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**woodmw** · 08-02-2017, 21:41

Re: 2017 Southwest Taylorcraft Trip

Mark...Nice presentation. Much enjoyed. Looks like a lot of fun. And a great way to use our little airplanes.

**Peterroy** · 08-03-2017, 12:28

Re: 2017 Southwest Taylorcraft Trip

WOW! Great presentation.

Looks like a fun trip.

Wish I could have been with you guys.

Peter

**Robert Lees** · 09-02-2017, 12:21

Re: 2017 Southwest Taylorcraft Trip

Here's my report (Part one) of meeting up with Mark in Texas.

Another trip to the States beckons, this time planning to visit Utah and California and New Mexico. Mike and I are to depart from just outside Chicago and meet up with Jim and Mark near Kansas City before heading south-west.

Below: Planned route

The thunderstorms in "Tornado Alley" put paid to that particular route, so all four of us took different routes and finally met up in Dalheart (KDHT) in the north of the Texas panhandle. On the way, Mike and I crossed the slightly inundated Mississippi where we spotted an interesting airpark set upon a peninsula:

Below: Guttenberg Air Park

Below: Four meet up in Texas (Mark's photo)

Continuing west, we overfly Shiprock (a rather solitary volcanic puy) and Four Corners (unsurprisingly so named because it's the only spot where four States meet).

Below: Flying around Shiprock...

...and Four Corners

Our planned stop is Moab (Canyonlands Airport), and en route we fly up Comb Ridge and over Canyonlands NP.

Below: Canyonlands NP....

...and Moab town.

Now part two became a little more interesting:

Having landed at CNY, the 2-minute video below from my GoPro shows me backtracking the parallel taxyway, and parking up and chatting to ATC and the marshalling lads. When I now look back at that video clip, I have to confess that my speech and cognitive awareness was not as I would normally expect, but it did not seem so at the time.

The first voice on the video is from CNY: "Welcome, aircraft approaching the ramp, this is Redtail [FBO] at Canyonlands, how long are you planning on staying here?"

At the end of the video, the chap ahead is guiding in aeroplane #2, and I'm chatting to another chap off to my left, and he asks "Hi, where have you come from" and you do hear my response.

Within 10 seconds of the end of that video and having got out of the aeroplane, I didn't feel well, so I sat down on the ground. I ended up flat on my back under the aeroplane, in the shade, not feeling very well at all. I had had a stomach ache for a few days (which I thought: nothing too much to worry about, I've had a stomach ache before).

And then this: I vomit "coffee grounds" (this picture was taken later):

My flying friends and the line boys called the FBO Chief Mechanic, Gary (who happened to be the airfield Health & Safety man). He took one look at me and called 911. Gary drove me to the FBO building in a golf cart to await the ambulance. This is on a Sunday at about 5pm.

By this time I was excreting a lot of blood, not pleasant for those around, but at least it was in the lavatory and not the open public areas.

In short order, the ambulance arrived. I was loaded onto a stretcher and on the ambulance, already on a saline drip, with my blood type "finger jab" having already been taken

and my flying friends followed me in a car kindly lent by the airport.

Some time passed in the Moab hospital while further tests were done, so it's now about 7pm, sunset. This was a Sunday evening. The hospital doctor had took my blood type; so fairly quickly I'm on blood products infusion now. It was obvious to him that I needed evacuation to somewhere more equipped, so a helicopter was called.

The helicopter arrived from Grand Junction a few hours later; there had been a motor sport event in the area all weekend, and I assumed it had been busy. By this time it was dark, Sunday evening, probably 10pm or so. I was still fully compus mentis (as I had been throughout, although very aware that I was rather ill). I was insistent that my friends take pictures and video for the record.

In the dark car park, I was loaded on to this helicopter from my stretcher in to the space where left-hand seat would be, but in a horizontal position.

It piqued my mechanical interest: the flat fixed "trolley" of the helicopter slid aft and then hinged outboard, then engaged with my hospital stretcher, whereby I was lifted from one to the other, and then allowed me to be slid in and forward, yawing horizontally so my feet slid left into the nose cone of the helicopter, and then the door could be closed.

My friends were then left to make their own arrangements to go to pre-booked accommodation in Green River; fortunately the airport allowed them to keep the car overnight.

I don't know what helicopter it was, other than it was a single-engine, with me (the patient) in the Left; Joe the pilot in the right and Bill & Elizabeth the two nurses behind. We took off directly eastbound from Moab over unlit territory to Grand Junction. Joe was using night vision goggles, but I could see all the dimmed flight instruments. My eye line was about 3 inches above the glazing line, so I could see pretty much all the instruments but it was black as a witches tit outside. If I weren't bloody strapped in to the stretcher like a cadaver, I would have taken a picture of the panel!

