Chapter 4 THE Comeback

Lake at Pokara, Nepal

by S.R. Oberst

Note to the reader: It's time to digress at bit. Prior to Charlie's ill fated cross country trip, he received a flight evaluation by the Squadron Fight Examiner, Captain SK Reamer. By all accounts Charlie's performance bordered on incompetence. Even the most rudimentary flying skills were a challenge to Charlie's ham fisted techniques. As a consequence, he was downgraded to co-pilot status. How did Charlie, so lacking in judgment and ability, regain aircraft commander responsibilities? Let's see how Charlie resurrected his career:
Charlie failed THE Checkride on a Friday. By Monday he was plotting THE Comeback. SK had busted Charlie back to co-pilot in-training status. This meant that he could not fly without an instructor pilot on board. It probably did not help Charlie’s ego when our Detachment Commander, Lt Col Brad McMellow, passed his own SK checkride, albeit with a “needs training” notation on the evaluation sheet. But instead of showing any embarrassment or regret over the failed checkride, Charlie’s true character rose to the top. In a closed door session with McMellow, overheard through the office wall, Charlie blamed the checkride failure on the weather, the aircraft, and the evaluator. Strangely, and to my surprise, he did not blame me who had been his co-pilot. He insisted SK had been out to get him. He told McMellow he planned to take immediate steps to rectify the situation and regain his flight status.

Another Un-Leadership Moment:
When confronted with personal failure, Un-Leaders will blame someone else. They are incapable of accepting blame or taking positive steps to address a failure. Further, the Un- Leader will react with anger and take on the role of an injured party. It is also highly likely the Un-Leader will seek revenge on the people they blame for their failure.

Charlie immediately began a letter writing and telephone campaign to impugn the character of Captain SK Reamer. He boasted about a letter he wrote to the Squadron Commander, Colonel Andy Devine, claiming SK was a vengeful flight evaluator who made his reputation at the expense of the many capable pilots who he had failed his checkrides. He protested the manner in which his own evaluation had been conducted and demanded an immediate re-evaluation given by a fair and impartial flight evaluator. Charlie discovered SK was meeting the same promotion board for major that next year. He claimed SK specifically intended to hurt his promotion chances, thereby improving his own. Charlie also stated SK was jealous that he was an Operations Officer rather than a Chief of Flight Evaluations.

There were four instructor pilots in the unit, and McMellow insisted Charlie participate in training flights with each of them in preparation for his re-evaluation flight. Charlie did not take instruction well, so these training flights were a nightmare for the instructors. He would belittle their flying skill and complain about their instruction methods and critiques. Two of them went to McMellow and requested that they no longer be part of Charlie’s training program. McMellow asked Captain Dave Evalman, our unit Flight Evaluation Chief, to take a training flight with Charlie. Under Dave’s watchful eye, Charlie flew a practice checkride. Dave declared that Charlie needed more training, and as a result Charlie turned on Dave and attempted to make his life miserable. Dave, with less than two years remaining in the Air Force, infuriated Charlie by ignoring his taunts.

Whether it was due to Charlie’s campaign or just luck, the re-evaluation flight was scheduled with the undemanding Captain Bill Pansy. Charlie’s good fortune continued on the day of the flight with perfect flying conditions, light winds, and clear skies. I was the co-pilot - it sucks to be the junior guy. The evaluation flight was relatively uneventful. Pansy sat in the jump seat and was asleep during the instrument portion of the flight. He seemed more interested in a fly-by of Mount Rushmore than with the flight evaluation, so Charlie did a simulated rescue mission under the nose of George Washington.

Returning to the base practice field, Charlie’s emergency procedure performance was marginal. He cheated on the manual fuel procedure by not rolling the throttle back as far as he should. This went undetected by Pansy, so Charlie got away with flying in automatic fuel mode while giving the impression he was flying manually. As we hovered in to the final stop in front of the unit hangar, Pansy was already congratulating Charlie on a successful evaluation. Let’s just say that Santa had nothing on Captain Bill Pansy when it comes to giveaways.

THE Comeback was complete – Charlie had regained his flight status, but this did not end the saga. Rather it marked the beginning of a two year long effort to discredit, embarrass, and destroy Captain SK Reamer’s career. Charlie was relentless in his efforts. He was able to identify other pilots flunked by SK, and he recruited some of them for his many nefarious schemes. He obviously did not confide with anyone in our unit regarding the details, but we heard about peculiar things that happened to SK and instantly deduced Charlie was behind them. For example, we heard that following every trip SK took to one of the squadron's ten detachments, an envelope or package would arrive at his house from each place he had visited. The contents ranged from sexy lingerie or underwear to copies of “girlie”magazines or a flyer from a local strip joint.

A few weeks later most of the pilots in the unit got together at the Officers’ Club for a few beers. Usually we had a good time laughing about Charlie’s latest escapades, but THE Comeback and the ongoing vendetta were not funny. As we sat somberly enjoying our beers, someone said, “Too bad we can’t do to Charlie what he is doing to others.” Hmmm. The wheels started turning. What could a bunch of lowly pilots possibly do to the invincible Charlie Crown?

Chapter 3 Part 2 Charlie's Check Ride

Lizard in Costa Rica - photo by JoAnn Sturman

by S.R. Oberst

Charlie's check ride woes continue as he shows he is incompetent at any speed or altitude.


