ATC Recordings

About a month after my accident I realized that it would be nice to have the Air Traffic Control recordings from the Palo Alto tower, as an audio record of what took place that day. I contacted the FAA representative in charge of my case, and she recommended that I file a Freedom of Information Act request.

My request was filled in the form of an audio CD containing 19 short tracks recorded in the tower that morning. I'm not exactly sure why the full two hour period wasn't available or why these particular tracks were, but from the letter included with the CD it sounds like the media used for the recordings had been returned to service and some of my communication with the tower had been overwritten. Thankfully, my most important call was found: when I declared an emergency. I have to admit that I was worried about how I might sound on that call and expected to hear something akin to the voice of a young girl.

I've cut together a short video including some of my communication with ATC. I didn't take any photos that morning before the accident, so I used some photos from the day the plane was delivered to me as stand-ins. ATC communication is often fast and difficult to understand for the untrained ear. Good luck!

Back in the Saddle

After I crashed my airplane I decided to take some time off flying. Many of my fellow aviators encouraged me to get back up in the air soon, but I was a little spooked and didn't want to make any rash decisions. I even considered never flying again. After about a week, though, I knew that wasn't the right thing to do.

I received a lot of support from pretty much everyone I talked to: the cops who arrived at the scene of the accident (several of whom were pilots, oddly enough); the FAA and insurance representatives assigned to my case; everyone on BeechTalk and Beech Aero Club; and friends and family members. Almost everyone encouraged me to continue my flying adventures and not to let the accident deter me.

I want to include a couple of Beech Aero Club forum posts from Jim Thurman, because what he wrote meant a lot to me. Jim was a previous owner of my airplane, N5779V.

Dear David,

First I'd like to say how deeply grateful I am that you and your instructor are fine. I also want you to know that you and I share a particular bond of sadness with what happened to 5779V. I had just finished reading your good news about purchasing the plane and had written a long post welcoming you to the line of happy owners of 79V. I hadn't seen the more recent posts until just this minute and deleted my message. I'll save it for you when you're ready. I owned the plane from 1996-97 when I bought her from the original owner since 1966. These are stories for another day. For now, it's wonderful that you are safe and can build on the lessons gained in finding the right plane, going through the purchasing process, and experiencing first-hand how well-built the Super IIIs are when they most need to be. Above all, keep the joy of flying in your heart. You are one member of a legacy of the few who loved N5779V as a cherished family member ... but most importantly, of a legacy of those who love to fly.

Clear skies,

Jim Thurman
St. Petersburg, FL (KSPG)

My response:

Thank you so much for your kind words, James. I have to admit I'm still very much struggling with this whole situation. I was so happy to own N5779V, my first airplane. It was so beautiful and I had so many plans to fly places in it with my family. I'm still in denial that it's not sitting at KPAO waiting for me right now. It's just hard to accept. I also feel bad that I've wrecked one of relatively few Super IIIs out there. I'm not sure what is the best way to move past this.

And his:

Hi David,

I can certainly understand how you may be feeling. I'm sure everyone would deal with a situation like this differently. And I'm sure everyone has some words of advice. I've never quite bought the idea that "time heals all wounds." Mainly because I see lots of folks who seem to stay stuck in the "time" without the healing. For what it's worth, if it were me, later this week I'd find the most experienced instructor (who really loves flying) at West Valley Flying Club there at KPAO, book him/her in one of the Archers, and fly over to KHAF in that gorgeous late afternoon light and shoot some touch and gos, then head down the coast. I'd let him do some of the flying so I could just savor the view, and then I'd head home to KPAO. And I'd keep doing it until I got my license...

Glad you're safe, grateful that you have a lovely family, happy that you loved the plane, too.

Clear skies,

Jim

I decided to do exactly that. My dad came down a couple weeks ago for a football game. I booked an Archer and some time with Dave Fry, the General Manager of West Valley Flying Club. We flew down the coast to Año Nuevo and did some ground reference manuevers around the huge flock of elephant seals. I shot a few touch and goes down at KWVI (KHAF was fogged in). My dad and I switched seats so he could fly home (his first flight!) and I just stared out the window at the gorgeous views. It was a beautiful day and a wonderful flight. I felt at ease and comfortable in the pilot's seat. It was good to be back in the saddle.

I also contacted Scott Stauter at WVFC and I've done a few lessons with him. Scott gave me my very first demo flight back in June; he's a great instructor. It feels great to be back on the path to earning my private pilot's license. Solo flight #2 is right around the corner!

