Ah memories. Back in college I taught skydiving to make a few bucks and cover my jump habit. I was also a pilot back then. Anyway, we were asked to come jump out of a drop zone with a grass strip called Birdland in the middle of nowhere Florida. The plane owner filled up with 5 gallon cans at lunch and I remember wondering where he got that fuel. Following lunch I put my two students in, strapped them down and off we went. He taxied to the end, spun it around and gunned it. I gave him a look with my eyebrows raised and said "runup?" and he just smiled. I was low time, he looked like he had been flying since before I was born....so I smiled at my students and told some silly joke to relax them.
Now, as the jump master in this little tail dragger Cessna, I sat on the floor beside the pilot, back to the panel and my left leg braced up against the door frame (door removed), the 'seatbelt' over my waist. The students, two teenage girls from my college skydiving club, sat in the rear seat strapped in. When the engine sputtered at 50 feet or so, I could only think of the very tall trees not far past the end of the runway. When he chopped the throttle and nosed over, I knew we were not going to enjoy the landing. He was diving for the last bit of land prior to the pines...
The right side gear snapped off on the first bounce. I remember what the ground looked like skimming by as I hung half out of the door, clinging to his seat belt with my right hand. The wing was in the dirt, and I'll never forget the sound of aluminum tearing through the field. We spun our way to a stop, exhaust smoke and leaking fuel smell all around us. The pilot was beat up, bleeding badly from his mouth, unable to talk very well. The girls...handled it like champs...after one of them kicked me backwards out of the door and I told them to "calm down". The exhaust and fuel smell concerned me so I opted to remove the pilot. He could not walk well so I was helping him away from the plane when the girls started screaming. As it turned out, the little field we crashed in was home to a stud bull and he was pretty pissed that I seemed to have all the females.
I put a girl under each arm of the pilot and told them not to stop no matter what until they got to the fence. My intent was to distract the bull if any of his fake charges turned real. He let us leave with our lives....but gave the FAA guys fits from what I heard.
Bad Mogas was what I was told later. Be careful out there guys...one day of not paying attention and a bit of poor fuel....and things can go pretty wrong. The three souls for whom I was responsible were all strapped in as well as that plane would allow and ended up unscathed. The pilot, lost most of his teeth on the yoke, had back issues, lost his plane, took some FAA grief, shutdown that poorly thought out drop zone and taught me a lesson that I should have thrown a fit when an unknown to me pilot acted unsafely. Since then, I've been pretty anal about fuel.
Sorry for rambling....it's the scotch, makes me chatty.
