SmokeWagon66
Member
Now to start this off, this did not happen to me. This was a story my dad told me when i was a kid and for whatever reason, it stuck with me throughout the years and Ive had a sort of complex about comm-chords ever since.
Back in the late 60's/early 70's my dad was a search pilot with the Civil Air Patrol out of Ventura Ca (Sqdn 61) and had a 1941 Fairchild UC-61 Forwarder ( F-24G) N46614. One day while flying near Santa Maria CA, He made a left turn and glanced behind him and noticed he was trailing smoke so he called out an in-flight emergency and was given clearance to land any runway at santa maria. unknown to him, they had just layed a new runway across the old one he was familiar with and hadnt yet smoothed out where the two intersected and he was landing on the old runway that now had a 6" "curb" right across it. long story short, when he hit the curb, his left gear collapsed and he skid to a halt near the left edge of the runway. Thinking that his plane was on fire, he got out and ran for it. He was wearing a GEN-TEX helmet and failed to disconnect the chord from his radio so he made it a few feet away from the plane before he ended up on his back. He told me it about broke his neck and went to say that if i ever became a pilot, always make sure my comm-chord could easily be disconnected or break-away in case of an emergency.
I always laughed when he told me this story and a few yrs back while serving overseas in the army, i caught myself checking the radio headset i wore in my turret to see if it would pull apart easily, and had a good chuckle about it. Not sure if this story has any relevance to anything here but it was plane related and had a safety overtone to it i suppose
Back in the late 60's/early 70's my dad was a search pilot with the Civil Air Patrol out of Ventura Ca (Sqdn 61) and had a 1941 Fairchild UC-61 Forwarder ( F-24G) N46614. One day while flying near Santa Maria CA, He made a left turn and glanced behind him and noticed he was trailing smoke so he called out an in-flight emergency and was given clearance to land any runway at santa maria. unknown to him, they had just layed a new runway across the old one he was familiar with and hadnt yet smoothed out where the two intersected and he was landing on the old runway that now had a 6" "curb" right across it. long story short, when he hit the curb, his left gear collapsed and he skid to a halt near the left edge of the runway. Thinking that his plane was on fire, he got out and ran for it. He was wearing a GEN-TEX helmet and failed to disconnect the chord from his radio so he made it a few feet away from the plane before he ended up on his back. He told me it about broke his neck and went to say that if i ever became a pilot, always make sure my comm-chord could easily be disconnected or break-away in case of an emergency.
I always laughed when he told me this story and a few yrs back while serving overseas in the army, i caught myself checking the radio headset i wore in my turret to see if it would pull apart easily, and had a good chuckle about it. Not sure if this story has any relevance to anything here but it was plane related and had a safety overtone to it i suppose