How Much Does It Cost To Own An Airplane?

This question is much less relevant to me now that I crashed my airplane, but I thought other people might be interested. I've done a fair amount of research on this, so I think I have some information to share, but I'm certainly no expert. I only really owned my airplane for 4 days, so unfortunately these numbers aren't based on personal experience.

It makes sense to divide airplane ownership costs into two categories: fixed and hourly. When you buy an airplane you sign up to pay the fixed costs every year, even if you never fly the thing. The hourly costs vary based on how much you fly. Here's a breakdown of the fixed costs for my airplane.

These costs will vary based on where you live and what kind of airplane you own. The maintenance cost is pretty much a shot in the dark. On a good year you might spend a total of $1,000 on maintenance. On a bad year it might be $20,000. To me, this is the scariest part of owning an airplane. You never know what's going to break! However, if you budget about $3,000 per year you'll probably do alright in aggregate. I'm going to list $2,000 here as a fixed cost, and cover the other $1,000 as part of the hourly cost breakdown. Admittedly, that's a fairly arbitrary line to draw, but the fact remains that your plane will incur maintenance costs even if you hardly fly it at all.

The hourly costs are even more variable from plane to plane, but here's an approximate breakdown for mine.

My plane burns about 10 gallons per hour at cruise, and avgas (100LL) currently goes for about $6/gallon. The engine fund represents long-term savings for overhauling that important part of your airplane. Aircraft engines have FAA-approved TBOs (time between overhaul), which you should plan on adhering to. They often require minor overhauls between major ones as well. I covered the last $1,000 of our annual maintenance budget with a $10/hour charge, which assumes the plane will fly approximately 100 hours per year.

If we're asking the age-old "Owning vs. Renting" question, we can use some simple algebra to check out the financial aspects (see kids, this stuff really does come in handy in Real Life. Stay in school.). Assuming your flying club charges $50 per month and a plane like mine rents for $140 per hour, we have:

600 + 140x = 6100 + 85x

Solving for x (where x represents hours flown in a year), we can see that you will break even cost-wise if you fly the plane for 100 hours per year. Flying less than 100 hours means you'd be better off renting; flying more than 100 hours per year means you'd be better off owning. Of course, finances only represent one aspect of this decision, but it's an important one and it's probably the only aspect that is quantifiable.

The qualitative aspects of owning an airplane include moments like this:

It was fun while it lasted.

I Crashed My Airplane

Just 12 hours after penning my giddy previous post about how I had bought the airplane of my dreams, I crash landed said airplane in an East Palo Alto marsh.

Needless to say this event has caused myself and my family much grief. We are all extremely grateful that Jassen and I were not harmed during the crash. At the same time, I miss my plane terribly. And I feel horribly about wrecking such a beautiful machine. I had many plans and dreams for that airplane, all of which have been dashed.

We can only speculate as to the cause of the accident. The NTSB is conducting a full investigation that will hopefully reveal the true cause. That being said, my instructor and I each have a theory. Jassen's theory is that the fuel selector valve malfunctioned, thus burning fuel from the left tank for the entire duration of our flight, even though we had selected the right tank for the majority of the time. The result would be that we ran the left tank dry and starved the engine on takeoff. My theory is that we were bit by Beechcraft Service Instruction 0624-281, which was issued some time after the airplane was manufactured, and which Jassen and I knew nothing about. The SI reduced the usable fuel quantity and warned not to attempt a takeoff with less than 11 gallons in each tank. Since we had about 5-6 gallons in the tank on our final takeoff, my guess is that the fuel pickups unported. Once again, the engine would have been starved of fuel on takeoff.

My insurance company, USAIG, has been great to work with so far. They want to total the plane and send me a check for the full insured value, which would more than cover my purchase price. Since the plane is still mostly in great shape, I'm going to get an estimate for the cost to repair it before I sign the total loss agreement, just in case.

As to the questions of whether or not I will fly and/or own an airplane again, I hope the answer is yes, but I will be taking some time off to think about it. The accident was frightening, to be sure. However, we were able to land safely and I definitely think that the experience will make me a better, safer, and more cautious pilot for the rest of my life. It will take time for the wounds to heal, but when they do I will be stronger for it.