Although lasting only 50 minutes, it seemed like an eternity of instrument flying time. Charlie completed his second instrument approach, turned the controls over to me, and directed me to fly west to the planned area for the simulated search pattern. For his simulation Charlie picked a spot on the map as the last known location of a missing hiker. Upon arrival Charlie took the controls and began an expanding square search pattern. Expanding square search patterns begin at the probable location of the target and expand outward in concentric squares. Accurate navigation is required to monitor the aircraft’s position in the pattern. Charlie’s lack of rescue training and inattention to detail was apparent to me, but what about SK? Again Charlie failed to allow for the wind, and the pattern would have missed any poor, lost hiker who had gone north of the last known position. Charlie, however, declared the search a success. He stated that the lost hiker was in a clearing and would require extraction from the air with the rescue hoist. Charlie entered a high hover about 100 feet above the clearing and struggled mightily to hold the aircraft in position while our flight engineer, Sgt. Cable, lowered the rescue device and completed the simulated pick-up. During this “rescue” mission, I thought to myself that the lost hiker was lucky he was simulated and not real.

All this time SK had been sitting in the jump seat without taking notes. Since he had the helmet sun visor down, it was impossible to tell where his eyes were fixed. As we headed back to the base, SK finally spoke, “Let’s go by the emergency practice field for some EPs (emergency procedures).”
“What?” croaked Charlie, “EPs aren’t part of this evaluation!”
“They are, if I say they are,” SK replied.

As we approached the emergency practice field, SK told Charlie to land. We only allowed to do emergency procedures with an instructor or evaluator at the controls, so once we landed SK switched seats with me. I’ll never forget the next 20 minutes as long as I live. The first emergency procedure was a hydraulics off landing. For this EP, the helicopter hydraulic system actually was switched off. Most pilots found this to be a relatively simple EP, but you needed to remember not to fly too slow on the approach to landing, because the aircraft became difficult to control. Over compensating Charlie came in too fast and just as we were about to touch down at over 50 knots, SK thankfully took the controls. He simultaneously turned the hydraulics back on and climbed away from the landing area. Charlie blurted, “Why did you do that?”
SK merely replied, “You have the controls. Let’s go around and try a manual fuel approach.”

I should interject here, that for normal flight the F model Huey has a fuel system that automatically compensates for changes in the position of the collective control which is used to increase or decrease power. However, should the automatic fuel system fail, there is a manual fuel system. This system involves a switch on the head of the collective that moves up or down to increase or decrease the amount of fuel going to the engine. It requires the pilot to anticipate changes in power settings with an appropriate increase or decrease of the manual fuel button. Every F model Huey seems to have a manual fuel system with its own idiosyncrasies.

It took practice to master a manual fuel landing on any F model Huey, but the manual fuel system on Beaver 72 was notoriously fickle. I knew from previous practice flights it had a manual fuel system from hell. It seemed to store up pilot inputs with no corresponding change in operating RPM and then all of a sudden the inputs would kick in and the RPMs would increase wildly, requiring rapid pilot flight control adjustments. Charlie never practiced manual fuel landings and was unaware of the potential problem.

Charlie took off to fly a traffic pattern and set up for a manual fuel approach and landing. Once in manual fuel, Charlie appropriately set up a long shallow approach for a running or slide landing. If a pilot accurately anticipated the need to pull up the collective at the bottom of the approach, he would bump the manual fuel switch up just enough to increase the fuel in synchrony with the need for power. Charlie anticipated this need with several bumps up, but the manual fuel on old Beaver 72 seemed to ignore him, so Charlie kept applying more bumps. I sat there in the jump seat knowing what was going to happen. Suddenly, all of those stored bumps took effect and the engine started to accelerate quickly. Over the intercom I yelled, “RPM!” Charlie momentarily froze. Thankfully SK did not. He again took the controls with a sharp command, “I’ve got the controls,” and simultaneously pulled up the collective control to avoid an engine over-speed. He re-engaged the automatic fuel system and then completed the approach to landing at the practice field. Calmly SK said “Okay, Charlie, you have the controls back.”

The next emergency procedure was known as a hovering autorotation. It was done by holding the aircraft stationary at 5 feet above the ground and freeing the engine from the transmission by rapidly turning the throttle to the idle position. Good hovering “autos” result in a well timed increase of the collective control and a soft touchdown. Charlie must have been a mental wreck by now, so it was no surprise that he pulled the collective up too early, resulting in a free fall from 5 feet. We were over grass and no damage was done to the aircraft, but it was a poorly executed, sloppy maneuver.

The last EP was the basic straight ahead autorotation from 500 feet above the ground. Charlie had yet to deal correctly with the wind. The landing direction was 300 degrees and the winds were now about 20 knots at about 340 degrees. Since he would not be heading directly into the wind, Charlie needed to compensate for this fact. Normally at about 75 to 100 feet above the ground the pilot begins to flare the aircraft to slow the forward speed and descent. If you are directly into the wind, you can start your flare lower. But, if the wind is light or there is a crosswind you will need to start flaring earlier. Charlie must not have recognized the strength of the crosswind, so he started his flare too late. Needing a more aggressive flare to slow the aircraft, Charlie pulled back on the cyclic stick. As you guessed it, since he preferred to sit with the pilot seat as far forward as possible, the stick hit him in the stomach. He was forced to abandon the maneuver, add power, and go around for another attempt.

Overcompensating on the second attempt, Charlie flared too early and too high for a successful completion. If it had been a real engine failure or forced landing, we would not have walked away. SK had seen enough. He took the controls from Charlie and flew us back to the helipad next to the unit hangar.

In the debriefing room Charlie was uncharacteristically quiet. SK debriefed me first. He said I had done a good job with copilot duties during the instrument flight and simulated search and rescue mission. He said my crew discipline was excellent, noted my frequent intercom announcements to assist the pilot, and that I had made the “best of a difficult situation”. He then thanked me for the assertive “RPM” call during the manual fuel approach. I was excused from the debriefing room at that point, so I will never know what was said to Charlie about the check ride. However, as I was leaving the room I did hear SK start the debriefing by saying, “First of all, Captain Crown, that lieutenant is no dummy and he probably saved you from...” I closed the door.