Amelia and the Luscombe Rudder Spring Adventure
Author: Ann
I was working on my commercial rating in a rag-wing Luscombe 8A with my instructor, Amelia Reid, at Reid Hillview airport in San Jose, California. The lesson was spin entry and recovery. Amelia asked me to make a one turn spin to the left. I cleared the area with a 90 degree turn in each direction, throttled back to 1200 rpm, stalled the plane straight ahead and kicked full left rudder. The Luscombe entered a spin by rolling over the top, pointing pretty much straight down, and winding up fairly fast. When we were 3/4 of the way around the turn, I pushed full right rudder, and as the rotation stopped relaxed the back pressure on the stick and recovered from the ensuing dive. We were close to rolling out exactly on the roll-in point. So far so good.
“Okay,” says Amelia, “Let’s do a one turn spin to the right.” This I accomplished in the same fashion as before. Normally we would have gone to the next maneuver at this point but Amelia noticed that we were almost out of time and so she asked for another one-turn spin before heading back to the airport. I thought I heard her say, “spin to the left” (we had no intercom or even earplugs in those days), but she had said “to the right.” As I entered the stall and kicked full left rudder, she shouted “You’re going the wrong way!” and she kicked full right rudder.
The result was a loud “sproioioing!” The spring which connected the right rudder pedal to the floorboard broke. We recovered from the left turn spin accompanied by Amelia’s laughter. She thought it was all terribly funny, and as was her wont, turned the incident into a lesson. “Okay, it’s time to return to the field. Fly us back under the hood,” she intoned.
During the next 15 minutes flying back to Reid, I struggled to maintain heading with the twitchy Luscombe trying mightily to make left turns all the way. The rudder cables were still fine. Just the lack of tension on the rudder caused it to feel like the plane was pulling as hard as it could in one direction all the time.
It was a lesson Amelia would teach me time and time again: be inventive! If something in the airplane breaks or does not respond in an expected manner, do whatever it takes to achieve the desired outcome. Never give up!
Tags: flying stories, in flight control problems, tailwheel training, training
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