Here is the report that I submitted to the FAA:

On the evening of Monday, August 22, 2011, I arrived at Palo Alto Airport at 6:30pm. I did a pre-flight inspection of my plane, started it up, and taxied over to the fuel island. I filled both tanks up to the slot in the tab (the 20 gallon mark). I set my fuel totalizer to 40 gallons to reflect this fuel addition. I then taxied back to transient parking and waited for my instructor, Jassen Todorov, to arrive. He arrived around 7pm. We took off shortly thereafter and flew straight to Hayward Airport. We did about 10 touch and goes at Hayward. The fuel totalizer is set to blink a reminder light after every 5 gallons of fuel burned. This is to remind the pilot to switch tanks; if you hit a button the light stops blinking and the 5 gallon counter starts over. I don't remember which tank we started on, but I do remember that I switched tanks twice while at Hayward. We then flew back to Palo Alto, landed, and parked the plane in transient (I was still in the process of getting my own tie-down for the plane). The whole flight lasted about 1.5 hours and the airplane flew fine the entire time.

On the morning of Tuesday, August 23, 2011, I arrived at Palo Alto Airport at 8:30am and started my pre-flight inspection. Jassen arrived just 2 minutes later, during my inspection. I drained all 3 fuel sumps and found no water or debris in the fuel. I checked both fuel tanks. The right tank was at exactly 15 gallons (the bottom of the tab), the left tank was well below the tab and I estimated it to be at roughly 10 gallons. I did some mental math as a sanity check: we had started with 40 gallons the previous evening and burned about 15 gallons that night, so a total of 25 gallons now made sense. In hindsight this means that we must have started with the left tank on Monday night, switched to the right for 5 gallons, and then back to the left. I didn't really think about that at the time, but I definitely noted that the right tank was more full and thus I started our flight on Tuesday morning on the right tank. I also performed a full 360 degree turn of the fuel selector valve as specified by the pre-flight checklist. The valve felt normal. We took off from Palo Alto at around 8:40am and began a series of touch and goes. After burning a little over 5 gallons (about 6 landings) I noticed the blinking light and switched to the left tank. About three takeoffs later, at 9:40am, the engine sputtered once and then quit completely when we were about 300 feet AGL on our upwind leg, just after takeoff. We had not observed any problems with the airplane or engine before this point. Jassen immediately took the controls and started playing with the throttle and mixture to make sure they were both all the way in. He then asked me to radio the tower and tell them that we had an emergency. I said over the radio, "Palo Alto Tower, we have an emergency!" They responded to ask for my tail number and I said, "79V." Then they asked if we could return to the airport and I said, "No, we can't." They said that they would dispatch emergency crews. Jassen was focused on landing the plane. I don't remember him saying anything after that until we were on the ground. I yelled out at one point, "Watch out for those power lines!," and "Go for that dirt road!" I'm pretty sure he had already picked the dirt road as his landing spot. It must have been less than 30 seconds between engine failure and landing. I braced myself for the landing, knowing that I hadn't yet installed shoulder harnesses in the airplane, something that I planned on doing as soon as possible. The landing was very smooth. We struck a tree shortly after touching down which sent us swerving a bit and eventually skidding sideways off the dirt road and into the marsh. It was kind of a bouncy ride, but my back never left the back of the seat and Jassen and I felt completely unharmed once we came to a stop. I immediately took off my headset and angrily hung it on the yoke in front of me, after seeing the damage to my left wing. Jassen radioed the tower to inform them that there were no fatalities and no injuries. We both climbed out of the plane to assess the damage and we started talking to each other about what might have gone wrong. Jassen went back in to gather up our personal effects, which had been strewn about in the back seat. I eventually went back into the plane to get my flight bag and headset. Emergency crews and press crews arrived shortly thereafter. We informed them that we weren't hurt, and the medical crews packed up and left. One of the firemen or police officers asked me to put the fuel selector in the off position, so I did so. My wife, son and in-laws arrived around 10am. We waited out there until about noon for the FAA team to arrive. At some point I went back down to the plane to lock the door and luggage compartment. At around 1pm we went back to the airport to get some lunch and I was contacted by my insurance company during lunch. The FAA crew also caught up to us at lunch and took some documents from me (my logbook, the plane's airworthiness certificate, and my temporary registration for the plane), which they promptly returned to me after scanning. After that we went home. I got a call from Nicole at the FAA around 4:30pm asking me to go back to the scene and try to start the plane's engine. My wife and I returned to the scene, but the FAA officer there said he didn't want to try starting the engine after all. They had entered the plane through the luggage door (the latch had been bent during the accident, so it wouldn't shut completely). He told me I could lock it back up, which I did before we left.

