TRAVAILS OF HOTEL BRAVO

It’s been a popular ruse since the onset of vehicular transportation, gussy up a weary old vessel worthy of more and sell the paint job to someone who doesn’t know better. So it was with Hotel Bravo. She came to us with a fresh coat of red white and blue — whose nose cone peeled the first year. Brand new main tire — with a 3/4-inch chip out of the rim on one side. New skid too — softwood, which broke before we could replace it. Ah but to be fair, I had to admit she flew okay. Not as nice as Juliet, but then…Days later I was up in HB, wing to wing with Juliet more or less and, just for effect, popped spoilers. No big deal — until they locked full open. And if you know anything about 2-32s, that’s a one-way ticket on the gravity express.Hotel Bravo’s saving feature, no tidy partition behind the aft seat, leaving all those mechanical innards between the wings exposed. While setting up an off-field landing I flew the stick with my knees, right hand jiggling the spoiler handle, and reached back with my left hand to fumble around until… whatta ya know, something got the spoilers unstuck and I closed them without losing any fingers.That evening with the two birds nose to nose and their turtle decks off, the problem was obvious. 2-32s’ brake assembly includes a strange triangular linkage that in HB had been installed backwards, allowing full extension to go over center and jam, unclosable. What I did in flight to trick it, no idea. Just so glad I happened to be in the back seat! (Imagine though, what it would have been like to land off-field with full spoilers, one-handed, while your other hand is caught in a metal pincer behind you!)Some other year, again wing to wing, this time I was in Juliet and saw what looked like a big bundle of cellophane tumbling behind Hotel Bravo. It was her canopy. Presumably somebody in back let his fingers do the walking and the rest was… his story.The pilot of HB, Tim knew to immediately turn straight for the airport, flying very slowly to limit parasite drag. Not much standard procedure involved, but they did make it.Assured of that, I turned back to follow the canopy’s descent. It would be demolished of course, but maybe we could untwist the metal frame and use it as a pattern to make a new one. Wishful thinking? By the time I looked again the falling canopy had vanished. I knew only that it was on the side of a certain nameless hill.Next morning the tow pilot took me there in back of the Bird Dog so I could pitch out a bag of flour somewhere near the place — but all we accomplished was having borrowed ear muffs blown off my head into the air. Over the next week, the Tim and I each made three trips into the woods searching, with no success. On one of my hunts (after I’d replaced those lost ear muffs with new ones) I found not the mangled canopy or any hint of flour, but the stupid muffs, hiding under a boulder. Was someone up there was just plain messing with us?Finally, last try, we went back together, and what Tim found is still hard to believe twenty five years later. That big one-piece canopy flew open, snapped its little lanyard chain and rolled off the wing into space, tumbling three thousand feet down, through treetops to land upright in soft fiddlehead ferns… virtually intact! Delirious, we carried it over our heads like a canoe en portage, down through the woods, washed a little mud off the hinges and put it right back on the bird.Ah Hotel Bravo, we knew ye well.Editor’s note: Tim, my partner in crime for this adventure, was the first student I ever had who became an instructor. We hadn’t flown together, or even seen each other in about twenty years, regrettably, but after writing this piece I emailed him to see if his memory of events matched mine. His response was lengthy and lots of fun to read, though not 100% appropriate for this venue. Here’s some of the G-rated part.“The left side canopy hinge was not safetied and it was wicked loose. I knew that, but would just push it forward before we flew and told passengers no to touch it. On this flight, either it was pulled or came loose on its own. The speed at which the canopy departed was pretty amazing. It swung up on the right, closed latches and just ripped off backwards. Glad it didn't whack the tail anywhere.”“And finding that Canopy! Like King Arthur’s Sword in the ferns with sun shining down on it through the trees, it had to have been set down there by the Angels. Couldn't believe it, that was quite a sight.”

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