We crossed the mountains at about 120 kts, and up to 12000 feet. Climbing through 9000 they made me breath 02 through a nasal canula (they had pre-warned me of this). The three flight crew (pilot & two medics) were brilliant. I would never undertake a single-engine helicopter flight, let alone at night and over dark mountains, but they were just brilliant. It was bloody noisy, though, and the whole helicopter vibrated like a dog shaking off water.

After 65 miles or so across some of the most empty territory in the lower 48, the landing was on the 12th storey helipad of the hospital in Grand Junction, at about 11 that Sunday evening. The Gastro-Enterology surgeon was waiting for me, having been called in, I later learned.

Within moments I was in theatre. The GE specialist explained that he would send a scope down my throat, and blew a spray down my mouth to prevent a gagging reflex. He then said he'd knock me out with anaesthetic, and that was the...last........thing........I...............rem e................

I recall being woken up about an hour later (because the GE surgeon had previously asked me for contact details of whom he should call, and my friends got the call at 1am or so).

Next morning I awoke in a hospital bed.

All in all, I had had four units of blood replacement products transfused. I stayed on a drip for two days, then was allowed up to walk around (with mobile drip stand in tow). Then on to pills for an extra night of monitoring before being discharged on the Wednesday. I'm still on some of those pills now, to reduce the chance of a recurrence.

The cause? My "stomach ache" was a duodenal ulcer, either caused by or exacerbated by the bacterium h.pylori, which ended up perforating a blood vessel in my small intestine, probably fairly shortly before I landed ay CNY. The surgery that night (through my aesophagus and stomach) cauterised the bleed.

The total cost for medical treatment was in the order of $54,000, of which $32,000 was the helicopter ride. All of it (less the £150 excess/deductible) was covered by my travel insurance. The best £23 I ever spent. The loss-adjusters have told me that they are contesting the extent of the bill, but that will not affect me.

The surgeon who operated on me was also a private pilot. It was he who suggested I stay an extra day (from the Tuesday to the Wednesday) for observation, knowing that I would be flying. My response to him was "You're the doctor; I'll do whatever you say".

So I was released on the Wednesday. I booked a taxi to drive me back to Moab CNY airport, but it was too late that day to fly. Gary (the H&S chap mentioned above) hugged me when I turned up, and we are firm friends now. I booked into a motel for the night.

The next day I flew to Tucson Arizona to meet up with my three Taylorcraft buddies who had in the meantime been to California. That next day's flight was a wonder, for all the best reasons.

More to follow.

**lfries** · 09-02-2017, 13:04

Re: 2017 Southwest Taylorcraft Trip

Thanks for the report. Sounds like you had a good insurance policy. Price seems very reasonable. Try to keep the excitement down on future trips.

**Mark Bowden** · 09-19-2017, 09:33

Re: 2017 Southwest Taylorcraft Trip

I found the chopper.

It is N914SM

A 2010 Eurocopter AS350-B3, SN 7012.

**skyboltone** · 09-22-2017, 05:56

Re: 2017 Southwest Taylorcraft Trip

General question: How did the 65hp vs 85hp airplanes compare in the intermountain area?

Great show, inspiring to say the least, I want to go next year.

Dan

**Mark Bowden** · 09-26-2017, 07:48

Re: 2017 Southwest Taylorcraft Trip

Hi Dan,

That quote is funny.

Mine, Jims, and Mike's are 65 hp. Rob's has a C75 but his prop isn't pitched to take full advantage. Mine had 2" off the tips and was repitched to "something" in the 1950's from a flight school mishap.

We were all pretty even in climb rate, Jim was a bit slower, but turns out his mags lost some advance, all fixed now.

At our highest point 10,400' I still had plenty of power to climb but we went around the Abajos going into CNY at that altitude instead of over. As a kid Dad took me to about 13K once.

Jim as lead would set cruise rpm at 2100 so as the winds moved us around as a group we had some cruise margin and could catch back up to maintain the formation plan for the day.

One thing I found was when at high altitudes if you advanced rpm to 2250-2300 then initiated climb angle and to 65-70 mph, rate of climb was much better and engine naturally loads back to an rpm of 2200 or so. If you changed climb pitch and advanced throttle at same time, the rate of climb was much poorer as the engine could never really spool up to use the hp you had left.

It is amazing the altitude records for Taylorcrafts and what Grace Huntington accomplished in 1940. There is a link to her story on the Foundation website, if the photo is real she did this with a wood prop? Also of note is her degrading penmanship as altitude increased.

http://www.taylorcraft.org/grace-huntington/ghuntington-record-x.html

Mark

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2017 Southwest Taylorcraft Trip

2017 Southwest Taylorcraft Trip

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