On the morning of Wednesday, August 24, 2011, my wife, son, and I arrived at the accident scene at 9:30am. The Open Space officers were at the scene and they wouldn't let us walk out to the airplane until the NTSB called them to clear it. They told us that they had arrived around 8:20am and nobody was guarding the site when they arrived. Apparently the private guard hired by my insurance company left around 8am. At 10am Dennis James from Plain Parts arrived with his truck and trailer to retrieve the airplane. He called Van at the NTSB and they convinced the officers to let us through. Right before we entered, Ken Steiner from USAIG, my insurance company, arrived. He walked in with us. I asked him if we could measure exactly how much fuel was in the right tank when it was drained. He said they would try to do so. I also asked if I could turn on the master switch in the plane so I could read some numbers from the fuel totalizer. Dennis called Van back to ask for permission for me to do that, and Van granted it. Dennis took photos of the fuel totalizer while I was reading it. It showed 24.7 gallons used since the last time fuel was added, with 15.3 remaining. I remarked that these numbers were exactly what I expected them to be -- we had burned 15 gallons on Monday and 10 gallons on Tuesday. We left as they began preparing to dismantle the plane and haul it away.

I Bought an Airplane

A real one. Not a toy or a model. Like a big one that people can sit in. Four people. And they can fly for hundreds of miles. It. Is. Awesome.

It all started about a month ago. I had been looking at used planes on controller.com and Trade-A-Plane every day for over a month already. I was starting to get pretty familiar with the various makes and models that had been produced over the past 50 years and what I could expect to afford. I narrowed my search to Pipers and Beechcraft, because I like low wing planes. Over time I became more and more drawn to Beechcraft airplanes. I see them as the Mac to the Piper/Cessna PC. They're a little more rare. They're better designed and built. They're both more attractive and more capable. And they have a loyal and passionate following that tend to turn up their noses at those "C and P airplanes".

After being frustrated that all the good options seemed to be in the eastern half of the country, I was shocked when I found what looked like a lovely Beech Musketeer not only in the West, but right here in the Bay Area! I decided that since it was so close, I should at least go up to Novato and check it out. So, on July 16, 2011, Jassen, Caroline and I flew up to DVO. There we met T.J. Neff, an aircraft salesman who has been working out of Gnoss Field for decades. He showed us the airplane and was even kind enough to let me fly it back to PAO. I pretty much fell in love with the plane during that flight. It was so nice!

After unsuccessfully attempting to convince Caroline and Drew to split the plane with me, I began to consider buying it all by myself. What a crazy idea! The thought of owning the plane was pretty much consuming me, though, so I knew it had to be done. I scheduled a pre-purchase inspection with Bob Burnett, an excellent mechanic who has a shop at DVO. I took Thursday, July 28, 2011, off work to participate in the all day inspection.

I learned a ton about the airplane that day. Bob was a great teacher and I'm glad he was willing to let me help out and put up with all my questions. I came armed with a list of things to check based on the advice I found within the fabulous online communities at Beech Talk and the Beech Aero Club.

The airplane passed its inspection with flying colors. It was in great shape. The current owner had mostly let it sit in a hangar for the year that they owned it, which is not optimal. The previous owner, however, had flown it regularly and put a ton of time and effort into restoring it and upgrading it. Through some careful internet stalking I managed to get in contact with this man and he has been incredibly willing to write out long, detailed responses to all of my questions via email. Not only have I learned a lot about the plane from him, but I also felt much more confident buying the plane knowing that it was heartily endorsed by a previous owner who no longer had any skin in the game.

After about three weeks of arranging a loan, setting up insurance, and haggling with T.J. and the sellers about how much I was willing to pay and how many of the minor issues that came to light during the inspection they were willing to fix, the deal was done on Friday, August 19, 2011.

T.J. flew the plane down to PAO and I met him there with Jassen. We then flew T.J. back home and I got to fly my very own plane back to PAO for the first time. It was a wonderful feeling, and a beautiful first flight over a fogged-in San Francisco.

I am the proud owner of a 1966 Beechcraft A23-24 Musketeer Super III. I've put a few hours on N5779V now, and I must say I absolutely love the plane. I couldn't be happier with it. Here's to clear blue skies and many years of safe, fun flying!