdrew the flap handle and continued to accelerate, albeit slowly, never doubting we would get airborne. It was not a rational thought.
Now we were rapidly running out of airfield and facing a line of large trees. Again I applied full flaps, this time gratified with a few feet of elevation. I forcibly maintained a level or even a slightly nose down attitude little more than a dozen feet off the ground in order to gain as much speed as possible before pulling back on the wheel to just barely clear the trees.
Even then I still had to maintain full flaps in order to gain a modest climb attitude before reducing it to half-flaps as we cleared Victoria airport and headed over Gulf Islands and Georgia Strait to Vancouver airport.
Later we discussed the flight. My employer had a very vivid memory of seeing a robin abandoning her nest as we cleared the trees on takeoff!
Indeed it was a very close call, yet somehow it never occurred to me wouldn’t make it.
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