When parts leave the airframe

Reading John's post about the possibility of a window departing the airframe reminded me of a time when, shortly after takeoff, it was rather obvious that we'd left something on the runway.

I'd flown a co-worker to Minden, NV for an...um...offsite breakfast meeting to discuss how we should approach some software development tasks. Ok, that wasn't it at all. We purposely planned to fly out for a quick breakfast and Minden was the perfect location as I hadn't taken the Arrow on any high altitude/mountain flights. A great way to start the work day, BTW.

Fast forward to the takeoff roll leaving Minden. Everything is normal, positive rate of climb, gear up, turn left 20 degrees on departure, starting to think about the 1000 ft. AGL checks when my co-worker says "We lost the oil door back on the runway". Huh? Sitting up a little more in the seat reveals a nice D-shaped hole in the cowl. Yep, no oil door. Suddenly my mind is filled with questions and it's time for some quick piloting decisions. Do I return to look for it? Do I keep going? Wait, what if it hit the tail/stabilator? Crud, a new oil door is a couple hundred bucks...argh...time to go back to the airport, take a look at the plane then try hunting down the oil door.

We return to the airport, shut down, checkout the plane, then start the oil door hunt. Fortunately, there was no damage to the airframe (well, other than the funny D-shaped hole):

A guy working the glider operations stops by in his truck, says "hop in, we'll drive down the runway to look for it", and off we go. 10 minutes later we see it off the right side of the runway, barely scratched. Our new found friend in the truck calls up a mechanic and after force fitting a piece of hinge wire in place and applying the appropriate amount of 200-mph tape, we're good to go. "How much do we owe you?" I ask. "Nothing" is the reply. Amazing.

As we're crossing Lake Tahoe on the return trip, I have visions of the door flying off to a watery demise. I keep a good eye on the door and it doesn't move.

Thinking back, I don't know exactly when the door came off. Likely, it was just about at the point of rotation. I didn't even see it. My co-worker saw a flash of white as we were about to rotate.

So, stuff leaving the airframe is never good. I'm fortunate that it I found my wayward part. I'm more fortunate that the wayward part was something small. I'm most fortunate that there was no damage to the airframe such that keeping the shiny side up and the dirty side down was a challenge.

Not quite one-six right

I recently had a chance to fly down to Southern California for the first time. Since the initial destination was Santa Monica (KSMO), I figured my logbook needed an entry to Van Nuys (KVNY). While I would have loved to hear "Arrow , cleared to land one six right", I had to settle for the "...three four left" version followed a minute later by "...switch landing runways, cleared to land three four right".

Note to self...next time, park somewhere on the East side of the field but we wound up at Million Air since we didn't really think ahead as to where we should have parked. Ah, next time...

Now, if I could just find my camera and post the only picture taken the entire trip...#2 behind a G-IV.